"The Beast", a 1996 4 cylinder 2wd under-powered Jeep Cherokee



A little over two years ago I purchased "The Beast" in an Ebay auction for $650. It is a 1996 Jeep Cherokee SE with a 2.5L 4 cylinder EFI engine and manual 5 speed transmission. It has 31 inch tires and a 3 inch lift kit. It's big, battered, boxy, broken in, and used to be beastly in it's appetite for gasoline.

I purchased it specifically for the purpose of a test platform for HHO and fuel economy technologies. Immediately all my friends questioned why I would be trying out such a blatantly inefficient vehicle for the experiment, pretty much a brick on wheels as far as aerodynamics are concerned. Why? Because it's difficult I exclaimed! "Huh?" My friends replied. Sure, I could purchase a Geo Metro and maybe get it to go from 40-60 MPG with HHO...and that would be commendable and fabulous. But do I really want to drive a Geo Metro? NO! Even this Jeep was a compromise for me. I need off-road capability. My job as a broadcast engineer requires it for visiting my remotely located tower sites on the tops of mountains. This Jeep has plenty of ground clearance and great off-road tires, but no 4 wheel drive. Still, would a Geo Metro get me to those places I need to go? Nope. Would this Jeep? Probably. As long as it wasn't through deep snow or mud. And so I caved and made the purchase.

The first week with The Beast showed that it desperately needed some love and attention. For $650 I didn't expect it to be completely trouble-free and it certainly wasn't. There was a gaping hole in the exhaust covered over by an old crushed soup can. The air conditioning leaked water all over the passenger floor when it was run. The check engine light was lit and the running was a bit rough. The oil looked dark black and thick as though it hadn't been changed in a few years. Last valid inspection sticker on the thing was from two years previous. Ummm, yeah this was going to be a challenge, no doubt. Fuel economy was a whopping 11 MPG. Highway! Wow. This looked pretty hopeless. I took plenty of ridicule from my friends on this one. "Fuel economy Mike? You're dreaming!" they said. I have to admit that they looked to be correct about that. Nevertheless, I pressed on.

Within 3 days I had the bulk of the issues resolved. The exhaust was repaired. The oil, plugs, cap, rotor, air filter, wires, coolant...all replaced with premium researched products. The air conditioning leak was just a clogged drainage hose. MPG the following week soared to 15 MPG highway. "Now I'm making progress!" I thought. Well, sort of. I wasn't even near the EPA estimate of 21 highway on fuel economy. I knew it was going to take some time. The engine was tired. It was under-powered for the Cherokee chassis. With 190k miles it was covered in sludge and carbon. The check engine light turned out to be related to a downstream O2 sensor failure. I replaced it, and while I was at it I thought it would be a good idea to replace the front one two. MPG went to 18 MPG highway. Great! Still, The Beast required more attention to even begin to run even moderately well. My exhaust was dirty and the engine was still a long way from rejuvenated. The Beast had no balls. No power whatsoever. I had to bottom out the gas pedal to get over some of the big hills I travel over to get to work. Would HHO even help? I had to try.

I built a 6 plate "brick in a bath" wet cell electrolyzer housed in PVC pipe and installed it during a weekend. Initial response to the HHO install was very good. My dirty smelling exhaust cleaned up almost immediately and was replaced by large amounts of steam. The engine was quieter, ran smoother, and had slightly more throttle response. I thought for sure my mileage was about to go up substantially. MPG in the following week with just the cell fell back to 16 MPG though. "What? Why? It runs better!" I thought to myself. Then I started following the suggestions of many other experimenters out there that also installed a cell and saw no gains or negative ones like me. "It's the computer!" they all seemed to collaborate. Okay, so how do we deal with this? A look at the Water 4 Gas manual and the answer was so simple. A Dual Edge MAP Enhancer!

So, with that I built my Dual Edge MAP Enhancer. I also followed more of the advice in the book and installed a fuel line pre-heater on the radiator hose. On the same trip to Lowes I had a PCV enhancer built too. I bought a ScangaugeII scan tool to monitor the computer and economy. "There! Now I have everything I need to make this work." I thought to myself. I installed everything the following weekend, and began to lean out the fuel mixture using the MAP enhancer knob. Remember, the Jeep already suffered in the power dept. Leaning the MAP enhancer further neutered The Beast. Still, the results of testing for the following week were encouraging. MPG went up to 18 highway again after a babying run of almost hypermiling at 60 MPH. Another week with everything set the same and my MPG fell all the way back to 14. The following week I was down to 12. What was going on here?

Well, flash forward a couple of months and my frustration with getting HHO to work was really mounting. Some weeks I would be lucky and get back the original 18 MPG again and other weeks my mileage would plummet even as low as single digits depending on how I set things. This was unacceptable. I knew it COULD work, but why wasn't it? Clearly tuning the ECU and the sensors had a lot more to do with this than anything else. So, I started looking for tuning advice on the internet, and it was then that I discovered the Dutchman Enterprises Mechanic's Training Hotline hosted by Mike Holler. It was meant for Certified Dutchman mechanics that were doing HAFC (Hydro Assist Fuel Cell) installations, but someone posted the number on a public web page and I thought I would spy and listen in. These guys were promising their customers a huge 50% increase in mileage! "WOW! I'd probably be happy with a consistent 20%" I thought. What were they doing that was so special? It took several weeks of listening to the hotline to figure it all out. I took notes. I archived the calls on my computer and listened to them again on the way to and from work. For a few months I became obsessed with learning their technique and duplicating it so that I too could get good results.

Supposedly, a little white box called the Optimizer was the key. What did this thing do? It attacked multiple sensor streams, and was tuned in such a way as to change the sensor streams together in unison. Holler would say something to the effect of this over and over: "When the various sensor streams agree about the conditions for needing less fuel, the ECU has no choice but to comply, and it will do so for a long period of time.". Brilliant! Now this was making sense. By turning that MAP enhancer knob I was changing the MAP reading but it was no longer in agreement with the other ones...hence the flaky performance. Now all I needed was an Optimizer and I'd be in business. Dutchman wouldn't sell just the Optimizer though, you had to buy the whole HAFC kit. The HAFC retail at the time was about $1200. Plus installation. OUCH. I simply didn't have it. I had to build my own "Optimizer".

It took me about a week as I assembled a box with some variable resistors to attack the IAT (intake air temp) and CTS (coolant temp sensors) like the Optimizer did. I also moved over my MAP enhancer to the same box and since I had nothing addressing my O2 sensors, which I found to be THE most important thing to address on a car with HHO, I bought a dual EFIE for the O2 sensors as well. Damn. This was a lot of stuff. I had a birds nest of wires going every which way under the hood to make this stuff work. Would I get good results? How the hell was I supposed tune everything in unison too? For the next couple months I tried various settings on various things, and my mileage became more erratic than ever. At one point it shot all the way up to 22 MPG. I was thrilled! In the following week I was back down to the low teens again. I knew it could work great, now I just needed to learn how to lock it in and keep the gains steady. Back to the hotline to learn more!

Holler spent a good bit of his time on the hotline rambling on about "short and long term fuel trims". It might as well have been Japanese because I hadn't the slightest idea about what he was referring to. After a while it became vary obvious to me that fuel trims displayed on your scan tool were extremely important because they were actually telling you what the ECU is doing in response to your sensor mods and made the difference in either keeping or losing mileage results. I learned all about these mysterious fuel trims, and how to read them. Before long I became somewhat proficient at adjusting the various sensor mods so that my fuel trim numbers on the scan tool looked favorable for good, lasting mileage. It finally worked! 18 MPG, 19 MPG, 21 MPG....holding and consistent! Finally, a victory for The Beast. And the power was better too.

21 MPG. Locked for the most part. Couldn't get much beyond that though. I tuned and tuned and tuned. I lost mileage...I got back up to 21. Lost it again and got back to 21. 21 MPG was the barrier. Was that ALL I could squeeze out of "The Beast?". These Dutchman guys were promising and delivering 50% increases to customers a good bit of the time. What was I missing? Well, about this time Dutchman took a hit from the FTC and seized operations by court order. The training hotlines disappeared. I remember listening in on the final call with Holler in January of 2009. It was a sad moment. A very dismal group said their final goodbyes on the hotline that night. I think many of us were teary eyed. The HAFC program was moving along with such great momentum. I had learned so much and was eager to keep learning more. Now I was on my own.

Knowing that the light had dimmed on my free training opportunity I pursued the Dutchman Mechanics Training Course on DVDs before they might disappear. I also bought Holler's own fuel economy book. From that I pieced the rest of the puzzle together. HHO and tuning work great but can only go so far. There was much more going on to get the big mileage. The course and book taught me about lighter weight oils, increased tire pressures, ozone injection, magnets and their effect on fuel, fuel additives, powerful ignition mods, vacuum on the crankcase, PCV catch cans, fuel pre-heaters, water vapor systems, vapor carbs, catalysts, smaller injectors, remapping ecus, and tons more. There was so much information being thrown at me it took me almost a full year to digest it. Now I was well informed. I had all the knowledge to get more mileage, I just had to start using it. Back to the basics.

Public perception of our gasoline engines would have you believe the car companies have done everything that can be done to burn our fuel as efficiently as possible. This could not be further from the truth! This was the first thing I had to investigate and confirm for myself. Turns out there are weaknesses in many areas that can be improved upon. I'll go over a few here but reviewing them all is outside the purpose of this article.

1. Liquid fuel doesn't burn. Period. What do injectors inject? Liquid. Yes, almost all the fuel sprayed by them becomes vaporized. (at some point) At what point that fuel becomes vaporized in the combustion cycle is the key. Is it early enough in the cycle to provide useful power to push down on the piston? Or is it too late in the cycle to do anything but heat the cylinder walls and exhaust? You can control this! You can improve it. Auto manufacturers are just working with basically the same technology they have for 30 years. HHO is an "outside the box" idea that they haven't yet considered. With HHO we have the ability to extract more energy from the fuel in the window of time that counts the most, the initial push on the piston. This is known as the "critical crank angle". This is the primary efficiency weakness you are attacking with an HHO system, but you can add other things to improve this further. HHO increases the burn rate, but attacking the other weaknesses listed here as well will target a faster burn rate, which is the bottom line of what we are trying to accomplish.

This Cal Cat fuel line catalyst uses waste engine heat to pre-heat the fuel while an active catalyst breaks down the covalent bonds of the long-chain molecules for faster, easier vaporization of the fuel.

2. The fuel is too complex. Gasoline packs so much punch because it's made up of long chain molecules. Why not break the fuel down into easier processed shorter chain molecules that the engine can process faster and within that critical crank angle window of time? It seems the gasoline we are burning in the engine is not even fully compatible with the engine in the first place for this reason. Using thermal and catalytic processes on the fuel BEFORE it gets to the injectors can substantially improve this area of weakness. We can extract more of the usable energy in the fuel in a shorter, more efficient window of time and focus that power to do the useful work of pushing down on the piston with less waste in heat and exhaust. The Cal Cat fuel line catalyst, fuel pre-heaters, and additives all work to improve upon this.

This MPGauser is a magnetic fuel rail addition that holds heat and treats with 8 strong magnets to reduce surface tension for easier vaporization of the fuel.

3. The ignition systems are old-fashioned and lame. Spark plugs themselves have changed little in the last 100 years. Ignition systems have been updated with electronic parts, but what counts is how much spark is actually delivered to the intake charge and that hasn't changed much. With the spark plugs and spark delivery having changed little there's much room for improvement in how much initial energy is delivered to the fuel we are trying to burn with just the ignition. New plug designs such as the Brisk LGS and plasma ignition modules such as the Aquapulser accomplish this improvement.

Aquapulser Plasma ignition module with MPG plus super low impedence wires and distribution diode bricks.

Brisk LGS open-faced racing plugs work well with plasma systems because of the unique electrode design. There is no obstruction to any part of the cylinder from the spark. The spark produced extends further into the cylinder and the electrode design promotes a better use of the energy supplied by the ignition system. They improve stock ignition as well.

4.PCV systems are wasteful and counter productive. Every engine has some element of blow by, that is gasses and liquids that escape the combustion cycle by slipping past the piston the on the stroke. These gasses and liquids escaped combustion in the first place because they were so molecularly complex they couldn't be broken down and utilized in the critical crank angle window or even right after it. Current PCV systems just recirculate these elements through the intake again to attempt to burn them the next time around. By putting more complex hydrocarbon strings from the PCV in with your fresh incoming fuel you slow down the burn rate. This is done to essentially "increase octane", but when you do this even more of the fuel you are burning also falls outside the critical crank angle window in energy delivery. This creates a perpetual circle of more waste, more PCV discharge and in the long run more carbon build-up and sludge in the engine. Why not treat the PCV charge itself before it gets recirculated back into the engine? The Intercharger PCV catalyst and PCV enhancers effectively treat the PCV system to make it work in a favorable way again.

The Intercharger PCV catalyst breaks down the complex sludge of the PCV and turns it into a fast burning fuel additive.

Getting back to The Beast, I set out on a quest to effectively treat the above items and extract the best possible efficiency out of the engine. I knew it was going to take plenty of time and money, but the beauty of it is you can add one item at a time. My goal was to make The Beast a hyper-modified example of what can be done and isn't being done on today's cars to improve efficiency. It also shows that you don't have to give up the kind of vehicle you want to drive to go green and get better results for you and the environment. I'm still trying various new products and configurations all the time. I report on what has worked for me here on HHOInfo, so stay tuned and thanks for reading about "The Beast"!

Current configuration of The Beast. Still testing/tuning for the latest MPG numbers. The Beast almost ALWAYS gets 23 MPG city/highway combined if not better depending on tuning and current modifications. This is better than any other stock Jeep Cherokee I've driven, and I own a total of 4. The Beast has become my fuel economical Jeep of choice!

Hydro Assist Fuel cell in place of the factory air box.

BEAST MOD LIST:

HAFC (Hydro Assist Fuel Cell) kit

Aquapulser ignition system in bypass mode (full plasma)

MPG Plus premium ignition wires

Brisk BR17 LGS spark plugs

Cal Cat fuel line catalyst/heater

GSP throttle body power spacer

Intercharger PCV catalyst

MPGauser magnetic fuel rail

Ozone tapped from distributor cap

Vapor return line from gas tank to charcoal canister vented to intake via solenoid.

IAT/CTS/O2 sensor tuning via Dutchman Optimizer

MAP tuning via Dutchman MAP adjust

UPDATE 8/31/10

About mid July I installed a prototype device that uses an ultrasonic transducer to admit a steady stream of water vapor into the intake charge:

The ultrasonic vapor chamber is the PVC tube at the bottom. Water is fed in through the barb and ultrasonically treated to release a stream of vapor, with the volume of vapor controlled by the throttle plate. The Aquapulser module then fractures this water on demand inside the engine.

The upstream oxygen sensor caused a surplus of fuel to be injected while using this device, and now the catalytic convertor has become clogged. Mileage is still holding at 23 MPG city/hwy after tuning to compensate for the device. I expect much better mileage after replacement of the cat.