The Elsbett engine.

[omgwtfbyobbq]

There was quite a bit of discussion about thermal efficiency over on the VW GTD forums, and I was wondering, how much more efficient can they make a diesel? Then I found this article on the Elsbett engine. It's oil/air cooled, built to run on straight, filtered plant oil with no modification, and gets over 70mpg in a mercedes. The best I've heard out of a mercedes is ~30+mpg, so for it to be getting roughly twice that means the engine is super duper efficient, probably because the designers built it to minimize heat losses. One of these in a stock Rabbit should allow over 100mpg, drop the Cd from .44 to .25, and we're over 150mpg. Add an electric 5th wheel with ~30-40 mile range, and we're over 200mpg!

[Sean88]

Here's a link to the referring web site.

http://www.eilishoils.com/

[SVOboy]

*thumbup*

Ah, the love of SVO/WVO, I really hope I can slap together something in a metro next year.