Save Gas Without Losing Your Shirt: 3 Gas Saving Devices with High Scam Potential
Fuel saving scams, er, devices, have been around for a long time, and now that fuel prices are soaring again, we decided it would be a good time to take a look at a few of the most popular and interesting ones out there.
Since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, oil prices have jumped from $28 per barrel to over $130, with most of that rise occurring in the last year. This fact is made even more stark considering that for all of the last century prior to the current meteoric rise, crude oil prices have averaged about $20 per barrel (adjusted for inflation).
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Economists and pundits continue to tussle over who or what is to blame for this, and I could hypothesize about how we’re all being taken to the cleaners by corporate greed, but that’d be a waste of energy, no? The important issue is that fuel costs have gone past the “arm-and-a-leg” stage and are now approaching “firstborn son.”
So, while I’d love to say that hydrocarbon fuel prices don’t matter because we’ve entered the hybrid-biofuel- electric-fuel-cell-hydrogen society, the reality is that I need a fix for my old jalopy quick… and what better place to start than a perusal of some of the spectacular deals to be had on the internet?
First up: FuelMAX
Better living through magnets, grandad always said. FuelMAX is a magnetic device that you attach to your car’s fuel line to “fracture gasoline hydrocarbon chains through magnetic resonance.” According to the company this could increase your mileage by 27% along with a whole host of other interesting side effects.
Unfortunately, you can’t buy FuelMAX anymore (in the US that is - in Latvia it’s still alive and well). Apparently, it was so popular and worked so well that the US Federal Trade Commission told FuelMAX’s parent company, International Research and Development, to take it off the US market and give people their money back.
Damn big brother, always destroying the hopes and dreams of fledgling corporations. Not to worry though, there are a myriad of other companies out there that sell essentially the same thing and who the Feds have left alone up to this point. Some even go so far as to not only put magnets on the fuel line, but also on the coolant and air intake (Video).
My Take: Magnet fuel savers work so well that the US government is involved in a conspiracy to systematically remove them from existence.
Next up: Cyclone Fuel Saver
When I was younger we used to watch hours of late night infomercials for fun. You know, the kind where they cover a car in a special wax made of what looks like cosmic fairy dust, and then they shoot a laser at it to show those microscopic fairies in action deflecting the laser from your beautiful car?
In retrospect, watching infomercials for fun was kind of lame, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have fond memories of products like the Cyclone Fuel Saver. This baby purports to create “a swirling air motion, allowing the air to move faster and more efficiently by continuously whirling air around corners and bends.” Which does what exactly? Apparently the swirling effect helps “atomise the air/fuel mixture in the combustion chamber” which results in a “more complete and efficient burning of the fuel.”
Wow. That sounds totally rad. And I bet it works too. If for some reason you can’t get your hands on one, not to worry, there are lots of other air intake modifications to be had. For instance, the Turbonator comes with “FlowTru™” technology which allows for the maximum amount of air to get to your engine. Also, if you’re inclined to dig around on such things, the Turbonator will make you instantly more popular with women as evidenced in this photo.
My Take: The Cyclone Fuel Saver must not work that well because the Feds haven’t shut it down yet and its been around for at least 10 years.
Last, but for sure not least: Water4Gas
Although instantly less cool than other fuel savers because it’s not technically a product and more of a description, Water4Gas has been getting a lot of the limelight recently… as it should. I mean, this company website has it all: vibrant color schemes, third-grade HTML proficiency, a video featuring Jimmy Carter, endless scrolling possibilities, and a money back guarantee from some guy named Ozzie Freedom. Ozzie Friggin Freedom. With a name like that he must be on the up-and-up.
Plus, Water4Gas has been tested on like 30 continents, or something, further proving its reliability. For only $97 you can get access to some online manuals that describe how you can spend a minimum of another $100 to modify your car to inject “hydrogen-on-demand” into your engine. Sounds like a winner to me. Mr. Freedom even has his own fan club that provides an unbiased and totally trustworthy review of the Water4Gas system.
Actually, of the three fuel saving systems included in this article, the Water4Gas type seems to have a very loyal following. Known alternatively as “waterhybrids” or “HHO systems,” some of them have been tested by seemingly reputable news organizations with actual positive results. However, based on the fact that advertisements on the Hydro4000 website make it look like the news station and Hydro4000 are in on some kind of scheme together, my trust in the news story is quite low. Plus, at $1,200 you’d have to have a major stash of money set aside for delusions of grandeur to actually buy one of these things.
My Take: The Water4Gas website is so bad that it must be a good product.
All joking aside, the sane part of my mind screams to me that these waterhybrid claims are so far gone that the products can’t be for real. Yet, as much as it pains me, I’ve got to say the jury’s still out on this one. Anybody have any personal experience they care to share? Any idea of how much energy is required to split water into its component parts and the ensuing energy balance (or imbalance) that would be present in a waterhybrid?
A recent post on Gas 2.0 details a system similar to waterhybrids that appears to have the backing of a university. That post generated some good cautionary comments regarding free energy, conservation of energy, and overall energy efficiency of a whole system such as an entire automobile. Any further thoughts on this topic?
Reality Check
Listen folks, if the claims make it seem like a product will do ridiculous things, then its probably a ridiculous product. Most experts say that fuel saving devices are largely scams and that, in lieu of expensive things like buying a more fuel efficient vehicle or completely changing your car’s aerodynamics, the only true way to increase your fuel mileage cheaply is the good old standby of changing your habits to up your car’s efficiency. In fact, in a post on Gas 2.0, Benjamin Jones points us to “100+ EcoDriving Tips to get Better Mileage in Your Car” and Edmunds.com has done its own field testing of many of these recommendations. Check them out and save your money.
Gas 2.0 Posts Related to Fuel Economy:
- How to Get 70 MPG Out of a Honda Civic
- 2009 Jetta BlueTDI Comes to US This Summer, Sports 60 MPG and Cleaner Emissions
- 100+ EcoDriving Tips to get Better Mileage in Your Car
- Can Improved Spark Plugs Boost Both Fuel Economy and Performance?
- Six New Technologies Will Help Manufacturers Reach the 35 MPG Goal (Without Hybrids)
- The World’s Most Fuel Efficient Car: 285 MPG, Not A Hybrid
Image Credit: adapted from d70Focus under Creative Commons
Re: Water2Gas
This is a scan. All engineers know this. There is no method in the world that can create additional “extra” free energy. In plain speak; converting hydrogen from water can be done by a grade 4 student. But it takes power to convert energy and the amount of “converted” energy will always be less than the amount of power required to create it. Get a grip people, this is not real, this is a total scam. Why do you think formal scientific studies have not been performed or released? Good grief, what a bunch of stupids you are.
i’ve built my own version of a water4gaz hho generator which i installed in my van a kia sedona 2004. i had to fiddle around with the oxygen sensors to get this working right, but i did get and maintained a 15% improvement in fuel economy. it was no miracle, a lot of work, fuel injection computers dont like hydrogen.
Thank goodness someone else is speaking out about these lame fuel-saving scams.
I wrote a piece on the silly-science behind these HHO scams and have had scores of replies from people who say “it works, I use it and save 20%-40% on my gas bill every week. Just visit my website at http:….”
And guess what?
Every one of those people is sending me to a website that either redirects to water4gas or has pay-per-click links to other scam sites. Yeah, they’re referring me because they want to gain the commissions or PPC revenues that these scams generate for them.
So there’s no way you can trust the testimonials of these people — they’re part of the scam.
If you want to see some simple math that debunks these schemes, then read all three pages of my article.
Interestingly enough, I have challenged everyone with one of these HHO systems to try out the simple experiment on this page: http://aardvark.co.nz/hho_scam2.shtml and report back with their results.
Not one of those who claim to be having so much success have done so.
What does that tell you?
But the media are in on this too — they’re on the lookout for fuel=related news items that will draw viewers eyes to the screen and there’s been a raft of really awful pieces in which nothing the scammers say is challenged in any way. In fact, some of these news pieces have been very cleverly edited to make it appear as if the science is endorsed by real scientists at well-known universities.
A good example of this was an Australian piece where they told how a couple of guys had improved their fuel economy by 20% through fitting one of these devices. They then went to a university and asked a professor “is hydrogen the fuel of the future” and he said yes.
The instant implication was that this system is therefore endorsed by real scientists.
Unbelievable.
Anyway, check out my article and feel free to contribute to the discussion in the related forum.
Also, please go to YouTube and search for “run your car on water”. Sort the results by “Date Added” and where you see all those multiple spam videos, flag them as spam so they get pulled and the posters get shut down.
Please help protect innocent dupes from these predators.
My article is at: http://aardvark.co.nz/hho.shtml
I took a 48 oz glass jar, 2 4-in. razor blades, 2 shirt buttons, some speaker wire and a toggle switch. A piece of 3/8 hose to connect to the air filter and gained 7 miles per gallon. I had all of these items at home and figured, hey, it didn’t cost me anything to try. So I did. I encourage you to also. Don’t knock it until you try it. By the way, it was used on a 2000 Pontiac Bonneville.
P.S. When you put in the roughly 30 oz of water, make sure its tap water, not distilled.
kbasham4@gmail.com
Magnets work. The EPA has some kind of conspiracy going on. To test a product the EPA charges a lot of money, so if a company knows its product doesn’t work it doesn’t make sense to have it tested and riducule by a government agency.The EPA hasn’t tested all the products out there so it is generalizing about all the rest not working.The EPA published the wrong MPG results before, somehow now they are more acurate. That wasn’t helping people figure if a product was working properly. That is why I suggest you use the miles per tank aproach first. Of course you car has to be tuned properly and running well.
For more info go to http://www.1mobilerepair.com
Enough already! Anecdotal evidence often indicates that the current applied science is incorrect. As for the water4gas or other HHO devices and the “science” that “proves” that you can’t achieve the expected results…total crap!
If the physics that many commenter post were “spot on”, we wouldn’t be using gasoline at all! According to their way of thinking, it just makes no sense to use energy to produce a fuel…PERIOD! Refining crude oil to produce gasoline takes an enormous amount of energy. The fuel produced though has a HIGHER energy potential than the energy used to produce it. That is why the production of gasoline makes sense.
The actual increase in power and energy needed to produce HHO from water is NOT greater than the POTENTIAL increase in power that the HHO can deliver when used in CONJUNCTION with gasoline. Yes it takes energy in the form of DC power from the alternator and YES that does cause your engine to work harder to turn the alternator BUT if the difference is more than compensated by the increase in power produced by the passive injection of HHO, then there is no reason for it not to work.
As for the power potential of Hydrogen, hundreds of times greater by volume than gasoline! Otherwise the shuttle would be launched using a gasoline/oxygen mix.
Another word, current engines are terrible at extracting energy from gasoline. The combustion mix used today is designed to keep engine (combustion) temperatures LOW! This is more of a manufacturing cost concern than anything else. Using any current engine, if you modify the fuel/air mix for greater power and efficiency, you will also burn holes in your pistons or burn up your spark plugs. Yes greater fuel efficiency is highly possible without using HHO but you will need a high tech engine with greater heat tolerance.
In the mean time, keep experimenting! It is those who keep trying when the “science” say “it can’t be done” who end up changing the world.
mother earth news did an article on water injection..what it amounts to is water in small amounts is injected into the airsteam in a mist. it give the engine more oxygen ( never buy a car on a rainy day it always runs better)that equals more power so now you lift your foot…you are going same speed with less gas used.(btw the higher compression the better within limits).proven in ww2 prop driven spitfire planes use this..BUT too much is bad..get the mother earth article. the cost in todays money less than $20.00 fact!!
Stanley Meyer invented the car that ran on water. Do a web search. Everyone says it takes too much energy to convert the water to hydrogen and oxygen, unfortunately, that’s not the case.
The VITALIZER has been on the market wince 1988, and as a mechanic and skeptic I bought one under the 90 day money back guarantee to prove it didn’t work. After seeing the results, I’ve been selling them ever since, and they have worked on every vehicle I own.
http://vitalizer.8m.com
thought that buying a book and following the instructions would be easy to build one of those water hybrid kits for my car . I was dead wrong. I could not find the parts in stock and once I had the parts it took forever to build. If you have the parts and the time, by all means purchase the book and install it yourself. But I did find a much easier way, and I’m not afraid to let you know.
There is a company that manufactures real stainless steel units like the cheesy mason jar one that I made. These units are awesome. They are pre-made, so no drilling and gluing and creating electrodes. Everything is done for you, they even have installers that will do it for you, so they look just like another component of the car and completely professional.
I increased my mileage from 14-15mpg to 24-25mpg in my Toyota FJ Cruiser. I am estatic about that. Sure, I would like to get 50 mpg, but I’ll take that increase which is almost double.
Anyway, if you want to see a picture here it is. http://hydrogen-on-demand.net
I see you referenced FUEL MAX but yet you show the Vortex Fuel Saver? They are different technologies as one is Bi-Polar and the other is Mono-Polar. Have you ever tried the Vortex Fuel Saver. It looks like from these third party testimonials that it works and works well. Are you saying these people even the news station is lying? From NEWS 12 to independent agencies showing that it works I wonder how much you do not really know about these technologies. For those that really want to see proof I suggest you look at the part of this website. http://vortexfuelsaver.com/28.html (cut and Paste)
Thanks for not using a product then saying bad things about it. You make no sense.