Updated , August 24th, 2010

Literally running on vapor! [see our pages on Super Carb's - Pogue, Ogle, McBurney, ...]

John Weston stands next to his 1992 Geo Storm, which is equipped with his invention dubbed the Air Vapor Flow System. He claims the car can run 14 miles on 4 ounces of fuel, which would equate to more than 400 miles per gallon.

John Weston's 1992 Geo Storm: "Since I changed the fuel system unit, it's drastically different. I disconnected the fuel line from the injector so no liquid goes to the engine," said Weston. Weston showed NBC-2 a version of his air vapor flow system where instead of liquid fuel, only vapors go to the engine. "They used to say, 'Hey I'm running on empty. I'm running on fumes.' Well, this is actually running on fumes," he said. Weston says the system burns cleaner and also made a bold claim about fuel efficiency from a one-time test. "It came up to 463 miles a gallon if we had driven in the same manner - a gallon," said Weston. "I drove from here to Fort Myers, and I'm up there keeping up with traffic running 80 mph." Now, the backyard mechanic is looking for investors so he can eventually take his invention public. In the meantime, he says you might see his car on the highway."

By Ovidiu on July 17th, 2008
The NBC reporters were even taken on a test drive, where the engine stumbled a little bit and John said he put too much vapor on the pipe, so when he lowered the vapors, everything got back to normal.

Some mechanics say that disconnecting the fuel lines and not feeding the engine with regular liquid fuel will eventually ruin it. It may be so, but precautions can be taken and proper oiling can be made so the engine is well-lubricated. The same thing applies to gas-converted [propane] cars, and they run smoothly forever (it’s only gas, not oil). I don’t know much about mechanics, but if you find a system that gets you 463mpg, you’re also smart enough to find a proper lubrication system.[ad#co-1]

NBC-2 relates that John Weston is waiting for investors, because he wants to sell his invention so the whole world benefits from it. I keep thinking about hoaxes in the energy industry. Some solutions are too simple and too mainstream-published to be hoaxes. There are also law prosecutions for that matter. I don’t know. It remains to be seen. In the meanwhile, it’s a great idea having this mileage. If that car can run on nothing else but gasoline vapors, an idea pops into my mind: why wouldn’t a car run on hydrogen vapors, for instance? Skeptics say you need a lot of hydrogen (much more than you can obviously produce on-demand). Is it true you do need that much?

THE AVFS

Hi,

My name is John Weston, the inventor of a fuel system called the Air/Vapor Flow System, referred to as AVFS, and would like to present this to everyone who is into automotive, energy saving systems, environment and new ideas that are a benefit to our society. Not to mention our economy, since the AVFS has been proven to get 14.8 miles on 4oz of 87octane gasoline, witnessed by Mr. Greg Martin, a reporter for the Charlotte Sun-Herald of Port Charlotte Florida.
I developed the AVFS to operate an engine on the gasoline vapors which eliminates liquid gasoline from going to the engine. This does away with any unburned fuel in the exhaust (meaning no need for the EGR system) and reduces the emissions by up to 70 % and possibly even more now (since I am doing further R&D).
With the reporter riding along with me when he was doing the story on the AVFS in the local news paper, we were able to drive 14.8 miles on 4 oz. of liquid gasoline going to the AVFS tank that I had developed and adapted to the 1992 GEO Storm GSI, using the simple materials I was able to afford at the time, being some pvc tubing and fittings, some electrical conduit tubing and a plastic tank that was actually manufactured to be a tank for windshield washer fluid. That added up to be about 460 miles of driving if we had gone through a gallon of gasoline during the ride for proving that the AVFS does actually work and was being witnessed by the reporter so he would be able to be honestly writing a true story.
My reason, hopes and desires for presenting the AVFS in this manner is that perhaps someone would be willing to either come here or have me brought to his/her facility or business, regardless of small or large selection of automobiles or equipment operated by gasoline engines, and give someone the opportunity to see it function in person, on any vehicle chosen to have the AVFS adapted to, the aspects of the AVFS and perhaps present it or assist financially as a means of helping get the AVFS in use for the sake of our environment, economy, energy savings and ability to stop buying so much oil from out of our country.
I thank you for your time and efforts in reading this email and for your response and other actions.
. . .

I did file a patent registration on it before presenting it to others. Plus, being a certified paralegal helped to put together several other AGREEMENTS that are signed before others are shown the whole working of the AVFS. I am hoping this will reach some people who will be able and interested in sponsoring or investing soon. Hate to say, but am at a financial stand still currently and open for sponsorship(s) from $10.00 and up. Even small amounts help in big ways.

Sincerely,
John Weston
17481 Harris Ave.
Port Charlotte, Fl. 33948
(941) 380-2138
AVFSman [at] aol.com

see original post at http://ideaexchange.timallen.com/viewtopic.php?t=5315

Hi,
Thanks for posting again. I know what you mean about others being open for trying to take the AVFS idea, soooooo, I did file a patent registration on it before presenting it to others. Plus, being a certified paralegal helped to put together several other AGREEMENTS that are signed before others are shown the whole working of the AVFS.
I am hoping this will reach some people who will be able and interested in sponsoring or investing soon. Hate to say, but am at a financial stand still currently and open for sponsorship(s) from $10.00 and up. Even small amounts help in big ways.
_________________
AVFSman, Inventor of the Air/Vapor Flow System--- "AVFS"

Maybe if enough people offered to pay him to install one on their vehicle (boat? ... around Port Charlotte) he could actually make some money from it! Especially when their friends want one also!

see our page on others who have succeeded: Super Carburetors

Gas-saving invention sparks memories

GREG MARTIN, Charlotte Sun staff writer; Posted October 18, 2007

NORTH PORT — A story published last week about a 48-year-old Port Charlotte man’s invention that he claims allows cars to get as much as 400 miles per gallon garnered attention from Naples to Delray Beach and beyond.

It didn’t seem all that astonishing to 78-year-old North Port retiree Peter Simmons.

In fact, it brought back fond memories.

After reading the story, Simmons, a retired electronic instrumentation engineer, contacted the Sun to reminisce about the early days in his distinguished career, in which he worked to reinvent a vapor carburetor similar to the Port Charlotte man’s device.

“I’m quite sure it got 120 to 150 miles per gallon,” Simmons recalled. “Those numbers I remember. They’re cast in concrete in my brain, because every time we got up to 145 mpg or better, we’d say, ‘Gee whiz!’”

Simmons is one of several alternative automotive energy buffs who contacted the Sun from across Florida in response to the article published Oct. 10 in the Daily News.

The article was about John Weston, who invented the Air Vapor Flow System. The invention consists of a tank mounted under the hood of a car that vaporizes gasoline by agitation.

The car runs on fumes drawn from above the level of liquid gasoline in the tank.

Others

There are a number who have tinkered with innovative systems themselves.

They include Todd Mastro, owner of the Maxi Taxi business in Naples. After reading about Weston, Mastro contacted him to offer technical advice about how to make his invention more usable. He referred Weston to a technology that could automatically meter the flow of gasoline into the device, a technical difficulty for Weston.

Mastro also said he adds chemical pills purchased from Fuel Freedom International to the gas tanks of his company’s taxis to boost their mileage. The pills consist of a catalyst that helps burn gasoline in the combustion chamber, he said. Mastro said he’s convinced the pills add 5 to 15 miles per gallon to the mileage of the vehicles, which range from full-size sedans to GM’s Yukon SUV. Mastro said he became so enthusiastic about the product he now helps market it in the U.S. "I can't shut up about this," Mastro said. "If I'm saving money and helping the environment, I have to tell somebody."

Richard Gargano, a business consultant from Naples, also contacted the Sun in hopes of forming a business relationship with Weston. Gargano said he represents a company that plans to build a high-tech enterprise center in south Florida.

"I have associates who could be very interested in taking Weston to the next level in terms of financing him, housing him and getting this invention patented," Gargano said.

The article also inspired inventor Gerald Rowley of Delray Beach to contact the Sun to share information about his invention, the Vapster.

Rowley, who also works as a real estate appraiser, said he became an amateur mechanic because his hobby was racing go carts and dragsters. In the 1980s, he attended a seminar on the potential benefits of vaporizing gasoline, and he became hooked on the idea.

“I’ve done lots of research,” Rowley said. “I’ve studied a couple hundred patents (for vapor carburetors). The problem is turning a liquid into a gas in a way that it’s controlled.”

Rowley spent many years trying to get engines to run on his device, which vaporizes gasoline by using the exhaust manifold to heat it.

Once the fuel reaches 250 degrees, it would build up enough pressure to run an engine, but the engine would run poorly, he said.

Rowley said he finally found success by accident. In frustration, he threw a rag over the air intake on a lawn mower and the engine suddenly started running well.

Rowley obtained a patent in 2003 for his device and is now looking for investors.

“I’m just a backyard mechanic,” Rowley said. “If I can get it to work, I don’t see why the large automakers can’t.”

A "super-charged" army?

Simmons, who was born in New Zealand and raised in England, said he suspects Big Oil has kept such innovations secret to protect profits.

"It is my opinion that all this stuff has been kept quiet and unknown by the poor unsuspecting public," he said. "They've all been taken for the biggest ride in history. We could have been getting 100 miles per gallon."

He has held that suspicion since the early 1950s, when he worked to develop a vapor carburetor with an engineering colleague he identified as Roy Lewelling.

Both Simmons and Lewelling were brilliant, young engineers for the Dowty corporation at the time. Simmons' day job was testing aircraft undercarriages. He and Lewelling launched their automotive enterprise as a home "hobby."

Lewelling rented a cow shed in the Gloucestershire/Cheltenham area for a shop. He also donated his 1932 Morris 16 motorcar for a test vehicle.

The two men obtained crude plans for a vapor carburetor from an advertisement in one of the amateur engineering magazines that were popular in England at the time.

"The advertisements sounded like a stupid dream and a con, with promises of a complete description of a carburetor that would get fantastic mileage," Simmons recalled.

But Simmons said he was already a believer because he'd heard a legend that the British Army, under Maj. Gen. Bernard Montgomery, had used vapor carburetors in its tanks and artillery trucks to chase Germany's Erwin Rommel from Egypt to Tunisia during World War II.

The route began with what Montgomery had dubbed "Operation Supercharge" in November 1942.

"Montgomery was able to get all the way to Tunis, I think, on one refueling," said Simmons, who served in the British Army’s engineering division after the war.

The use of the carburetors by the British Army could not be immediately confirmed. [there have been similar reports]

Old-time tinkering

Simmons said he and Lewelling began tinkering with the goal of creating what they dubbed the "Pogue type 2" carburetor. It was based on the concept of the Pogue carburetor, invented by Canadian Charles Nelson Pogue in 1927. It used a radiator-like device to heat the gasoline.

An article about the Pogue carburetor in the May 1936 edition of the Canadian Automotive Trade magazine carried the headline: "Prominent automotive men convinced over 200 mpg possible."

"Really, I was the guy who handed the spanners (wrenches) to Lewelling, and offered suggestions," Simmons quipped.

Simmons said they carefully measured the mileage they achieved and he's convinced it reached as high as 150 mpg.

The results were tempered by two caveats: it ran only on "white gasoline," a pure form of gasoline which was not readily available except to the military, and the mileage was based on imperial gallons, which are one-sixth bigger than U.S. gallons.

After several years of development, the project was dropped in 1953. Simmons said both he and his colleague were courting their future wives at the time and chose to devote more time to their regular careers.

Simmons became a senior engineer who tested high-tech aircraft including the Concorde jet. Later, he marketed instrumentation used in nuclear power plants.

In the 1970s, he relocated to Sarasota, where he worked for the Fairchild Weston firm, which made electronic tape recording devices. The devices included the "orange boxes" that record flight data on space shuttles.

Simmons said he wishes Weston luck with his vapor carburetor.

"I hope he succeeds, and inspires the oil industry," he said.

Weston said he was pleased to hear about Simmons' story. It lends credence to his own venture, he said.

"Since there was a way to get that many miles per gallon on those old cars back then, why is it so hard to believe we can't make it work now," he asked.

- - -

You can e-mail Greg Martin at gmartin@sun-herald.com.

October 9, 2007

If John Weston of Port Charlotte can get investors to take his gas-saving invention to the global automotive market, it just might solve the problems of smog, global warming and the high cost of foreign oil. It also might prove that human potential is not limited by education or socioeconomic status.

Weston, 48, who dropped out of high school as a 10th-grader but later achieved a GED in prison, claims to have invented a device that can turn virtually any car into a gas-miser that can run as far as 500 miles on a single gallon.

Called the Air Vapor Flow System, or AVFS, the device functions by vaporizing gasoline before it gets inducted into the engine. That saves fuel and reduces pollution because it allows the engine to burn more of the fuel that gets sucked into the combustion chamber, he contends. The device works on small, industrial engines or larger automobile engines regardless of whether they have carburetors or fuel injection systems, according to Weston.

Weston has been working to bring a prototype of the invention into more advanced development since the late 1990s. After encountering some financial difficulties in recent months, Weston is now renewing efforts to find investors.

Some of the financial problems stem from an incident in which Weston was arrested on a charge of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer. The incident occurred July 8 at his house at 917 Dupin Ave. when, according to a sheriff's report, police were involved in a 10-hour standoff with an armed Weston.

"My setback has always been financial," Weston said. "That's why I'm totally open to sponsors, investors or purchasers."

a small, plastic tank
The device consists of a small, plastic tank that gets mounted under the hood of a car. Some hoses from the engine's air intake housing are run to the top of the tank so that the engine draws in vapors from above the level of the liquid gasoline.

In an impromptu demonstration conducted for this reporter last week, Weston installed one of the devices into his battered 1992 Geo Storm. Weston's car ran well on the vapors from the device when the level of the liquid in the tank was within a certain margin. The engine ran either too rich or too lean when the level was above or below that margin. The car traveled 14.8 miles on about 4 ounces of gasoline during the test. If accurate, that would amount to about 473 miles per gallon.

Weston's neighbor, retired construction contractor William "Pops" Gavel, said he witnessed an even more dramatic experiment conducted by Weston. Gavel said he rode as passenger in Weston's car for 28.7 miles -- from Weston's house to a location in Englewood -- on just 4 ounces of Coleman camping fuel, or white gas. If accurate, that rate would be equivalent to 918 miles per gallon. Gavel said he watched Weston pour the 4 ounces into the tank and checked the mileage on the odometer himself.

"I couldn't believe it," said Gavel. "I said, 'Wire me up!' I've got a Ford V-8 whacking down a gallon every 17 miles and I thought, gee, I could drive all day with that kind of mileage."

still, very crude, manual, operation
To operate the engine, once the fuel level dropped below its optimal margin, Weston briefly triggered a home-made switch 15 times. That pumped in additional fuel from his car's regular fuel tank. The switch was made from a lamp cord. It was triggered by pushing the two prongs of the plug together for a split second. After the test, Weston estimated the amount of gasoline consumed by measuring the amount of gasoline that was added from his car's regular fuel tank. To do that, he again triggered the homemade switch 15 times, this time pumping fuel into a measuring cup. The fuel measured 4 ounces.

"Right now, it's looking like a Mickey-Mouse backyard setup, but regardless of the way it looks, it functions," he said.

Also yet to be perfected are ways to maintain the level of liquid fuel in the vapor tank, and a way to adjust the mix of air and vapor while driving.

Weston recently tested one of his AVFS tanks on a gasoline-powered utility generator. Without the device, the generator ran for 3.5 hours. With the device, it ran for 14 hours on the same amount of fuel, he said.

School of hard knocks

Hailing from Connersville, Ind., Weston attended 23 schools in 10 grades before dropping out. He explained his father, a construction worker, moved the family often, in both Indiana and Florida. "I could not afford to take vehicles in to get repaired," he recalled. "I could afford only to buy a Chilton's manual and repair them myself."

After working as a welder on oil rigs off Louisiana, he returned to Indiana to care for his ailing mother.

The breakthrough came after Weston, who routinely smokes cigarettes while working on his engines, needed to peer into the gas tank of a lawn mower engine. It was dark in the tank.

"I didn't have a flashlight at the time, so I used a lighter," he recalled.

Suddenly, a blast of flame blew out of the tank. Weston immediately realized the potential.

"I said, 'Wow, let me try this,'" he said.

Weston grabbed a piece of tailpipe and stuck one into a carburetor and the other into a five-gallon gas can. The engine ran for a few moments on the vapors from the can, he said.

In 1996, a school teacher in his hometown invested $12,000 to help Weston fashion a working prototype. The teacher, Edward Slaybaugh of Connserville, Ind., said he considered the invention "the greatest boon this century." "I hope some good comes of it," Slaybaugh said Friday.

In 1997, Weston sold the rights to his invention to Reg Tech Inc. and its subsidiary, Regi U.S., of British Columbia, Canada.

Slaybaugh said he was compensated for his investment with Reg Tech stock, which he still holds. The company is currently working to develop a lightweight rotary engine.

Weston's deal called for the two Canadian firms to pay him $100,000 cash, $400,000 in stock, plus royalties. If the companies never turned the device into a commercial product, the company would still have to pay Weston $24,000 per year for 21 years under the contract.

The company had the AVFS tested on a small engine by the firm Adiabatics Inc. in Columbus, Ind. The results showed it reduced hydrocarbons 71 percent and carbon monoxide 25 percent. The rate of fuel consumption was reduced by 15 percent to 30 percent. But the device increased emissions of carbon dioxide 12 percent and nitrogen oxides 296 percent. Those are greenhouse and smog pollutants.

Weston said those emissions increased because Reg Tech's engineer failed to properly adjust the vapor/air mixture. "Not all engineers are mechanics," Weston said.

In 2002, Reg Tech relinquished the rights to the invention back to him.

John Robertson, Reg Tech president, said in a phone interview last month the company's patent attorney had advised the firm that Weston's invention was "unpatentable" because it was "not unique." Apparently, a similar system may have been used in race cars in years past, Robertson said.

The company dropped the invention because it would have been unwise to invest in it without the protection of a patent, Robertson said.

"It runs, but somebody's got to have a sophisticated testing apparatus to develop it," he added.

the industry expresses its standard disapproval [why do they even bother!]

The automotive industry has made strides in the past 10 years to make cars that produce less of such smog gases as hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides, said Jim Kliesch, senior analyst for clean vehicles at the Union of Concerned Scientists. [no, they have fought long and hard, in court and in Washington, against making any improvements!]

If a vaporization device such as Weston's improved mileage to the levels that Weston claims, that would reduce gases contributing to global warming, said Kliesch. [an open recognition that Reg Tech's testing through Adiabatics must have been flawed when claiming an increase in carbon dioxide and nitrogen]

"In a theoretical sense, that would reduce greenhouse gas," he said. "However, anytime you have a claim of a substantial improvement in mileage, I think a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted."

"It sounds intriguing," added John Cabaniss, director of environment and energy issues for the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers. "It would be nice if it did work. I would suggest he try to get somebody to test it in a lab situation." However, Cabaniss said he doesn't see how the invention could work, considering the efficiency of modern cars. He said more than 99 percent of the fuel going into a modern engine gets vaporized and burned in the combustion chamber. He cited the fact that cars now are equipped with computers to adjust oxygen levels and ignition timing. "There's only a certain amount of energy that's in a gallon of gasoline," he pointed out. [totally clueless, if not lying.]