MikeMandaville wrote:

Last year I bought a diesel truck, an '83 half-ton Volkswagen Rabbit,
with the idea of rebuilding the engine, and then running it on recycled
cooking oil. Now I am giving serious thought to converting it to
steam.

The idea of being able to power my truck with solid fuel is one which I
find to be greatly appealing. At the time I decided to convert to
diesel, I was looking for an economical means of moving foundry coke
from Alabama to Texas. With a gasoline powered vehicle, the cost of
the gasoline would exceed the cost of the coke by one full magnitude.
Interestingly, for about the first century of their existence, most
steam powered road vehicles which I have read about seem to have run on
coke.

In the nineteen-fifties, the Sentinel truck company sold several
hundred steam trucks to the government of Argentina. These trucks were
used for hauling coal. Of course, these trucks burned part of their
load to power their boilers. I see no reason why the Argentinian
solution should not work for me also.

Any comments?

You'll have to go with flash steam rather than a boiler. Regulatory
issues will be a PITA. Coke is not really cheap, as it costs a pile to
get it from where it's made, to where it's used. Black smoke and cinders
coming out of it will have every envirofreak and treehugger on your ass.
Maintenance issues are a pain.

Of course, if it made any sense at all, they would be everywhere, but
mostly steam vehicles are in museums and collections of oddities. Wonder
why? Cost less to run other means of propulsion, that's why.

Of course you might cover all the bases and run flash steam with an
alcohol burner, just to see whether you actually could get any form of
liability insurance at all.

Cheers
Trevor Jones