Odd Mod - Fuel Line Heater

[ProtonXX]

(The UGLY)Was looking forward to getting a fuel heater & hydrogen generator from hydrogen-boost.com. Thins started out bad when I initially paid for the fuel heater & then paypal blocked me form paying again for the generator. (the dont have a shopping cart where you can combine items.)Long story short after miss information I canceled the hydrogenerator order(very glad i did), & only went with the fuel heater.After getting the fuel heater in I was paranoid on working with the fuel lines & was scared of gas leaks, so I double clamp everything check -recheck & check again. Mileage went DOWN, response & power was DOWN. I suspected a gas leak so I put the regular gas line back in place & sure enough mileage & power went back up. I only drove about 50 miles with the fuel heater but the mileage & power was pitiful I had to send it back.Anyway $20 shipping later(had to pay return & new shipping costs. I was given a bigger flowing gas tube. but I did a blow test on it t see if air flows freely thru it..nope, still bottlenecking. As a test I put it on the gas line & didnt attach coolant to it. Mileage & power went back down. Sent it back & got a refund.The fuel heater was such a promising product but it was poorly designed. It had welding lumps on it where it didnt fit flush inside the antifree tube. The tubes were the gas line connects was just pinched onto a smaller copper pipe. The red circle is the diameter of the INSIDE of fuel hose, notice the inside of the copper pipe. HUGE bottleneck. In the end avoid hydrogen-boost fuel heater. Its poorly made, & it will cause a fuel pump failure(just like clogged fuel filters do).

[ProtonXX]

(The GOOD)I didnt give up & went with brightgreens fuel heater. Their fuel heater isnt made of copper which is fuel line friendly & its much higher quality. I did the blow thru the tube test to make sure it wasn't blocking fuel flow & it passed just like a regular fuel line. So now I felt safe to shop up my fuel line & radiator hoses once more. I didnt do # specific testing because Ive been busy traveling but the fuel heater was awesome. The car had a newfound floating quality that let me coast at 80mph & get 29-30mpg. Before I would have to drive 70-75mph to get 30mpg.An extra bonus came from using higher octane gas. Using 91 octane actually did something useful with the fuel heater, like improve power & mileage.I would like to do a followup test w/o the heater installed to see if the benefits are reversed but its hard to now since my radiator hose is sliced up. Also I gotta deal with bad oil for 3000k miles since I did a 10w30 oil change that dropped my mileage from the 5w20 days

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[northvibe]

wait... so did you install the heater then use a 91octane or have you always used 91?I ask because when I used a higher octane I would get better mileage without changing anything else.

[BlueCrush]

Higher octane can give you better mileage and more power on it's own. Maybe you should just get a Camcon and tune your A/F ratio.

[Sublimewind]

Sounds like more snake oil to me man... Higher octain fuel will give you better milage as stated by the others. I would think COOLING the fuel would help more than heating it... It would allow for a denser fuel mixture... at least that is how my logic works...

[joholste]

I think the reason the heater works is the fuel warmer and therefore closer to the detonation temperature..so it would therefore ignite more completely...and making it possible to get more power out of the same amount of fuel. Actually cooling the fuel would make it so that you would be pumping more fuel in. While yes this would get you more power than normal, you would have used more fuel than normal.just my 2 cents

[northvibe]

how does a fuel heater work? do you plug it in to power or what?I need a ecu piggy or replacement that can have 1 maps, 1 for power and 1 for economy... I forgot BC, did yours have both stored in the camcon or did you have to reflash to switch?

[BlueCrush]

The Camcon only holds one map of settings at a time. The Unichip is the one that holds one map for economy and one map for power.

[joholste]

I think the Emanage ultimate can do two right??

[joatmon]

Quote, originally posted by BlueCrush »Higher octane can give you better mileage and more power on it's own. Higher octane will allow more ignition advance, and octane and timing combined may give you more power or mileage. The question is will a vibe automatically adjust timing in order to take advantage of the higher octane fuel? If the car was prone to pinging on 87, then moving to a higher octane would let it not retard the timing to prevent knock, and it would run better. I suppose it is possible that the ECU is programmed to advance the timing until it senses knock, then back off a bit, and would automatically adjust for higher octane, but I think it more likely that there is a limit to the stock timing adjustment range the ECU will try, and that it would not be broad enough to take advantage of the higher octane. In my car the higher octane is a waste of money, and my experience has been that higher octane fuel in the base vibe gave me worse mileage. Power gain was limited to the effect of weight reduction in my wallet.ymmv Quote, originally posted by northvibe »how does a fuel heater work? do you plug it in to power or what?Sounds like the fuel heater is a mod that runs a section of the fuel line through the interior of one of the radiator hoses, and should not require any electrical hookup. Seems safer to use the coolant to heat the fuel than something electrical, the coolant is only going to get so hot.

[ProtonXX]

O let me clarify, I used 87 & 91 on a trip before the heater. 91 had more power but resulted in less mileage. The only gas that gave me more mileage was shell gas With the heater the tank mileage went up about 20-30 miles when using 91 & it justified the extra 20c for gas. The results it gives seems to scale up nicely with the quality gas used.The heater is plugged into the fuel line & main radiator hose. In the pics mine sits behind my airbox.(Along the radiator jose to the engine path & close enough to the fuel line).

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[djb383]

I've read a dozen or more articles regarding 87 octane gas vs higher octane gas and they all say higher octane will NOT increase mileage on a modern engine designed to run on 87, like the Vibe. Does anyone have info to the contrary?http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S ... od...s.htm

[Sublimewind]

Quote, originally posted by joholste »I think the reason the heater works is the fuel warmer and therefore closer to the detonation temperature..so it would therefore ignite more completely...and making it possible to get more power out of the same amount of fuel. Actually cooling the fuel would make it so that you would be pumping more fuel in. While yes this would get you more power than normal, you would have used more fuel than normal.just my 2 centsBut detonation tempature is just what you DON'T want... Gas has plenty of enegery stored in it to not need any help... A cooler denser charge of air/fuel is ideal in all respects. Well, for power production... And cool fuel doesn't mean you will pump more fuel per injector opening, it's metered the same reguardless of temp... I could see a possibility of maybe better atomazition with warm fuel... but gas doesn't thicken like desiel... so i donno... I don't know there are so many conflicting technoligies, like say for instance on a WRX, they have coolant routed through the throttle body on the car... but upstream they have an intercooler?? Engineertwin?? you out there....??? Opinions??

[Sublimewind]

Do you have one of those fuel line magnets as well?? They are REALLy supposed to make a big difference...

[drunkenmaxx]

Quote, originally posted by djb383 »I've read a dozen or more articles regarding 87 octane gas vs higher octane gas and they all say higher octane will NOT increase mileage on a modern engine designed to run on 87, like the Vibe. Does anyone have info to the contrary?i concur. the (removed) dyno placebo effect is no enough to convince me. if that was the case, wouldn't every car come with a recommendation for high octane? MPG and power are pretty big selling points, the companies would make you aware of any possible increase in either through gas selection.

[BlueCrush]

After thinking about it for a bit, running higher octane on a stock car with no mods will probably not give you any gains. However, if you have modified your car with an intake, header and exhaust, then use a higher octane fuel that you would see some hp gains since doing those mods may leave you running lean enough to lose some power on regular octane. Any thoughts?

[djb383]

Yep, lean/rich has to do with air/fuel ratio. Low/high octane has to do with the fuels ability to prevent pre-ignition.

[ProtonXX]

Quote, originally posted by Sublimewind »Do you have one of those fuel line magnets as well?? They are REALLy supposed to make a big difference... lol my fuel heater from bright green came with 2 magnets, I just stuck them to my desk & went on without them.

[Sublimewind]

Are you CRAZY, that is where all the POWER went.... sheeze... lol

[chevelle_lover]

In all this would do is to increase the temperature of the fuel allowing it to atomize better in the air stream. There would be more space between the molecules. In effect since the fuel air mixture will be better mixed then you can use slightly less fuel for the same amount of work. There was a Fiero in the 80's that they did the same thing and add a fuel warmer to the engine. The cooling of the fuel like an ice bucket for a drag car is going to do two things. It is going to prevent vapour lock since the fuel lines pass so close to the exhaust and then it would cool the incoming air making that more dense as well. This works really good on a carb car. This would give one more horsepower for the 1/4 mile shots but the actual fuel mileage is terrible.