John, I would like to know what you did or didn't do with steam power. I'm a steam nut. The U.S. airforce was playing with Sterling cycle engines and was using them in on-base vec. Winnabago at one time was offering a Sterling cycle engine powered gen. in motorhomes but nobody was buying them due to the cost of the option. I saw one of those in action years ago. You couldn't hear it run.
Then there was the Freon engine that a man had in New York. This was a 1909 White 2 cly. steam car engine highly modified and installed in a VW bus. The big problem was the condenser. This was the reason for using the VW bus. The whole roof carried the big condenser. Gearing was 1 to 1 ( crankshaft was the rear axle, no tranny) Rev gear was by Stevenson link on the engine. The heat source was electric cal. rod. This fellow drove the bus back and forth from Fla and N.Y. for a while. This engine was offered to the big 3 but they all laughed. Izuzu has the rights to it now and I last heard that they doing R&R with a marine version using a keel condenser.
This story was written up in a VW in-house publication back in the '60s
I'm not really convinced that Hybrids and all electric is the answer due to the short range of the electrics. Chevy is now bragging about one new vec. that you can buy now and will let you go UP TO 40 miles on one charge . Whoopee!! Thats one trip to the store .
I wish that I was a young very,very rich engineer and could play with things like this without having to fear for my life from the oil folks. All you people out there working on these projects better start looking over your shoulder if you come up with ultiment idea. Do you remember the Silkwood and Kerr-Magee thing years ago ?
