Going green might seem like a concept that has gained traction the past few years, but there have been many activists from years gone by that have made a difference, especially in the automotive world.
One such pioneer is Tom Ogle. You might be wondering what the Tom Ogle engine is and how it affects you, so we plan to cover it all.
In this article, we discuss the life of Tom Ogle and look at his engine design. We will also look at the benefits and downfalls of this innovative engine.
What is Tom Ogle Engine?
The idea behind Tom Ogle Engine originated from Charles Pogue’s invention of a carburetor. It is a fuel-efficient system that aims at reducing the pollution rate from vehicle exhaust fumes. The engine all started as an accident, from a lawnmower.
As the inventor put it, he was messing around with a lawn mower, and accidentally, he hit a hole in its fuel tank. He then placed a vacuum line from the tank into the carburetor’s inlet and kept it running for a long.
He noted that fuel stayed the same because the mower was running efficiently without a carburetor. When the engine got extremely hot, he cooled it using a fan and was amazed when the mower ran for 96 hours on the remaining fuel that was in the mower’s small fuel tank.
He later moved from the lawn-mower to auto-mobiles, similarly converting vehicle engines. Its engine ignited immediately although the gas tank of the first vehicle collapsed inwards. It took several months of reinforcing gas tanks before he could solve the vacuum problem.
However, the car without its fuel pump and carburetor had no acceleration. The modified engine could only run at about eight mph, from the initial 20 mph to the gallon as it began stalling after a few minutes.
One time, he examined the stalled car’s engine and found that it was cold, more like an ice cube. This was because he was sucking vapor out hence the engine was behaving like a refrigerator, with a fume on top and a liquid at the bottom.
He believed that his intention would be the solution to today’s pollution issues and also demonstrated almost zero pollutant emissions from his engine’s exhaust. With time, a lot of financiers and oil companies wanted Tom Ogle’s engine patent to control interest in his invention. He was predicted to be a billionaire in the near future.
How Did The Tom Ogle Engine Work?
Tom Ogle was an American inventor who came up with the idea of a vapor carburetor that makes an internal combustion engine highly fuel-efficient.
In 1977, Ogle applied his revolutionary innovation on a 1970 Ford Galaxie featuring a V8 engine (427 hp) and a 3-gallon tank. He used a multiple-vapor system in that car and drove it for 100 miles.
It was shocking that Ogle achieved that much fuel efficiency in a 4,000+ pounds car, so a lighter car could provide much more mileage.
What was changed in the Tom Ogle engine? Most internal combustion engines use a carburetor and fuel pump. Liquid fuel is transferred into the combustion chambers and it gets burned to provide power to the engine.
Ogle replaced this carburetor and fuel pump with a black box filter and the combustion chambers were injected with vaporized gasoline.
For many people, including scientists, it was hard to digest that such a simple fix could bring such a revolutionary result. So, they checked the modified engine for hidden fuel tanks, but none was found.
Who is Tom Ogle?
Tom Ogle’s full name is Thomas Hans Werner Peter Wolfgang Dinglestadt Ogle, but it’s probably best to keep it simple.
Ogle was a mechanical engineer who accidentally made an amazing engine discovery while working with his lawnmower. He found that with a vacuum line, he could run the lawnmower without the carburetor.
Once this part was eliminated, the lawnmower ran for hours upon hours, up to 96 hours at a time. That’s what sparked the idea to run an engine without a carburetor.
For many years, Tom continued to test and experiment with different ways to run an engine without the carburetor, but many of his attempts were unsuccessful.
That was until 1977 when Ogle was 23 years old. He created a tool that completely replaced the vehicle’s carburetor. Plus, the engine could run 100 mpg with this configuration.
Initially, there was a lot of skepticism in the automotive world when the innovation was brought to light. Critics looked for every way they could to downplay the achievement. But, the efforts were a waste of time. Tom became well-known for his amazing invention.
Tom Ogle Engine Pros
#1. Fewer Emissions.
Probably the most important benefit to the Tom Ogle engine is how it benefits the environment. With less fuel needed, there are bound to be fewer emissions as well.
In the race to find the most fuel-efficient gas-powered vehicle, the Tom Ogle engine would be a huge success. The ratings even beat that of many hybrid vehicles.
#2. Cost-Effective.
There are numerous ways to save money with a Tom Ogle engine. First, you would be spending less money at the fuel pump, making this a great commuter motor.
Additionally, tax credits are often offered with hybrid and fuel-efficient vehicles. If the Tom Ogle engine could qualify for these incentives, people could put more cash in their pocket.
#3. High Resale Value.
The Tom Ogle engine is said to be durable and reliable. With less servicing, it’s only natural that the resale value on these vehicles would rise.
With depreciation taking a chunk of change from every person that sells a used car, this could be a selling feature. After all, people will spend more on a car that benefits the environment.
Tom Ogle Engine Cons
#1. Not as Stylish.
When a car is designed to be fuel-efficient, the styling is generally an afterthought. That would likely be the case with any Tom Ogle engine vehicle.
If manufacturers were focused on getting the full 100 mpg out of the motor, the focus wouldn’t be on making the car look great. Instead, it would be about weight and aerodynamics.
#2. Not as Powerful.
With a supercharged V8 or twin-turbo V6 under the hood of a car, you can expect maximum speed and acceleration. However, that’s not the case with a fuel-efficient engine.
Engines like the Tom Ogle motor are not going to offer a ton of horsepower and torque. The speeds are going to be tame to keep efficiency at its best.
#3. More Costly to Repair.
While there are many ways to save money with the Tom Ogle engine, it could also come with some hidden costs. Sometimes, the parts of hybrid and alternative fuel engines cost more than the average motor.
In addition, finding the right technicians could prove to be a challenge. Most mechanics are not trained on the Tom Ogle engine, so you would need to pay a premium for any work that is performed.
What is MPG?
MPG is the acronym for miles per gallon. It is a measurement of the distance in miles that any vehicle can travel using a gallon of fuel. This measurement mainly demonstrates the fuel efficiency of a vehicle.
Those that are capable of achieving a high mpg rating are considered to provide an operational savings cost. Most environmentalists use this gauge to know the car models that contribute more to pollution. Tom Ogle 100 MPG
Often, there are two different figures produced: highway MPG and city MPG. These two figures are usually determined by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. It rates the fuel economy of newly designed cars after a lot of testing on a dynamometer.
City MPG is when one drives with occasional stopping or braking, while highway MPG is based on continuous acceleration. Highway MPG is considered more efficient because it yields a higher figure.
However, imperial units such as MPG are not as often used in Europe. Rather, liters per 100 kilometers are used. 1 l/100 km = 282.5 mpg. The US gallon equals 3.79 liters, while the UK gallon equals 4.55 liters.
To find your vehicle’s fuel consumption in mpg, you only need to divide the result by 282.5, and vice versa is also true. Various websites can reliably convert these figures for you if the task seems daunting.
Official mpg figures are used for comparison purposes only, but they rarely reflect on the real-world economy. It is not all cars that can reliably return their indicated mpg figure, irrespective of how considerately or carefully you drive.
A few of Tom Ogle’s myth busters said that his claims that the engine would consume only 100 miles per gallon were not achievable at the time. Hybrid cars are a crossbreed between both fuel and electricity. They offer a 30% to 60% reduction in total fuel consumption.
City or Highway MPG?
City mpg is the figure obtained when vehicles are constantly stopping, more like in a city where there is traffic congestion. In contrast, highway mpg is a figure that shows fuel consumption when a vehicle is moving in continuous acceleration. However, these figures are not necessarily what you get in your everyday life because everyone drives differently.
City mpg is often the lowest because driving in the city involves a lot of stopping and starting. The engine is often subjected to more work due to the city’s navigation and traffic. Doing so consumes more gas. It can be likened to a car climbing uphill, and it consumes a little more fuel due to the horsepower required to move the vehicle.
Highway mpg, on the other hand, represents the fuel consumption when our vehicle is speeding, especially on a highway. Even though you would be driving faster and for more extended periods, most highways are usually smoother than city roads; hence, they keep your engine running and require less fuel.
If you are looking for a used car and you find a newer model with high mileage, the best bet would be that the vehicle was driven mostly on highways and the hot engine is still in great shape.
These tests do not consider how fast one drives, road conditions in different areas or when they decide to shift gears if they use manual transmission vehicles. In simpler terms, the results you get may be different.
Your vehicle’s combined mpg sounds like a combination of both highway and city numbers. Contrary to what you may assume, it is not found by averaging the two. To calculate the combined MPG, a percentage value is assigned to highway and city MPGs.
City MPGs are allocated 55%, while highway mpg is assigned 45%. These two numbers are then combined to give the combined MPG.
Why His Product is not popular in the Market
Story Of Tom Ogle
You might be wondering how Ogle got such a groundbreaking idea. Well, as with many great inventions, Ogle also stumbled upon that innovative idea accidentally. The whole idea of a fuel-efficient superengine came from a deformed lawnmower.
Once, Ogle was running a lawnmower and created a hole in the device accidentally. To fix the damage and keep the machine still working, he used a vacuum line from the carburetor inlet to the engine.
Doing this increased the fuel efficiency of the machine, and a small tank of fuel kept it running for 96 hours.
Encouraged by this discovery, Ogle applied this technique to an automobile engine. But it did not go as planned.
Without a carburetor, the engine tanks collapsed, the speed was slow, and it was gulping a great amount of fuel. The modified vehicle used a gallon for 8 miles, and its average speed was 20 mph.
This was disappointing, but Ogle was determined to find a solution. He found out that the absence of a carburetor was freezing the gas tank, like ice cubes.
He solved the issue by using heater coils. The coils kept the gas tank at normal temperature, and this simple fix finally made the car run 100 miles on a single gallon.
Is Tom Ogle’s 100 MPG Engine Actually Feasible?
Considering the market presently, VW built VW 1 (DE, EN), which is a hybrid car that has up to 260mpg. The German site claims that a test drive was carried out whereby the car only consumed 0.89l of diesel in 100km, which is equal to 240mpg. Other confusing numbers show consumption of 1.84L/100km, which corresponds to 125mpg.
Therefore, the Tom Ogle Engine is feasible at 100mpg. A more reasonable car, such as a Tesla Model S, weighs about 2000kg, similar to the weight of Ogle’s model, which runs at 260 miles on a 75kWh charge, as it has 125MJ/gallon, which equals 34.7kWh per gallon of energy.
Therefore, if the Tesla model were to burn to produce electricity at an efficiency of 100%, I would consume about 75/34.7, which equals 2.61 gallons/260 miles.
However, a combustion motor has a maximum efficiency of about 40% or 50% in theory because the exhaust fumes are usually under pressure and hot while leaving the cylinder. In reality, both the drive and internal train functions reduce efficiency more.
Even electric cars do a lot to increase their mileage, even with their higher than 90% efficiency. For instance, the kinetic energy of the vehicle is used for charging the battery while braking rather than wasting it as heat.
If you replace the carburetor with a system that allows you to add the gas in a more controlled manner, more precisely, and in ways that would enable better or more efficient combustion. This increases mileage a lot, although 100mpg is a bit far from realistic.
Did Tom Ogle die in suspicious circumstances?
Continuing in his spiral downfall from media attention and quick success, Tom’s wife happened to leave him, and she took their 5-year-old daughter, Sherry, with her. On 14th April, Ogle was shot and left for dead in the streets.
He, fortunately, survived this incident, but on August 18th, Tom left his usual drinking place drunk and collapsed at a friend’s house later in the night.
On August 19, 1981, 25-year-old Tom Ogle collapsed and died. An autopsy was carried out, and it showed that he died from an overdose of alcohol and Darvon. Darvon is a painkiller. His death was declared a suicide after they carried out a cursory investigation. Most people believed it was, however, a cover-up for murder.
People thought that Tom was still young to die then. His life was just beginning and on the verge of a breakpoint to a better life. It made no sense that he would kill himself, but also, he was going through a lot of stress by then.
His wife and daughter had left him, and most of the financiers who supported him had backed out; thus maybe it compelled him to commit suicide.
However, it is not known whether his death was a suicide or a murder. A lot of people, on the other hand, wanted to see his downfall because his success would mean their downfall.
Tom had been gravitating a lot towards gambling, and he started losing plenty of money during his gambling forays. He once told his attorney that he believed that some people were adding drugs to his drinks, but his attorney, Bobby Perel, was skeptical.
What Happened to the Tom Ogle Engine?
There was so much focus on the Tom Ogle engine in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so when did all of the excitement die down?
Tom’s life became a mess when his wife left him, and his career tanked. In 1981, it was said that an assassin tried to kill him, but the attempt was unsuccessful. It appears that big oil companies were not fond of his new invention.
Following the shooting attempt, Ogle died anyway. That’s when the invention died with him.
Nothing ever materialized from his concept, even though there were plenty of investors ready to move forward. Imagine what the world would look like if the world had adopted the Tom Ogle engine in the 1980s.
Conclusion
The Tom Ole engine was a legendary invention, consuming 100 mpg. If this engine achieved real and lasting success and was adopted by various motorists around the world, probably pollution would have been less of a concern.
Well, with the world’s increasing problems, pollution being only one part of the equation, we have to support dreamers who pursue their breakthroughs no matter what continually. It would help make the world a better place to live in for both the present and future generations. However, what we see today is the opposite of conservation. More and more people continue to profit at the expense of the environment.