Thursday, January 22, 2009

Water-Burning Carburetors

In 1921 and 1922, Crosley’s Americo operation (American Automobile Accessories Company) offered carburetors that “burned” water—the miracle that’s still with us today!


The aftermarket accessories were offered in newspapers and magazine like Popular Mechanics. Do you supposed they stopped selling the gas-saving devices because the oil industry paid them off, like all the others? Anyway, it’s a safe bet that neither Powel nor Lewis Crosley used them with their respective Fords and Cadillacs.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe they were selling water injectors. They were very popular at times (they seemed to come and go several time over the years). They were suppose to work to give small improvements in milage. The cleaning out the carbon was one of the selling points.

Probably an early version of the VitaMeter.

Jim...

Michael A. Banks said...

Good point, Jim; I had forgotten about the VitaMeter. (Reminds me that saw something in a book a couple of days ago about guys burning pistons by supercharging their Hotshots.)

If they had time, they might have put the water injectors in their cars--or had them installed.
--Mike