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Restricting fuel supply for HHO purposes.

crazy240

New member
Joined
Jun 16, 2008
Location
Austin TX
Hello, I have been messing with an HHO generator for a couple months but I need to tune down the amount of gas that is going in to the engine.
I know you can get a EFIE controller but I don't have the money at the moment.
Anybody messed with this before?
Any body know a good way to lean out the fuel mixture on a 93 245?
 
Wideband O2 sensor with a programmable narrowband output. Set the narrowband output to a leaner setting.

Otherwise, pretty much whatever you do the ECU will try to offset by enrichment, as it is guided to do so by the O2 sensor. Do enough and the CEL will go on, but at that point it won't be a very 'even' lean running condition, just gimped to the extent you messed with it.

In any case, there's like a 99% chance that your HHO system isn't going to do anything detectable without incredibly precise instruments anyway. Post up some pics and specs.
 
HHO is working great but with added levels of oxygen the O2 tells the ECU to send more fuel due to it reading lean hence why most people don't have any luck with HHO until they study it and tune their cars to it. It is not just a bolt on and you get 30% better fuel mileage.
I got it figured tho, I am using a potentiometer between the O2 and the computer to cut back in voltage delivered to the ECU. The potentiometer I am using is the stock volume knob from the radio.. Basically I am doing the same as a EFIE controller but not spending $80.
 
That's not exactly how narrowband sensors work. It does a rather sharp switchover around stochiometric. I don't really think a simple potentiometer will really do much of anything. To the extent it's working, it's probably just making the engine run lean, that will save gas with or without any HHO thing on the motor.
 
HHO is working great but with added levels of oxygen the O2 tells the ECU to send more fuel due to it reading lean hence why most people don't have any luck with HHO until they study it and tune their cars to it. It is not just a bolt on and you get 30% better fuel mileage.
I got it figured tho, I am using a potentiometer between the O2 and the computer to cut back in voltage delivered to the ECU. The potentiometer I am using is the stock volume knob from the radio.. Basically I am doing the same as a EFIE controller but not spending $80.

The added oxygen just burns the added hydrogen, so you don't need to change anything. The sensor still works the same way. If there is extra oxygen in the exhaust the ECU adds more fuel, as usual. How well do you understand what is going on?
 
That's not exactly how narrowband sensors work. It does a rather sharp switchover around stochiometric. I don't really think a simple potentiometer will really do much of anything. To the extent it's working, it's probably just making the engine run lean, that will save gas with or without any HHO thing on the motor.

Yes it will save gas with or without hydrogen however with hydrogen it replaces the gasoline taken out so that your engine will not detonate.
 
The added oxygen just burns the added hydrogen, so you don't need to change anything. The sensor still works the same way. If there is extra oxygen in the exhaust the ECU adds more fuel, as usual. How well do you understand what is going on?

Well with engineering and mechanical backgrounds as well as having studied it for a long time I would say I understand it very well and know exactly what I need to do.
However I am on a tight budget at the moment hence why I am using a volume knob and a mason jar to make this work.
So far I am using a 6 plate single cell configuration in a mason jar with a switch on the dash with an air fuel ratio gauge. This is all built with scrap material I had laying around.
So far the set up has costed me less than $3 and I am getting 2-2.5 mpg on average better fuel mileage. However my cell is designed to produce about 1lpm when warm and that is enough hydrogen to where I should be able to get at least 30-35mpg. But in order to get that I need to fool the ECU to put less gasoline so that the hydrogen really can go to work. Not bad for a mason jar and some stainless laying around..
Once my budget allows I will be going to a dry cell set up. With proper EFIE/MAF controllers with full 100 amp pulse with power supply.
 
Well with engineering and mechanical backgrounds as well as having studied it for a long time I would say I understand it very well and know exactly what I need to do.
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Smoke and mirrors. It does not work. No one has ever been able to show any scientific based proof. If you want to run it go ahead. Water injection at least does "something" when used in the right situation.
 
Smoke and mirrors. It does not work. No one has ever been able to show any scientific based proof. If you want to run it go ahead. Water injection at least does "something" when used in the right situation.

Have you tried it? How come you can run an engine on Hydrogen but you can not lean your fuel mixture?
 
This thread is gold. How do you figure 1lpm. What's the current draw on this ****ing masterpiece?

1lpm is measured by how long it takes to fill up a 1l bottle. In my case it is around 1 minute.
Amp draw ranges between 15-20 depending on driving or idling.

I am not claiming that this works yet. I am trying to see if it does on a budget before I invest but I am seeing 2-2.5 mpg better on average over several tanks so it is doing something.. Just how far can I take it? And to be honest 2-2.5 mpg better is not bad at all.
 
Do you understand how many liters of air/fuel the motor goes through in a minute?

Try driving it around with your HHO thing disconnected and you'll get the same results. 1 liter of disassociated H and O over a whole minute isn't enough to make any noticeable difference. And to the extent it does make a difference, you're using every slightly more power to break the H and O apart than you get back by letting the motor put them back together again.

But who am I kidding, the confirmation bias withi projects like this is *massive*. You'll think it works, because you want to. And that's fine, really. We all do silly things that make us happy.
 
But let me take one more crack at getting you to understand how a narrowband O2 sensor works, and why adding a potentiometer isn't really the 'fine tuning' that you might think it is.

Narrowband sensors are called that because they really read the mixture over a very tiny range. Right around stochiometric. Just a richer than stochiometric, and the sensor 'flops' to a 'full rich' reading. Just a little bit leaner, and it flops to a 'full lean' reading. Here's a diagram of how the sensor's voltage reacts to different mixtures:
O2+sensor+voltage1150420738.gif


This is acceptable no an OEM ECU because all they need to do is find stochiometric, they're not trying to do rich mixtures under boost, or run lean mixtures under cruise. They just want to hit stochiometric to make the cat happy. They do that by having the ECu cycle back and forth over that switch point. If the sensor is reading 'full rich' then it leans the mixture out, slowly, until the sensor flops to 'full lean', then it slowly richens the mixture up again. This is the 'closed loop
operation, the ECU is cycling back and forth over that stochiometric point.

This means, however, that the stochiometric mixture is BUILT INTO the sensor. The narrowband can't be used to do anything other than find the 'switchpoint' at a stochiometric mixture. You can't trick it into finding a different switch point by adding resistance to the sensor signal. Because it will still flop' at the same mixture. Your trick would work on a wideband sensor, because it sends out a varying voltage over its whole range of mixtures it senses. Adding a resistor would make a difference on a curve like that:
wide-bandvsnarrow-band.gif
 
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