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San Diego inventor gears up to deliver 200 miles per gallon

By Greg Fogg

April 24, 2006

San Diego--With gas prices soaring over $3.25 a gallon, the pump is quickly earning the dubious distinction as “the new one-armed bandit.” However, one San Diego automotive inventor claims he has a device that will soon put a crimp in the hoses of big oil.

Dave Steckling, the President of Vapor Systems Technology, is working on a fuel vapor system that he claims will deliver well over 200 miles per gallon to drivers who attach his device to their cars. His device turns liquid gasoline into a vapor that can power the engine sparingly and efficiently.

He says he started downloading and saving every expired patent that he found. After more than 400 hours of research, he had collected 900 systems, some 80 years old and some that claim they can deliver 200 mpg.

So if they’ve been around for so long, why aren’t we using them today? The oil companies would lose out on their profits for one, says Steckling. As of April 28, 2006, Chevron posted quarterly profits of $4 billion. That’s a 49 percent increase from last quarter. Meanwhile, Exxon-Mobil announced $8.4 billion in profit, the biggest profit ever posted in a first quarter by the oil giant. The government would also suffer severe loses in taxes if drivers could suddenly travel 200 mpg in their cars.

Several mechanics have tried to bring such systems to the market before, but never quite got them up and running. Steckling points to two prominent inventors who claimed to have achieved astounding results with their own system fizzled out in the end.

In 1930, Charles Nelson Pogue of Winnipeg, Canada, was one of the first to claim to have created a system he called the “Winnipeg” carburetor. He claimed he drove 200 mpg with his Ford V8 using the device. However, after making a big noise about the carburetor, the designs disappeared and Pogue suddenly shut up about the project. A short time later, he went from being an unemployed inventor to managing a factory that made oil filters for the motor industry.

Then there was Tom Ogle, a 24-year-old from El Paso, Texas, who built his own system and, in May of 1977, drove his 1970 Ford Galaxy for 200 miles on two gallons of gas. The trip was even well documented by the press. Ogle never found funding for his system and died of a drug and alcohol overdose just four years after his monumental drive.

Whether government or oil industry insiders had anything to do with the fates of the two inventors remains a mystery.

But Steckling’s idea, after collecting all these expired designs, was to compile them on a CD and sell them on his website (www.fuelvapors.com) for $25 each to home gear heads who want to build vapor systems for their own cars. He figures that someone with mechanical knowledge could build one over a weekend and could see a 10 to 20 percent improvement in gas mileage.

In the meantime, Steckling is going into overdrive to have his own system up and running by this summer, before gas prices are expected to hit record highs. He’s hush-hush about how it actually works, although there are preliminary photos of it on his website. He predicts that by summer, even if it isn’t him, “someone is going to come out with something radical.”

While drivers sit by idly, President George W. Bush has called for an investigation into price gouging and unfair practices by the oil industry, an act that Steckling says “is not going to bring any results.”

The results he suggests his system will produce are as dizzyingly high as prices at the pump. Steckling says he expects to improve tenfold on the best patent he researched. If he’s telling the truth, that’s somewhere around 2000 mpg!

Steckling is prepared for the naysayers. “People will scoff and say I’m a lunatic, but I’ve done my homework,” the inventor says.

And if Pogue and Ogle really did meet with some sort of foul play, Steckling says he’s not afraid of reprisal. He calmly explains, “It’s possible. It’s okay. I’m not worried about them. I’m not worried about oil companies or government.”

He points to the “why we’re doing this” section of his website which, along with numerous bible quotes, reads:

Let me tell you something. Almost everyone in the past has kept quiet or sold out, and you can see where the world is today. God calls us to be good stewards of this beautiful earth He's given us. Wasting 10 times more fuel than what's needed is not fulfilling this command. Over and over, God used common, everyday folks like you and me to make a difference in this world. I WILL fulfill the call He has put on my life to bring the truth about these suppressed technologies into the light.

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