Ford Man
 

My cars are a 1988 Ford Escort 1.9L TBI 4 speed manual transmission with 474,000+ miles on the original non rebuilt engine this is my experimental car. This is my everyday car which averages getting 50-100 miles per day. I have just recently started a mileage log on it since adding a PCV enhancer and started using 3 oz. acetone per 10 gallons gas and 3 oz. water per 10 gallons mixed with the acetone. At first I was a bit skeptical about adding water to the gas tank, but if you mix it with the acetone before adding it to the tank the water mixes very well with acetone which mixes good with the gas. I have been doing this for over a 1000 miles now and have had no problems with the way the car runs, no sputtering, or loss of power. When I first tried it I thought if the car ran like crap on that tank of gas I would just run it down nearly empty on that tank and refill with gas with acetone only added to it. Over the last 1156.7 miles with this mixture and the PVC enhancer it has averaged 44.951 MPG. After I have run this set up for about 1500 miles I am going to try the PCV enhancer without the acetone/water mixture. Then I am going to try different amounts of acetone/water mixtures. If anyone is interested in making their own PCV enhancer it is very simple, just take a jar any size (your choice) and drill two 3/8" holes in the lid, buy a piece of all thread pipe (pipe used in making lamps is what I use available at Home Depot electrical department) cut two pieces about 1 1/2" long and place them through the holes in the lid and place lamp nuts with lock washers on top and bottom of lid to hold the pieces of pipe in place, seal any air leaks with silicone and fill the jar about half full of steel wool to give the liquid something to be absorbed in then just buy some heater hose or fuel line whatever size you need and run one hose from the PCV valve to one fitting on the jar and from the other fitting on the jar run a hose to the intake or where ever the other end of the original PCV hose ran to. It is surprising how much blow by liquid will accumulate in the jar. I use about a 12oz. jar and it looks like I will need to empty the liquid emissions about every 2,000 to 3,000 miles, but I may get more blow by than most because of the miles and wear on the engine. I am also going to soon place a couple of layers of stainless steel screen between the TB and the intake and check the mileage like that for about 1500 miles to see if it improves or not. I am also going to to experiment with different amounts of acetone/water mixture to see if that effects fuel economy. I am also going to put Xado to the test and hopefully soon make and install a hydrogen on demand system. Each experiment I am going to run for about 1500 miles so I can get a fairly accurate average on driving habits, weather conditions, and combined city/highway driving. Prior to starting the mileage log I checked mileage about every tank and got 37-41 MPG without the enhancer and acetone/water mix so something has helped I'm not sure whether it's the PCV enhancer or the acetone/water mix or a combination of both. I also have a 1996 Ford Contour 2.0L Z-Tech MPI 5 speed manual transmission, a 1997 Ford Escort Station Wagon 2.0L MPI 5 speed manual transmission with 22,000+ miles on it which I have also placed a PCV enhancer on, but haven't drove it enough to find out whether it has helped mileage or not. Next month I am going on a trip in it that will be about 1050 miles of highway driving round trip. It usually gets about 40-42 MPG highway with the cruise set at 55 MPH so this trip will give me the chance to find out if the PCV enhancer helps it or not. Then there is the 2002 Ford Escort 2.0L MPI automatic transmission with 84000+ miles that my son drives most of the time which usually gets 29-33 MPG combined city/highway, and last but by no means least is my 1982 Yamaha XJ1100J with 1.1L 5 speed manual transmission with 9,000+ actual miles on it. Believe it or not the 1988 Escort beats the pants off of it when it comes to MPG because it only gets about 37-39 MPG combined city/highway. Hope this tells everyone a little bit about me and what I am going to be doing for the next several months as far as testing different items and products. Looking forward to learning lots of other interesting experiments on gassavers.org and increasing mileage. I'm shooting for 100 MPG on the 1988 Escort and many more years of service from it. My goal may seem unrealistic, but if I set my goal high I will keep experimenting with different things trying to meet the goal. For anyone that is interested I tried the Fuel Saver 2000 on this car several years ago it did NOT work for me. I was able to install it myself so all the expense I encountered for trying it was the cost of a few hose clamps and a few feet of vacuum hose. My mileage decreased. At the time Wyoming Instruments offered a money back guarantee which I see they no longer offer which leads me to believe that they were getting lots of them back like they did mine. Just wanted to let everyone know so they can try it at their own risk. If anyone has any interesting ideas or know of something that increases their MPG I would be glad to hear from you. Just email at rickycook1@basicisp.net

Edited 6/6/08: Someone on this web site told me it was better to use copper BB's or copper wool in the PVC enhancer because the copper will act as a catalyst

Ford Man, you should use the "Enter" key to separate paragraphs. It's very difficult to read one huge block of text. To further exacerbate that problem, for some reason your post came up extremely narrow, only a few words before it wraps to the next line, so it goes on for pages while only being ~2 inches wide on my screen. I imagine that's a malfunction in the forum, not your fault. I quoted your message and previewed it and was able to read it wider that way.

I'm interested in the PCV enhancer idea. I don't understand the PCV system that thoroughly, so I am unable to understand the enhancer. Can you explain how and why the enhancer works, and how you came up with the idea? It's certainly the type of nearly-free mod that a lot of folks here (myself included) would like to do.

Edit: After reloading the page it still stayed narrow, but now that I've posted a reply your post filled the normal width. Weirdness.

PCV Enhancer
 

The reason I tried the PCV enhancer is because on the 1988 Escort the blow by gasses were routed back into the air filter/breather. I was having trouble with it blowing oil and liquid emmisions all over my air filters making them get dirty quicker so I came up with the idea to just reroute the hose into the jar then route one from the jar to the breather. The liquid emmisions are then absorbed by the steel wool while the burnable emmisions vapors are passed back into the engine to be reburned. I am not sure why it helped the mileage except that it keeps oil and water coming from the crankcase from entering back into the engine. So if it didn't do anything else it will help keep your engine cleaner by filtering out the contaminants. After making mine I checked on ebay and people were making them from air compressor water removers and people are paying sometimes nearly $50. each for something they can make in about 15 minutes out of a jar that would be thrown away and about $2. worth of other materials. If you try it on your car please let me know what kind of results you recieve. I am curious whether it works on all cars or not.

It makes sense. Cleaner and cooler air is always better...

I just stumbled across someone who came up with the same mod for approximately the same original reason -- oil getting blown all over the place:
https://www.golfmkv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50949

In that thread, a point was brought up that with a good PCV valve, the oil wouldn't be all over the place, and that the OP's PCV valve was almost certainly bad.

It's still a cheap enough mod to be worth trying. :)

AKA - a "catch-can", and they've been used by all sorts of car enthusiasts for years and years with success.

My car does not have a pcv valve. I thought the same thing and looked in the service manual because I couldn't find it. I am not sure exactly how the pcv system on this car works. It has two orfices that work off of manifold vaccum. I just started having this problem within the last 100,000 miles which leads me to believe a lot of the blow by is just because the rings are getting worn. I talked to a mechanic with 40 years of experience about the problem I was having and he said he was never successful in stopping it on any he ever worked on.

If you can find copper BBs or copper pan scrubbers, you should try those in the jar instead of the steel wool. Copper has catalytic properties with hydrocarbons, such that it may crack some of the liquid goop into methane, hydrogen etc, that can go through and burn.

I think I can find the copper scrubbers. Thanks for the information I'll give it a try.