At Home In Ephrata

First let me say when Protium Fuel Systems says everything needed, They meant it.

Well, for those of you that are interested in how we got the Hydrogen system to fit under the hood of the 2007 Trailblazer, We actually didn't. We mounted most of it in the bumper. Yes, the bumper. We pulled the plastic cover off of the bumper to get easier access to the areas we planned on mounting the water tank

and RCR Unit

We also mounted the pump near the RCR unit.

The Amp gauge we mounted under dash

with velcro and also used wire wrap to make it look more professional.

We also mounted the Fuel Optimizer

and then discovered we couldn't use it with Modulated Frequency sensors. Oh well. It all looks very professionally done. I thank Vern and his soldering iron for getting all the electrical connections done right and looking spiffy.

First off I must give you a few warnings. DO NOT use baking soda in a hydrogen system of any kind. Gasoline and diesel have chemicals in them to alert you of a poisonous gas called carbon monoxide. Using baking soda in a Hydrogen on demand system will also produce this gas, except it won't burn your throat, or irritate your eyes. You will just get sleepy and shortly there after be deceased. A system that says to use baking soda in the water should be avoided. The other thing to watch for is if it says to use glass jars for the electrolysis chamber. Personally to me having glass jars under the hood just don't sit right with me. They may work, but just look like something you would be embarrassed to show anyone. "Hey looky here Billy Joe I got me a six pack of mason jars under the hood." the glass jar systems also seem to only give you maybe 5 mpg more then not having it. The protium system is much more efficient and looks very impressive and professional. I doubled my mileage in town on the first day of running the Protium System.

Ok, now on to installing the Protium kit. One thing you will need to know is whether your car or truck uses modulated frequencies on the MAF or MAP sensor. Call your local mechanic to find out if your vehicle does. That's what I did and got lucky to find someone who actually knew what I was talking about. If your vehicle does use modulated frequency sensors then you will not be able to use the protium fuel optimizer and should order the kit for the carbureted engines. I was told that basically that is the major difference between them is one uses the fuel optimizer.

Once you have decided on what system you will need, then it is time to look under the hood for a good location for the water tank, the accumulator tank and the RCR unit. (the RCR unit is where all the action happens). Now on my 2007 Trailblazer there is almost NO ROOM under the hood to add anything. The accumulator MUST BE INSTALLED VERTICALLY!!! The RCR unit can be mounted either way. After several hours of trying to find a place and test fit the accumulator under the hood we found a spot behind the driver side headlight just before the battery. Just enough room to mount it, after slightly moving the car horns out of the way. We drilled a hole into the body and one into the frame at the top front part by the head light. These were the locations of the mounting bolts to hold the accumulator in place.

Now that we have the spot for the accumulator that is about 8 inches long, it was time to find a spot for the RCR unit that was 12 inches long. It took us most of the day and a bunch of four letter words to even think of a place to put it. I was under the car looking toward the front of it and noticed a section right behind the bumper that had a small strut that held the ground effects on the front on. It was big enough to hold the RCR and close to the accumulator. In fact it was almost directly beneath it. Excellent!!!! Now the hard part. Trying to get it mounted. OK, I found a sturdy metal beam I can drill a mounting hole into and use the strut bar bolt for other end. Kool!! or so I thought. The one thing I didn't count on was not being able to get to the upper bolt to mount it to the strut bar. OH man what now? Ok how do we get the plastic cover off the bumper, nice only a few bolts and plastic pins holding it on.

Now I have the plastic bumper off my brand new trailblazer and am drilling a hole into a metal beam on the front. While trying to remove the strut bar bolt which had a nut welded onto the frame, the bolt broke!!!! Oh Geez, we got like 4 days till we pack the truck up and move and one thing after another happens. OK, so I drill out the bolt and rethread the hole. Oops, Wrong thread for the replacement bolt. To bad your going in anyway. So I got a self tapper in and there it will stay.

Bolt One of the RCR mounting bracket was now in place. I took the RCR unit and test fitted it on the mounting bracket, great it will work. Now I look at the frame where I drilled the hole for the other mounting bracket. Yikes, its almost 1/4 inch off. So I loosen the mounting bracket and bent it a bit to conform to the holes location. Perfect, or as close as it is gonna get. I got the bolts snugged up nicely and look proudly at my work. OK now the next part, running the hoses to the right places.

There was one hole already in the body panel that will work nicely for the hose that goes from the accumulator back to the electric fuel pump and back to the RCR unit. And I can run the hose from the upper port of the RCR unit to the accumulator, just outside the body panel and up where some wires and another hose go. Follow the hose diagrams on the Protium site for proper hose connection. You should print the diagram out for best results. There is also a diagram online for the wiring without a fuel optimizer. If you follow the very well labeled wires and where they say to go you should have no problems hooking them up.

The tubing that came with the system was just barely enough to go from the accumulator to air intake and from accumulator to pump. I purchased some more tubing to complete the installation. This was like the 5th trip to auto parts store for parts we needed for one reason or another. The guys at the auto store were getting real curious as to what we were doing to my trailblazer.

We get the tubing all run and the wiring and we start the engine for the first time using hydrogen. And wouldn't you know it the Check Engine Light came on. I was prepared for this and shut the engine down and installed the oxyisolator that was supplied with my system. This solved the Check Engine Light immediately. Off we go to start our in town test. Which proved to be very surprising. We went from 13 mpg in town to 25 mpg in town. And as of this writing we are still increasing out mileage to 29.7 mpg in town. The single RCR unit is plenty of hydrogen for in town but at highway speeds it doesn't seem to be enough for a 6 cylinder. I will be ordering a second RCR unit and wiring kit to run two of them on one system.

The fuel pump that is supplied with the system seems to be the weak link. We had to replace it 6 times in less then two weeks. We have been driving several hundred miles a day. I finally got a different type of pump and it seems to be working for now. The main problem seems to be the fuel filter on it. As the system breaks in it generates some rust that plugs up the filter and dries out the pump making it fail. After the second pump I removed the filter, It seemed to run longer but as soon as the system hit 30 amps the pump failed again. I think the pump failed due to rust buildup in the water.

I went to another auto parts store and purchased a different type of pump, the previous one was a typical rotary style pump, this new one is similar to an air pump on a fish tank. It seems to be working for more then a few days. Which is as long as the other type lasted. So far so good. But we haven't put as many miles on it as we have the others. Although I did have to flush the water because the amps were at 30 again. And it's still working. I need to call Protium to discuss my findings.

The one auto parts store didn't have what I needed so I went to another one that had a manager that was building the glass jar ones with baking soda. I informed him of the dangers of using baking soda, and showed him the one I had installed. He promptly asked me for the web address and called his friend that he had building the glass jar units. Needless to say he was planning on ordering several of the Protium systems.

How many times have we seen statements like this? Well, I have been looking online for several months. I finally found a company that not only had a high quality system but also thought of safety. The system has a cut-off in case of an accident or engine stall. This was a very big plus in my eyes.

Although the system cost over $900 dollars, the equipment you receive is of very high quality. And the technical support is great. I ordered my kit back in July, and received it just a few days before our big move (they are on a 6 week back order)across country from New Mexico to Washington State. This left us with little time to test it before taking it on the road. Luckily for me Vern had arrived from Washington state to help us move back.

With a little hard work and a lot of reconfiguring we got the kit installed. Total time was 3 days. The kit is supposed to be able to be installed in 2 hours. The reason for it taking so long was finding locations for the three main parts. The accumulator has to be mounted vertically, the RCR unit can be mounted in either direction. We found a small area behind the drivers side headlight that would hold the Accumulator, and mounted the main water tank to the back side of the bumper on the passenger side and the RCR unit mounted on the back side of the bumper on the drivers side. Vern came up with a great remote filler station so we wouldn't have to take the bumper cover off each time to fill it.

After getting all three of the larger parts mounted we started on the wiring. There are extremely well labeled wires letting you know where they got connected. The relay and circuit breaker mounted to the fender well on the driver side with ease. the amp gauge mounted easily on the dash with the Velcro that was provided. The fuel optimizer however was a little difficult, Not in installing it or wiring it, but in its use. It seems that the optimizer does NOT WORK with MODULATED FREQUENCY MAF sensors. If your are not sure if yours use a modulated frequency then call up you local dealer and ask. Hopefully you will be as lucky as I was in finding a person that actually understood the question i was asking. So, after finding out the optimizer won't work for my 2007 Trailblazer we removed it.

So now the system is installed, wiring all taped up or put into wire harnesses, it was time to test the in town mileage improvement. The trailblazer usually gets about 13 to 14 miles per gallon, the main reason we were looking for a fuel supplement system. We filled up the tank at our local Sams Club. After driving around town for 2 hrs and going up hills at 20 miles an hour, by the way the trailblazer actually performed much better then it did going up the same hills without the hydrogen hybrid system. After 60 miles we went back to the gas station and filled back up. To our surprise the trailblazer only took 2.5 gals of fuel. That was a 10 mile per gallon increase. And this was after the FIRST test. After talking with Protium Fuel Systems about it they said that it will improve over the first 180 hours of operation. That is basically the systems break in period.

Now during this first 180 hours of operation you will have to rinse the system out to flush out the rusty muddy colored water. Since we didn't get a chance to test the system on highway before hand we had to hope for the best on the road. The only real problem we had was the electric fuel pump that comes with the system has a fuel filter on it. The only thing we can figure is the filter would plug up and deprive the pump of water and burn up. We decided this after the second pump we purchased at Auto Zone did the same thing. So I decided to skip the fuel filter on the third pump. So far its working great after 3 days (others only lasted a day) of use and the amount of rust colored water is far less.

On the trip to Washington we had to replace the pump several times. But at one point we could not find a auto parts store within hours of driving from our location and had to run the system with out it. Lucky for me Verns ingenious remote water fill station was gravity feeding into the RCR unit. So the hydrogen built up a bit in the RCR unit but then would move up to the accumulator and into the engine. Since the Hydrogen was basically free flowing up into the intake of the engine we were unable to get an accurate reading on mileage improvement, Until now that is. At 148.7 miles of highway and city combined driving we can give an actual number for average miles per gallon. 148.7 miles used a total of 5 gallons of fuel. for those without a calculator that comes to 29.74 miles per gallon average. A heck of an improvement from the 13 city and 22 highway we were getting with a combined average of 17 miles per gallon. Now the system still is not broke in yet and we are still getting better mileage each day. I am NOT saying that you will get this great of an increase. I am saying you WILL get an increase, of how much depends on how you drive and how bad of shape your engine is in.

In my opinion, Protium Fuel Systems lives up to its word. The parts are of high quality and the tech staff volunteer there time to help you get the system installed and running correctly. There system really works. And it works on both Gasoline AND Diesel Fuel. I highly recommend getting one of these systems for your vehicle. If you don't have room for it under the hood, try looking at behind the bumper or between the front grill and radiator.  You will want the accumulator as close to the air intake as possible but keep it away from the exhaust manifold. Since we have a straight six cylinder we mounted the accumulator on the opposite side of the exhaust manifold.

As the mileage improves or goes down I will let you all know. I know it seems to good to be true but the conversion of water to hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis has been around since 1806. Yes, that's right almost 70 years before cars started using gasoline for fuel. I have yet to have the emissions tested but I will be doing that in a week or so to let you know how it goes.

Until then, Check out Protium Fuel Systems at the following web site. www.protiumfuelsystems.com

It's approximately 3 AM on September 11th. We all are tired from loading the truck after driving 3 hours to pick it up, spend a few hours at the space museum then drive the truck back to Roswell. Vern and I packed everything we could that day and it was time to take a shower and get a few hours of sleep.

We get back up around 8 am and continue the loading of the 16 foot truck. At first it appears that we will have plenty of room. As the boxes seemingly appear out of thin air to be loaded onto the truck we realize that its going to be a very tight fit. If not for Verns expert packing we would have had to leave several things behind. The loading continues throughout the rest of the day. After a few naps and continuous boxing and packing we get the last of the truck finished. Now it's time to get the Subaru onto the trailer. It's 3 AM on Friday now and starting to rain. Vern and I have had almost no sleep. We get the car on the trailer and hooked to the 16 foot Penske truck. We gather up the last of the stuff in the house and begin our long adventure across the country.

At this point we really haven't tested the hydrogen system on the trailblazer. We got excellent results for in town driving but haven't had a real highway test yet. During the first 180 hours of use, we are supposed to change out the water when the amp meter reaches 30 amps. First off, the amp gauge was reading just over 5 amps when the car was off, it also read this amount before we even installed it.

We pull out onto the open road towards the west at about 3:30 AM. It's a 5 day journey back to Washington and we had to be back there by the 17th. It will be tight be we know we can make it. I am in contact with Vern via a hand held two way radio system he brought with him. We soon discovered that if I was more then 1/4 mile ahead or behind him that we had a very hard time hearing him. We maintained a speed of 55 to 60 mph. This was the best speed we could do safely with the truck pulling the car on a trailer. Going up any long or steep hills provided to be a challenge for the truck. We did discover that the trailblazer with the hydrogen on demand system had better power going up hills and mountain passes without having to drop out of overdrive to often.

We planned on stopping in as many places as possible. However time was against us and traveling at 55 mph proved to be a real pain in the behind. Traveling at this speed we would not be able to see some of the things we wanted to see. One of our first stops was the Ice cave in New Mexico. It is completely weird to see ice on the ground when its 75 to 80 degrees out. But as you descend into the cave opening the temperature drops to 31 degrees. So the ice stays frozen. No one really knows how the ice cave was started or formed but it is different.

On the second day we got to see the Painted Desert, Petrified forest in Arizona. We then proceeded to the Grand Canyon. We got separated in the grand canyon park for about 3 hrs. I was out driving around looking for Vern and the Penske truck while he was looking for us. Vern had all the camping gear in the Penske. I got us a space at the campground and went looking for Vern. He finally found the park and was at the campsite when I returned. We quickly setup camp and got the campfire going.

We got up fairly early the next day and went to the main viewing area of the Grand Canyon. All I can say is it doesn't look real. It's so huge and vast and majestic. No camera or video can ever capture all the beauty of it. Pictures just cant capture the beauty. You must see this for yourself if you ever get the chance. and take a week or two to do it. It is HUGE.

We change out the water in the hydrogen system because it is showing 30 amps. They recommend changing the water at this point, and for the first 180 hours of operation you may have to do this several times. Vern and I came up with a draining system for the kit that seems to work well.

It's almost noon and we get back on the road again heading for Flagstaff and the Lowell observatory. One stop I really wanted to see. It was great to see a part of our scientific history. I learned a few things that I didn't know and we had fun playing the with the interactive displays that they had set up there. We spent about an hour there and we were behind schedule so we try to get as many miles as we can.

We make it to Lake Mead (Katheryns Landing) after a very long day of driving. We setup camp there and didn't even bother with the tent rainfly. Sky was clear, temp was warm, and it was late. We fill out the campground info card and head off to bed.

At the crack of dawn I proceed to get everyone up and moving. We have a ton of miles we need to put on the truck and no time for any delays or stops. From this point on its about how far we can get in a day. Vern and I push ourselves to the limit as we slowly climbed the steep mountain pass that winds around some extremely scary cliffs and Vern is doing this in a Penske truck towing a car trailer. by the time we get to the campground the Penske truck is almost out of fuel, warning light is on, needle on E. And seemingly no place to fill it up at. So, off comes the fuel line on the Subaru which has been extremely well fastened to its trailer and we proceed to drain some fuel from it for the truck.

We spend the night at a campground called Grover Hotsprings. They warn us that bears have been coming into the campground during the night and day. We unload the truck to set up camp. Vern parks the truck in the overflow parking area and we begin to hear wolfs howling in the distance. Vern feels that they were up near the overflow parking area. Kool, neighbors. After listening to them howl for about an hour or so we turn in to get some sleep, California is a long state to drive through. And we are only bout halfway through it. The plan now is to head up the 395 all the way home and get us back on the morning of the 17th.

We get out on the road pretty early and get the truck filled up with some gas. We stop to fill up the trailblazer as well. We continue driving as long as we can only stopping for bathroom breaks, fuel, and food. After many hours and I don't know how many miles we finally arrive at our destination of Moses Lake at 3:00 AM of the 17th. We decide to stay in a hotel for the night and get  in touch with people later on in the morning.

The journey was done but now we need to unload the truck into storage, The two tarantulas in the truck are doing fine. Family members show up to help us unload the truck because it needs to be in Pasco on the 17th. I call up the truck rental place at 4:30 PM and tell them we finally got the truck unloaded and are in Moses Lake, they close at 5 so no way am I making it down there in time. The wonderful lady on the phone said we can bring it in the next morning no problem. Kool. I go to the cab of the truck and checked on the tarantulas to find both have deceased. I guess the heat of the day got to them in the cab of the truck.

Now the task of finding affordable housing is at hand. The cost of living here is about twice that of living in Roswell. So into the newspaper and nickel saver we go looking for a place and filling out tons of rental applications at all the local realtors.

I will let you know when we get a place to live. As for now, I go to Safeway and sign into there free WiFi at the Starbucks inside and check mail, upload photos, and write this blog.

Sounds weird doesn't it? Well, for this computer we added liquid cooling so, now we have to figure out the best way to run the plumbing for it. I bought the ThermalTake Bigwater 745 system. It uses 3/8 inside diameter hoses. (pretty good size by the way.) I also added on a few extra plumbing components. Water block for memory chips, hard drive and chipset. Although the chip set already has a cooling system on it. (Didn't know that when I ordered it). But the chipset block can also be used for video GPU or other chips on Motherboard. (Like southbridge.)

Memory Water Block                                  Hard Drive Water Block (dual)

     CPU Water Block                                     GPU/Chipset Water Block

One thing to know about liquid cooling your system is the flow rate. If it flows to fast the liquid won't be able to transfer enough heat to the radiators. Yes, the computer has radiators just like in a car. This one has two. A single fan one and a dual fan one. The dual fan was designed to be mounted outside the computer case and comes with a stand. It also can be mounted inside at the rear fan locations or on the outside at the rear fan locations. I currently have mine mounted on inside but may move it to outside case location.

A good thing to know is the direction of flow through your pump and reservoir. Also, it is good to note the amount of fluid it can pump in an hour. This can do 400 Liter per hour. Some are much higher. There is a cooling system out there for just about every kind of system or multi-system setup you may have. Make sure you have an idea where the plumbing is going to go to first. For this computer setup we will be going from pump to CPU, then to Memory Chips, then up to the hard drives then to radiator #2 (dual fan) and radiator #1 then back to reservoir.

Dual Fan Radiator                                              

Single Fan Radiator

My friend Vern also made a good comment about keeping the incoming coolant separate from the outgoing coolant tubing. They can transfer heat back and forth. Don't need warm coolant going into the CPU now do we. I did the best I could on that part. I have a little space between the incoming and outgoing tubes.

Getting the length of tubing is extremely important. Cutting it to long and you will get kinks in tubing slowing flow rate and increase pressure. To short and you get the same thing. What I did to help solve this was take full length of tubing and mounted one end to first the CPU and then routed it back to pump. I routed it the best way I could to not have any kinks in it. I then went from CPU to the memory chips. Now this is where it got interesting. I went to FrozenCPU.com and clicked the 1/4 inch cooling systems, and selected the Bigwater 745 listed there and then memory and drive and chipset cooler, all 1/4 inch inside diameter. NOPE, the Bigwater is actually 3/8 inch inside diameter. I called frozenCPU and they said that Bigwater was usually 1/4 inch and then sold me the reducer fittings I needed to complete system. Now this is going to have some effect on the flow rate through the memory chips, and hard drive section of the cooling system. I will probably add a flow meter to system later on to double check this. But the on board sensors say everything is well within heat levels.

Now that I have the reducer on the tube coming from the CPU and have 1/4 inch tubing to go from there, we can continue. The hard part about this is that now I have added the reducer and it has made it a little harder to get length correct to prevent kinking. With a little trial and effort and a little cutting here and there we got it set. I then routed tubing from memory to the hard drive coolant pack. From the hard drive pack to, oops need another reducer here. Luckily I had ordered 2. One for incoming one for out going. Ok, we are now going from the last piece of hardware to be cooled to the actual radiators now. The first radiator is the dual fan one mounted inside case. Right behind the hard drive area by the way. I had to test fit and refit tubing several times to get it to fit without kinking. But it is done. We then go from double fan radiator to the single fan radiator below it. Not a hard one at all. I routed the output from single to the reservoir. System tubing is all done.

Now for those of you thinking this is WATER, it isn't. It is a nonconductive fluid that comes with the system. I also recommend getting a second or third bottle of this liquid. The original system was able to hold 300ml of fluid, but since I added the extra parts we will need more. Each bottle of the fluid is 500ml. Not enough for what I have setup in the system. So make sure you have plenty of fluid. It won't do much good to have a pump running dry when you turn the system on.

All the tubing connections should be hand tight, and double check the radiator connectors to make sure they are seated properly. One came loose when I took the locking nut off of one of the connectors.This can cause leaks. So double check all connections in ENTIRE system.

You will probably need a small funnel to fill the coolant reservoir. A second person to help spot leaks as you turn system on and are filling the reservoir as the fluid gets cycled around the system. OK, now for the first time of turning on system. We turn on the power and I was quickly surprised how fast the fluid was going through all the tubing. OOPS got a leak at radiator #2 power down real fast. Rags are also a good thing to have at this point.Not a big leak just a drop here and there, no spurting or anything. Tightened up the fitting a bit, dried up the tiny amount of fluid that leaked and turned system back on. You will need to keep an eye on the reservoir at this point, it goes down fast as all the tubing and water blocks get full. I had to have over 1000ml for the added stuff for pump to maintain a full level.

You will notice air bubbles in the tubes here and there. Gently move the tubes a bit to get them out. I noticed a few and once they got removed from where they were at seemed to flow through to reservoir very easily.

As the system came online and my wife and I are watching for leaks, I turned the Monitoring software on to check speed of fans and temperature of CPU and Motherboard. CPU temp maintained a 67 degrees and motherboard at 70 for several hours with little usage. Now the real test. To max out the CPU as much as possible and see how it is affecting the temps.

A great program for testing it was the BOINC software for networked computing for med research. The Rosetta data crunching is very intense for a computer to run. I loaded up BOINC and Rosetta and told it to run 100 Percent CPU usage. Now since it has dual core, the BOINC software ran two Rosetta files at once. Now this is going be fun. I watched the CPU usage meter peg at 100, memory went to 35 %. I then let it run this for over 6 hours of non stop data crunching.

I monitored the system every few minutes and watched as the temperatures climbed rather quickly when CPU hit 100 %. It then stayed at 82 degrees for almost the entire 6 hours, the motherboard was hitting 95 degrees. A lot better then 100 plus temps for the CPU and MB that I was used to seeing on air cooled only systems.

As of this writing the system rarely gets to 90 degrees on CPU and has never hit 100 for the Motherboard. Make sure that you also have some fans running in the system to help remove heat from the non liquid cooled components, like the cd ROM, video card, other add on cards. I added one more case fan to the system. Just to be safe. Heat kills computers, the more you can get rid of the heat, the longer and better your system will run. I added a 120cm 70 cubic feet per minute fan to the front of the case right in front of the video card. They generate a lot of heat from those higher end video cards. So make sure you have a good way of cooling them.

I have to admit I was skeptical about putting a LIQUID in the computer case. But after seeing the efficient cooling it does and also makes it look nice inside to. The pump and CPU have a blue LED UV light on em. The tubing and fluid are both UV reactive. Kind of cool looking, and helps to spot fluid leaking. I may just add one more small LED to make it look nice.

Well there you have it. Computer is built and running Windows Vista Ultimate with a rating of 5.4 out of a scale upto 5.9. The CPU ran 5.4, Memory 5.6, drives 5.7 and video card at 5.9. Lowest score determines system final score.