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Hiclones

Back in the 80's the photo above was the original Hiclone, not made by the company that make the current Hiclones unless they changed names. They were called fuel savers from memory, made by Karrina Industries. The fuel saver was placed directly under the carburettor. This one is off a Holden red motor. Thanks to the chap that sent this photo to a mate of mine, who then sent it to me. I thought I would never see one of these again. When I first saw them in a magazine, I was interested in testing them to see how they went. I contacted the CEO of the company, explaining how I was proposing to test them and asked if he could send me a few different samples for my purposes. He sent me about half a dozen different samples for testing.

The equipment I used to measure fuel economy was nothing more than a liquid flow meter which could measure in increments of 1ml of fuel passing the instrument. It is the same in principle what the petrol bowsers use to measure the amount of fuel you put in your tank. The measuring device was placed in between the fuel pump and the carburettor. An electrical cable was attached to the device and passed through the drivers window then attached to the control panel.

I used the main highway out of town to test the cars fuel economy at 80 and 100 KPH. My first run would be without the hyclone fitted. I would sit on exactly 80KPH and press the start button when I passed my first marker on the side of the road. When I reached my next marker, 5 Km away I would stop the counter. I then knew exactly how much fuel was consumed by the engine. I would repeat this test on the return leg to the workshop but at 100KPH. Once back at the shop I would calculate the fuel economy at these two speeds. It goes without saying that the engine was tuned first before I started any tests.

Next I would fit the fuel saver under the carby and without any adjustment I would repeat the test exactly as the first one. I was duly impressed. The results of the various initial engines I tested the fuel saver on is below.

I fitted many more over the years but did not physically record the results but what I do know from my initial testes, it appeared that the pre-pollution engines benefitted the most from having this under carb hiclone fitted. Some models only got about a 2% increase in economy, but I never found one that did not do better. I have no doubt that after fitting one under the carb, I may have got even better mileage if I did a bit of carby re-jetting, but I did not have the dyno at this stage and the concept was fit and forget, not fit re-jet and forget as this would just add to the cost of the device.

I contacted the CEO and set up a meeting with him on the Gold Coast to show him the results and also to discuss sole rights to sell his product in the CQ area. From this meeting I purchased about $1000 worth of fuel savers and they were a very good seller.

    This now brings me to the current Hiclone that is advertised. I gotta say right now I think that some of the figures coming out on this hiclone seem far fetched. Please note the Ad says up to 20% better fuel economy. Logic says that this is very very unlikely. With any such device the vehicles that benefit most are old carburetted models, pre any pollution devices. WHY?  This is because the older engines were not very thermal and volumetric efficient compared to more later model vehicles. The methods used to deliver fuel were crude and spark was rather lacking. I am not saying they were crap, but lets face it, compared to today they were very primitive. These old vehicles needed better distribution of air and fuel than the technology of the day could deliver. This is why the under carb Fuel Saver worked so well on an older holden. It created turbulence of the fuel and air to deliver a better more homogenise mixture which was easier to ignite.

   I would suggest that a realistic figure for these new devices fitted to an old vehicle would be below the 10% mark and when fitted to a modern EFI vehicle perhaps no much increase. I have not looked into these things to hard as the price is the first thing that turned me off them. I also looked at a lot of comments users have left on bulletin boards about them. There appears to be way more negatives there than positives and the positives were just, I believe plasebo effects without any back-up data. I will leave it at that for the moment but I would like to investigate these hiclones a little further one day. I also note that Hiclone promote the K&N air filter. I believe there are better alternatives. Unifilters are the worlds best air filter, see my product review and look at the literature and I think you will agree. Anyway back to the story.

If someone out there has real data concerning the benefits of the hiclone on their car I would be interested in hearing from you and discussing the real facts required to prove that they work as they say they do. Please do not confuse my story in believing I don't think they work. I think they do, but not as convincing as the ads suggest. Below is a Hiclone that was fitted on top of a carby on a Nissan Patrol.

My next experience with an actual Hi-clone was when I discovered two of them in the intake hose on a Toyota Hi-lux during an injection timing adjustment. I explain what I decided to do with them in the following video. I will update this article once I receive some feedback from the owner.