I happened to go outside to put something in my truck at lunch time, and noticed a co-worker had her hood up on her SUV, and my boss was standing next to it with a socket wrench in his hand. An open car hood attracts engineers like a moth to a flame, so of course over I went. They were busy installing some sort of thingamabob that is supposed to give your car better gas mileage.
So of course, the first thing I think is yeah right. :dubious:
Anyway, the “thingamabob” (don’t you love my use of precise engineering terms?) consists of a plastic container about half full of a liquid that looks a lot like windshield washer fluid. It connects to the car by putting a T in the vacuum line coming in under the air cleaner, so basically it’s going to draw vacuum through the liquid, which it does. You can watch the pretty little bubbles go through the liquid. Wheeee. It works.
Once this is connected, and you’ve secured the little plastic box thingie somewhere, you add in the “magical mystery liquid” which looks suspiciously like hair shampoo. The claim is that platinum gas is somehow generated in the top of the mystery box, which gets sucked in through the air intake, and makes the car get better mileage.
Well seeing as how platinum boils at 6920°F (3827°C) I’m thinking the device’ll somehow have to develop a negative pressure in order to get much platinum into the vapor phase. Are any of the pieces of the box made from exotic matter with a negative energy content ?
I think that if they attached the retrolaser to the vehicular antiquark distiller, and aimed it towards the superhydrogenic SMP, then they might be able to achieve results.
So your boss isn’t very good on science and technology. Could be worse - used to be, my company had a Creationist for a “Chief Technology Officer”, before he got caught with his hand in the cookier jar.
That’s a new one on me, it’s all blue LEDs on windscreen wipers round these parts. Sounds like Boss has plumbed a soapy bong into the air intake. Is the special fluid a consumable, perchance?
You’ll forgive a newbie his self indulgence by linking to a thread on it’s way to a mercy killing, so feel free to rip into this.
Actually, the surprising thing about this is that my boss is very mechanically inclined and usually pretty good with science and technology. I wouldn’t think he’d be taken in by something like this. The co-worker has a decent amount of car knowledge too.
And yes, the special fluid is consumable. And you can only get it from the manufacturer (of course). It’s the stuff in the middle pic from the link that Scruloose provided. The manufacturer claims that the bubbles pick up little particles of platinum, which end up in the top of the container beacuse this is where the bubbles burst. So, 6920 deg F is apparently not required, but I’m still using this smiley way too often. :dubious:
I still wonder what’s in the magical mystery fluid.
(and how did I know as soon as I read Squink’s post that someone would be reversing the polarity in this thread sooner or later?)
It’s amazing how many people who should know better get taken in by things like this. Anything that purports to “make gas burn more efficiently” is kind of ignoring the fact that the gas is already being burned about as efficiently as it can be. The only measure of how efficiently the gas is being burned is the ratio of burned:unburned gas. And any unburned gas gets “burned” in the catalytic converter. So if your catalytic converter is glowing white hot from all the unburned fuel, then maybe you have some fuel burn efficiency problems. But if mine were doing that, I think that there would be other standard engine repairs in line before looking at magic Platinum.
Looking at the technical blurb on the Gasaver homepage, it is indeed an automotive bong, filled with sparkly fairy juice: <pic>.
Now the supercavitation of bubbles is a wond’rous thing, and the temperatures do indeed reach thousands of degrees (C & F), but it takes large transient pressure changes in the fluid to produce this, not just a gentle sucking from the air intake. The cracking noise old knees make when moved grudgingly is due to bubble cavitation (collapse), and the huge temperatures these tiny, transient bubbles experience is many times greater than the feeble ambient temperature in the Gasaver.
It seems that the Gasaver is a network marketing/multi-level marketing deal. Which in itself is no bad thing if decent products are sold at reasonable prices to proper customers, but they’re relying on dealers buying demo stock as much as selling to real punters. It doesn’t look like a well-financed setup, so expect it to disappear suddenly overnight at some point.
Call them up in a panic and tell them you dog/cat/daughter/wife… just drank some and you need to know if they should get help and if so you’d like to be more specific then “It looks like shampoo but they tell me it’s liquid platinum.”
It does make a difference in fuel efficiency, but not for your car! It’s a big help for any nearby vehicles with improbability drives. The improbability of this platinum bong can easily be good for thousands of miles for an I.D.
