Gadgets to raise mileage ‘crazy’

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, July 1, 2008

As the price of gasoline heats up, so does the number of devices that are marketed that are “guaranteed to boost your mileage 20, 30, even 40 percent.” As the ad says, “just connect this whatchamacallit between the gadjaramus and the injectapooper in your car, and enjoy increased mileage today!”

Back in the mid-70s, when the Arabs first decided that maybe they could all get along with one another if as a result they could stick it to the Americans by lowering the amount of crude oil they were producing, a whole raft of these mileage increasers flooded the market.

Ah, those were the good old days. Simpler cars, no computers, no oxygen sensors, no MAP sensors,

In a simpler time, when the average red-blooded American male could actually have his father look under the hood of his car and tell him where he could adjust the fuel mixture on the carburetor. Boy. Those were the days.

“Attach this magnetisoramajama to your fuel line, and get better mileage immediately.” Really, it was just a magnet, and the true genius here was hiding that under a bunch of manufactured plastic and chrome.

Magnetism has actually been the basis of a lot of the hocus-pocus foisted upon technically innocent citizens, ever since it was discovered.

It’s still around today, boosted in complexity by the invention and application of electricity, as a way to improve whatever is wrong with your body.

The unpredictable part about all this is the fact that your body can heal itself if your mind truly gets with the program and unquestionably believes that it can, regardless of whether you’re wearing shoes with magnetic soles, gloves with magnetic palms, or hats with magnetic liners in them. (All the better to protect the brain from extraterrestrial messages sent by Martians, kind of a bonus feature.)

Cars, however, cannot take a sugar placebo pill and heal themselves, nor can they produce better gas mileage just because you’ve gone the extra technical distance and went down to your local cow veterinarian and bought every cow magnet in the place, and hooked them to every line and hose under the hood.

Now, with the price of gasoline rapidly reaching the level of pain, well, it’s an invitation to every snake oil salesman out there to sell you something to fix that pain.

I took one for the team (that would be you, the public) by purchasing a bunch of stuff on hydrogen generation. One particular mailing had 70 pages of information about making your own electrolyzer.

It started like this: Go down to your local plumbing supplier and purchase some 4-inch Schedule 80 pvc pipe.

Wait! I’ve been in and around the plumbing business for 35 winters, and I have yet to find any — yes, that was ANY — supplier who stocked that pipe. But, for the heck of it, let’s say I find some.

Now, said the directions, go down to your local muffler shop and find a piece of stainless steel pipe with an outside dimension (OD) that is 0.040 inches smaller than the ID of the Schedule 80 pvc pipe that you couldn’t find.

Next, after you haven’t found the Schedule 80 pvc, and haven’t acquired the stainless steel pipe that is 0.040 inches less in diameter than the pvc, now call around and find another stainless steel pipe that is 0.040 inches less in OD than the ID of the first stainless steel pipe that you couldn’t find either.

Now, said the paper, you can start to build your hydrogen generator. Really! Just to let you know that this is important, they go on to say that any other tolerance won’t permit your generator to work at all well.

Really! What they’re saying is: We know you can’t find any of this stuff, and then can’t accuse us of ripping you off for the 50 bucks you spent on this paper.

If I run out of toilet paper, I’ll use their instructions.

If any of you want any cow magnets, I’ve still got six that I took off that old Chevy.

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Alan Linda writes from his New York Mills home.