Chicken John’s Woodgas Pickup Truck

The other day I stopped by Ace Auto to see Chicken John. Visiting the junkyard is always a great experience. The Doggie Diner dog heads live there now. Most of the cars are gone (Ace is currently in transition), but there is still quite a bit of computer detritus all over the place. Here are some photos I shot while running around Ace.

The main reason for my visit with Chicken was to check out his “Cafe Racer” Woodgas Pickup Truck, a 1975 GMC pickup truck that runs on wood pellets using a downdraft gasifier. It was created by a team of mechanics and artists lead by Jim Mason as part of one of Jim’s Power Exchange Gasification Workshops.

Here are my photos of the woodgas pickup truck.

We turned my truck into a wood burning gasifier! The vacuum cleaner hose the pumps the gasifier gas (hydrogen) to the engine of the truck. Through the 5 gallon paint bucket with a filter in it. It’s literally made of garbage. My truck runs on wood. I can’t wait to bring it to the smog station… it’ll have almost no emissions. Suck it, veggy oil hippy… were takin’ alt fuel to the racetrack!!!

Chicken’s ultimate goal with the pickup truck is to raise $5000 so he buy a pelletizing machine which he will then use to convert coffee grounds into fuel pellets. That’s right, Chicken is planning on running his pickup truck on coffee!

If you want to check out Chicken’s Woodgas Pickup Truck, it will be down at Maker Faire 2007 this weekend as well as Laughing Squid: Paradise Lost on July 28th.