I've got to say that if someone were going to kill the inventor they really should have done it before the patent was filed.
I looked at the patent and it's pretty detailed. Someone should be able to duplicate the apparatus. I imaging there will be aspects that would not work right to begin with but it should be possible to work them out.
I also did a few calculations. I don't have time to figure them out in great detail but they should be in the ballpark of correctness.
The energy content of gasoline now (I don't know what is was back then) is about 1.213x10^6 J/gal.
If this car got 100 mi/gal over the course of a mile the gas it would use has a maximum energy content of 1.213x10^6 J/mi.
The theoretical max efficiency of a gasoline engine based upon thermodynamic considerations is about 56 % so the engine could put out a maximum of 6.72x10^5 J/mi.
The car's mass was about 1844 kg so not taking into account any other losses this energy is equivalent to the energy of getting the car up to about 60
mph. This does not include any frictional losses or hill climbing and mechanical losses and is with a very generous efficiency calculation.
It could be than I am missing some aspect that would make it possible (or maybe lots of little ones) and I don't have the time to do a more detialed calculation but it seems to me based merely on the energy content of the gasoline it would be challenging to get a car of such mass to run at 100 mpg.
Christian
