I just had my memory jarred by a recent issue of HOt ROD magazine. Smokey Yunick died while I still lived in Florida (not far from his shop) .While they were having a big garage sale of performance parts , the newspaper mentioned they would not sell his 80mpg Ford aspire with a hot vapor engine. The new issue of hot rod has an article on a hot vapor fiero a guy put back together. It makes 1.8hp / ci and gets 60mpg. Basically it heats the intake charge until it is 450 deg f entering the cylinder. Actually too hot to cause engine destroying detonation. Anyone trying something like this or just heard about it?

I read a little about Smokey a while ago, including the hot vapor stuff.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

 

One of the all-time greats

there was a local here that did a very similar engine a few years back....the engine went well once it was up to operating temperature got around 90mpg in a 4runner....it had two downsides....one it couldn't be driven until it was up to full operating temperature which took about 15-20 mins from a cold start...second downside was the fact that it had to use funny coolant that didn't boil and a lubricating oil normally used in a gas turbine due to the high temperatures that the engine was run at