The mystery of 100+ mpg cars, and the disappearance & deaths of men behind it

With gas prices close to $4 a gallon again in many areas, and a possible war with Iran looming, meaning gas prices could reach upwards of $7, the hunt for alternative fuels for vehicles has more than begun. The most common alternative for gasoline (aside from hybrids) is electric, with companies like Tesla Motors really getting the ball rolling. Their cars are incredibly expensive, but certainly make up for it in mileage:

The EPA uses some formula, but the easiest thing to do is compare costs. It takes about 2¢ worth of electricity to drive one mile. At $2/gal, and getting 20 mpg, your present car would cost 10¢/mi. So that's 5X your present mileage.

But the quoted figure is around 240mpg equivalent. That must be using other factors, too.

www.teslamotors.com...

However, electric cars have drawbacks. First of all, it takes 48 hours to charge from empty for the Tesla car. And the range is limited to around 250 miles. But what if the solution to our current issues was in fact under our noses this entire time? What cars could get 100+ mpg using gasoline?

First, lets explain the carburetor.

A carburetor is the part of an internal combustion engine that blends air and fuel in a tiny explosion. The kinetic energy from that explosion is used to push the pistons of the engine.

A basic understanding of how an internal combustion engine works is as follows:

The fuel injectors inject the gasoline.
The spark plugs ignite the gasoline.
The gasoline explosion moves the pistons. (Sort of like a potato cannon.)
The pistons turn the crankshaft.
The crankshaft turns the rest of the car.

Seems simple, right? Well what many people don't realize is that the carburetor is EXTREMELY inefficient.

The primary problem with carburetors is the fact that most of the energy it makes is wasted as heat and isn't converted into kinetic energy.

The standard Carburetor that we've been seeing for the last 70 years is only 9% efficient. It gets an average of 25 miles/gallon of gasoline, depending on the weight of the car. While this has gone up since then (usually by making more efficient use of the other parts of the car and by making cars out of lightweight materials), carburetors today are still only about 12% efficient.

Which means the other 88% is basically wasted energy in the form of heat.

www.lilith-ezine.com...

So… It doesn't take a genius to realize that if that fuel could be used more for kinetic energy than heat, than cars would be incredibly efficient. Even at 50% efficiency, a Hummer, which struggles to get 10mpg, could get 40mpg. Something like a Camry could get close to 100mpg. And that's only at 50%. Imagine what 60 or 70% would be like!

Now back to the topic at hand. In 1978, there was a young man named Tom Ogle.


Tom was able the achieve 100+ mpg in his Ford Galaxie by removing the carburetor and running the car on fumes.

“I was messing around with a lawn-mower when I accidentally knocked a hole in its fuel tank. I put a vacuum line running from the tank straight into the carburetor inlet. I just let it run and it kept running and running but the fuel level stayed the same. I got excited. The lawn-mower was running without a carburetor and getting tremendous efficiency.”

The engine got so hot Ogle used a fan to cool it and was amazed when it ran 96 hours on the fuel remaining in the mower’s small tank.

He went from the lawn-mower to the automobile, converting a car in the same manner... Ogle did away with the carburetor and fuel pump, replacing them with a secret black box he calls a filter. The super mileage, he said, was due to his pressurized, vaporized fuel system that injects fumes directly into the engine’s firing chambers.

Now I'm sure you're thinking hoax right now, but the interesting part was that it was verified by the media.

Frank Haynes Jr. is registered state engineer with degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University. He was at Peck’s Automotive Saturday where he looked the system over and talked with Ogle.

“From what I saw, there was no hoax.” Haynes said, adding that he learned of Ogle’s invention in The Times.

“What I saw was very convincing,” Haynes said. Haynes said he felt the only chance of a hoax might have been in the amount of fuel that actually was in the tank.

Prior to the test drive Saturday, reporters and onlookers witnessed a mechanic at Peck’s empty the special, pressurized gas tanks, and pour two gallons of fuel into the tank after it was empty.

Haynes said he was additionally convinced of the system’s authenticity by the fact it was difficult to start the car before heading to Deming.

“The car had to be primed quite thoroughly in order to run. That gave me the idea that there weren`t any fumes in the system after drainage.

“That was quite convincing for me personally. If there had been hidden fuel, there wouldn`t have been any difficulty in starting the car, according to how he (Ogle) described the system to me,” Haynes said.

Haynes described Ogle as an “open, earnest young man who convinced me everything he said should be true.”

fuel-efficient-vehicles.org...

Sounds great, right? Well, it didn't turn out well due to another company supposedly working on a similar design, followed by some shady circumstances.

But Ogle’s first and only car center soon closed and his monthly checks stopped. Ogle was told he’d get no royalties because AFS was working on a device that got similar results but wasn’t his invention.

Continuing in his spiraling downfall from quick success and media attention in 1981, Monica, Tom’s wife left him and took along their five-year-old daughter Sherry. Then on April 14th he was shot in the street by someone who ‘got away’ yet he survived the incident.

On August 18th a broken and forgotten Tom Ogle, drunk, left The Smuggler’s Inn, the same place that I’d first met him. That night he went to a friend’s apartment and collapsed.

He was declared dead at El Paso’s Eastwood Hospital. His death, which involved a combination of Darvon, a prescribed pain killer, and alcohol, was ruled accidental or suicide. Many believed it was a cover-up for murder.

The odd deaths has made many wonder over whether Tom and company were deliberately targeted by the oil industry. For more on this, check out the below video, which also touches more upon Tom's work:




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But Tom Ogle wasn't the first time, nor the last time. Some of you might have heard of Charles Pogue. Back in the 30's he created a carburetor that got 72% efficiency.

“In 1933 Charles Nelson Pogue made headlines when he drove a 1932 Ford V8, 200 miles on a gallon of gas during a demonstration conducted by The Ford Motor Company in Winnipeg, Manitoba using his super-carb system.”

In early 1936 Breen Motor Company, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada tested the Pogue carburetor on a Ford V-8 Coupe and got 26.2 miles on one pint of gasoline (That’s 200+ mpg).. The performance of the car was 100% in every way. Under 10 mph the operation was much smoother than a standard carburetor. T.G. Green, President of the Breen Motor Company did the tests.

The idea behind itself is simple and sound.

There is a certain maximum economy mixture of gasoline and air ( generally conceded to be about 16 to 1). If a carburetor delivers this with the air, this is accepted as the best it can do. Actually, “the best” is possible only under ideal conditions. That is, a one-cylinder engine operating under a constant load-fluctuations in power would upset the entire mixing process.

The matter of gasoline engines efficiency is one which has stumped automotive engineers since the advent of the horseless carriage. Because of the high power losses in the carburetor, in the exhaust gases, and low power factor at which engines work, gasoline has never been delivered its theoretical potential.

What, then, did the Pogue carburetor do to overcome these power losses and offer the mileage claimed?

Basically, the Pogue carburetor heated the gasoline before mixing it with the air. With this system, the inventor claimed that the imperfect mixing of gasoline in air ( which resulted in small unvaporised droplets of gasoline which do not explode, which burn slowly, unevenly and increase internal heat- all bad for performance and mileage ) was eliminated and every possible energy unit in the gasoline was being utilised.

To provide a perfect gas-air mixture for the engine, Pogue believed that a heating chamber was needed to thoroughly vaporise the gasoline before it joined the air stream and entered the cylinders.

Although automobiles do have a heating chamber built into the intake manifold, this chamber heats the gasoline and air mixture only after it leaves the carburetor Although this helps the automobile to start easier and warm up faster, it also creates an expansion of air and consequently, a smaller charge of air-gas mixture is drawn into the cylinder. Pogue decided that the only way to produce a real gasoline vapour was to heat the gasoline and not the air.

Pogue admitted to little difficulty in starting the car however, for the gasoline was not warm until the exhaust gases reached it. So the first charge of gasoline going into the engine was far rawer than those later when it had been heated.

But with the exception of this one minor flaw, Pogue still believes his carburetor is completely practical.

So the mystery of the Pogue carburetor lies not in the devise itself, but in the semi-secret story surrounding its invention, development and eventual abandonment.

…Which IS incredibly strange. Perhaps it was a hoax, perhaps not. But what was truly strange was that Pogue disappeared and refused to talk about his invention. He finally talked to a journalist in the early 50's, but was frightened and uneasy, yet may have revealed some very key details.

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“Were you ever threatened, Mr. Pogue?”
“Yes, several times.”
“Were you ever physically attacked?”
“No.”
“Was your workshop broken into and models stolen?”
“Several times.”
“Were you ever the victim of political pressure?”

“What do you think? Say you’re a government official and you’ve got oil stock and my invention came along. What would you do? I had pressure from both Canadian and American politicians. One of your fellows, a big shot in Washington now, was one of them.”

“Will you name him?”
“No.”

“Why didn’t you produce the Pogue carburetor?”
“Firstly, we couldn’t get materials, then distribution, then the war came along, then…”
“There’s a story which says you were bought off. Is this true?”
“No.”

” Don’t you think the public would have bought your carburetor for installation on standard cars.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore”.

And that was the unsatisfying end of Charles Nelson Pogue’s first interview in 14 years, perhaps the last time Pogue will speak about his invention to anyone.

Earlier, in the two-and-a-half-hour interview, this information came to light:

Charles Nelson Pogue, tired and frightened, is hiding a great deal of information for no apparent reason that I can fathom. Although visibly moved when confronted with the picture of young inventors who might be aided by his experiences, he would not tell his story. Even when confronted with the fact that many readers would consider his refusal to speak a certain indication of fraud, he merely shrugged. He refused even to pose for pictures and threatened prosecution for invasion of privacy if photographs were taken against his will.

One emotional moment came when he was asked if his invention was dangerous. He leaped up, towered over his gadget-strewn desk and waggled his forefinger: “That’s nonsense. Gasoline will not explode unless it has oxygen. In my invention the gasoline was heated before it mixed with air. Its entirely possible many people misunderstood that, but my invention would never explode. Never!”

He also disclosed that the first rash of publicity brought letters of inquiry from governments of Italy and Canada and personal visits from representatives of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. He hinted darkly at financial and political considerations offered to him by these governments but, when pressed for details, refused to continue.

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Even more recently, a few years back, a man named John Weston came forward, claiming to get 463 miles per gallon.

In an interview he gave to NBC-2, John Weston states: “It came up to 463 miles a gallon if we had driven in the same manner – a gallon. I drove from here to Fort Myers, and I’m up there keeping up with traffic running 80 mph.” The NBC reporters were even took to a test drive, where the engine stumbled a little bit and John said he put too much vapor on the pipe, so when he lowered the vapors, everything got back to normal.

Some mechanics say that disconnecting the fuel lines and not feeding the engine with regular liquid fuel will eventually ruin it. It may be so, but precautions can be taken and proper oiling can be made so the engine is well-lubricated. The same thing applies to gas-converted cars, and they run smoothly forever (it’s only gas, not oil). I don’t know much about mechanics, but if you find a system that gets you 463mpg, you’re also smart enough to find a proper lubrication system.

Regardless over whether this is a hoax or not, John Weston did leave contact info, so if any of you would like to contact him, you can. There haven't been any more articles about him that I could find.

*SNIP*

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I actually found an interesting tidbit on an auto forum while doing research. Regardless, take it with a grain of salt. Someone was talking about the Pogue design.

I actually had a customer in the other week at work talking about this I was kinda interested in it. He said that lately someone has found and used the design, but before they could sell the design to someone else I guess 2 people showed up at his house and told him "You will not make this, and if you try again you will be shot". I didn't know to beleive him or not just found the whole thing kinda interesting.

www.automotiveforums.com...

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All in all, fuel efficient cars in the modern world are a must. But it still makes you wonder whether or not some of the inventions of the past were stifled by the auto industry. Perhaps only time will tell
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More info:
www.rexresearch.com...
fuel-efficient-vehicles.org...
www.scribd.com...
fuel-efficient-vehicles.org...
fuel-efficient-vehicles.org...



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I saw this title and thought about something dad said to me about this over 30 years ago.
He worked for general motors for 25 plus years.. and we talked cars often, I remember him
mentioning this carb that was developed that achieved that kind of mileage. The entire story
is a bit fuzy, but i do remember him saying the man that came up with the idea was kinda forced
sell his rights to the carb..funny how greed always works its way in..

Great explanation and thread topic.

What are your thoughts on the wave disk engine?

www.physorg.com...

www.msnbc.msn.com...

Originally posted by METACOMET
Great explanation and thread topic.

What are your thoughts on the wave disk engine?
www.physorg.com...

Thanks and I haven't heard of it, but it seems interesting. I'll have to look into it. Thanks!

Ive always thought it funny that I could fill up my motor bike for $10 and go 200 km, but we cant make a car that would do the same. I know theres a lot more to it (motor size, carrying capacity) but still, it is a little odd. Theres no way that weve had an automotive industry so long and nobodies solved this problem.

I've heard about these carburetors for ages. I want one.

I want to believe!

I just dont understand why car companies dont just release these carburetors that can do that..

People would FLOCK to that company to buy their cars.

Originally posted by DaRAGE
I've heard about these carburetors for ages. I want one.

I want to believe!

I just dont understand why car companies dont just release these carburetors that can do that..

People would FLOCK to that company to buy their cars.

edit on 27-1-2012 by DaRAGE because: (no reason given)

It's not the car companies, it's big oil. If an average person's gas efficiency was multiplied by 5, then they would only buy 1/5 as much gas, meaning the oil companies only get 1/5 as much profit from a person than now.

It's really comes down to greed.

It's 2012 -.- OFCOURSE we can make vehicles use hardly any gas and get even better results. The question is.. where is the profit?

reply to post by DaRAGE


If you were a big wig executive for say.. GM.. and all of the gas companies paid you a pretty penny to NOT create these vehicles, what would you do? Now I know right now you say, turn it down. Well then you gotta remind yourself that no one has showed up at your doorstep yet offering say.. 50 million. Maybe even more for all we know

There are millions of people in the USA alone that work on their cars, hundreds of magazines dedicated to achieving the highest performance and efficiency out of their motors. To think that if this was possible and no one is pursuing it in the hobby world and the fact that it isn't common knowledge and repeatable proves to me that it's a hoax at best and at worst a scam to swindle automotive illiterate people out of their money. It's scary how many people have absolutely zero idea of how a machine they use everyday of their adult lives even works.

Automotive companies are hugely competitive, spending billions of dollars on research . every new model is a giant leap in tech, their competitors have to be better every time and if they fail they lose their jobs. To think that a company would keep tech like this in the modern era secret and hidden is kind of ridiculous in my opinion.

Automotive journalists are pretty good, one of the best at uncovering industry secrets. There are very few stories that stay secret in that world for very long and something this big would not be a secret.

Oh and carburetors haven't been used on production cars for 25+ years.

There are quite a few reasons this is complete bunk, but I will go through a quick calculation to demonstrate why any and all of the above examples violates the laws of thermodynamics.

The basics if conservation of energy

U=Q+W

Or the total system energy = waste heat + work done.

For an automobile, a bit more detail in the above

Energy output = waste heat (energy in the exhaust + radiator) + work done (movement of the car + rolling resistance + power accessories + wind resistance + transmission losses + other drivetrain losses)

In an automobile, combusion operates as the otto cycle, which states the the MAXIMUM thermal efficiency is governed by the compression ratio. This explains why diesels are more efficient than gasoline engines as they operate at twice the compression ratio.

Now, for our Ford Galaxie, the compression ratio would be probable 9:6:1, or somewhere in that range. That would give us a MAXIMUM thermal efficiency of around 60%. This means, no matter how much you reduce all other losses, 40% of your potential energy is going to be lost as heat.

One gallon of gas contains 125,000 BTU's or 125MJ.

The curb weight for a 1970 Ford Galaxie is about 3700 lbs.

So how far could we move a 1970 Ford Galaxie with a gallon of gas with only rolling resistance? Assume a rolling resistance of 185 newtons, which seems reasonable for a 1970 Ford Galaxie as the rule of thumb is 100 newtons per ton at 55mph. Since work equals force times distance the distance equals work divided by force. 125MJ's divided by 185 Newtons is 675,000 meters or 420 MPG.

Seems like it would verify the miracle carb, right? Well, no becasue we neglected to account for our thermal efficiency which now takes us to 252 MPG.

Still pretty good, huh? Once again, no because we havent accounted for mechanical losses in the motor, or how much energy it takes to turn the engine over. It doesnt sound like it would take much to do this but think about it for a minute ... all those valve springs 16 on our 1970 Ford Galaxie (ever try to squeeze a valve spring by hand?) ... the tight tolerances on the crank journals and in the piston rings takes a tremendous ammount of work to move.

Consider an average battery .. about 500CCA. Now, if your batter is nearly drained, it might be putting out 8 volts, just enough to turn the motor over. 500 Amps at 8 volts is 4000 watts. Maintaining 4000 watts would consume about 20% of all the usable mechanical energy that our 1970 Ford Galaxie could deliver. So now we are down to around 200mpg.

Now, we come to wind wind resistance, a big gray area considering the lack of readily available data for the 1970 Ford Galaxie, but I will make some assumptions from an old textbook. At 55MPH you add about 140 Newtons / ton to your overall resistance. Since work equals force times distance the distance equals work divided by force. 59 MJ's (the ammount of energy left after the mechanical, rolling, and maximum theoretical work) divided by 260 Newtons is 226,000 meters or 140 miles that you must subtract from your range at 55 mph.

So now we are down to 60 mpg.

Subtract some more for AC, transmission losses etceteral and we are down to what we all see is a much more reasonable number.

Now this is all back of the envelope stuff, but it should demonstrate why a 200mpg Ford Galaxie has never and will never exist.

reply to post by SirMike


Thanks for explaining why this is impossible. The 100mpg+ carb has become an urban legend , it's always a friend of my ........ Worked/knew someone at gm, there's never any evidence just stories. It's not much different then the miracle cure salesman playing on the ignorance of the masses 100 years ago

reply to post by mossme89

reply to post by Pelvi


Yeah... So they're earning money from Big Oil... So what? They'd make a LOT more money from the purchases of their vehicles from customers, which would also damage the competition much more, leaving the way for possible take-overs in the future...

reply to post by drock905


Interesting thread, i used to ride my motorbike, on cold winter nights,i realised that when i went down into a foggy hollow, where the humidity was at saturation point, the engine seemed to have more power and ran smoothly.I often wondered why, untill i came across a war time carby, that actually injected a spray of water into the engine, alongside the petrol.The normal petrol engine could then be decribed as a "petrol steam engine hybrid".The petrol was used at the point of ignition to cause the water to turn to steam. I wonder what the formula is for that amount of petrol to raise the amount of water required to make its boiling point. Which raises an interesting fact that for every gallon of petrol that goes through an internal combustion engine, five gallons of water is produced from the exhaust.After combustion, so there must be some sort of steaming goin on already.

The reason a motor bike will get great mileage is because, if you double the weight, you need 4 times the energy to move it at the same speed/acceleration (not just 2 times the energy like one would suspect).

Now, there is a way to test this super mileage claim. If you have a newer car that tells you mileage stats, you just heat the metal fuel line just before it goes into the injectors. Don't heat the rubber line and don't use a flame. I would find a good 5-10 watt 12V heating strip or find a 15watt 20ohm resistor and attach it to the metal fuel line and then insulate it, use a 5amp switch and don't forget to turn it off when you are done driving. If your mileage goes up a noticeable amount then there may be something to it. Granted, I don't know if 8 watts is enough to heat it well enough or too much, even just insulating the whole fuel line might be enough to see a change in mileage.

The best would be a temperature controlled system and use it to get the fuel 10-20%hotter then normal operating temps.

What about that "Fish" carburator does that work?

reply to post by SirMike


Check this out. See yourself?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Just thought I'd point it out for grins and giggles.

I had seen this and thought to myself what if he hooked it up to a generator how much elctricity could this thing produce off a gallon of gas.