Magnetic magic - the fuel 'scam' the truckies love

By SIMON COLLINS

Truck owner Tony Bolderston is mystified. For three years he has been using a magnetic fuel-saving device on some of his trucks, but he has no idea why it works.

The Kynetik Power Pack, which he installed in October 1997, has been condemned in Parliament by Act MP Rodney Hide as a scam.

Consumers Institute director David Russell says that in his 27 years with the institute no magnetic fuel-saving device has been found to work.

Yet Mr Bolderston, who runs United Transport's Pukekohe-based fleet of 35 trucks, says the device consistently cuts 12 per cent off his fuel bill. With fuel prices soaring, that can mean a lot.

"Our heavy vehicle average fuel consumption per month is $1800 to $1900, so if you can trim even $100 a month over the life of the vehicle of eight to 10 years, there's certainly an advantage there."

In fact, his 12 per cent saving amounts to $216 to $228 a month. The device costs just $250 for a standard car, or $350 to $450 for a truck depending on the size of the motor.

"Logic would tend to make you wonder whether the thing is a hoax," he says, "and I can't explain what it does or how it does it, but it does reduce the fuel consumption."

He was sceptical when first approached by Nathan Balasingham, a former DSIR scientist who lives in Pukekohe and has the New Zealand rights to the American-made gadget.

At first, he tested the device on one truck for three months, comparing its performance with that of an identical truck. The truck with the fuel-saver used 12 per cent less fuel.

"We thought possibly different driving styles were making the difference, so we swapped the drivers over and the vehicle still saved 10 to 12 per cent," Mr Bolderston says.

Swapping the trucks produced similar results.

Up the road, "Beatle" Brougham, of Brougham Buses, has put Kynetik Power Packs on his three buses, his own car and an employee's car. He says he is saving 30 per cent in fuel.

And one of Pukekohe's famous sons, rally driver Possum Bourne, wrote a testimonial for Mr Balasingham stating that he got fuel savings of 10 per cent on vehicles ranging from older, high-mileage cars to high-performance turbos and heavy linehaul trucks.

Bourne wrote to the Herald last week reaffirming that the device worked, and stating that he provided his testimonial free of charge.

In fact, the Kynetik Power Pack springs from a long line of devices which claim to save fuel through attaching magnets to the hose that runs from fuel tank to engine.

Browns Bay electrical engineer Alvin Crosby sold an American-made three-magnet set called the Tripolion in the early 1990s.

"What I have discovered is that there is a vested interest by the oil companies and others to keep them off the market."

An Inglewood firm, Julians Electrical and Energy Conservation, has been importing a magnetic device called the Fuelmax from San Diego for two years. Unlike the others, the Fuelmax has been tested by Auckland University, which confirmed fuel savings and lower emissions.

Mr Balasingham picked up the Kynetik Power Pack on a trip to the United States in 1997. Patented in 1993 by inventor Dr Julian Melendrez, it arranges its magnets alongside the fuel hose with a steel bar opposing them to focus the magnetic field.

The patent claim says the focused magnetic field "partially ionises the fuel ... to increase its affinity for oxygen, thus producing more complete combustion."

The magnetic field is said to detach electrons from the hydrocarbon molecules in the fuel, leaving the fuel positively charged and more ready to bond with negatively charged oxygen in the combustion engine.

The effect is that the fuel burns more efficiently, producing less wastage through the exhaust. In Dr Melendrez' tests, carbon monoxide emissions were cut to nil, hydrocarbon emissions dropped below levels achieved in natural-gas-powered vehicles, and fuel efficiency in miles per gallon increased by between 45 and 79 per cent.

Dr Melendrez initially made the device through his own company, Enviro-mag, in Vancouver, Washington. Mr Balasingham says the company sold 600,000 units in the United States and Thailand. But it has recently closed and its website has been dismantled.

Mr Balasingham says Dr Melendrez, aged 71, is now planning to have the device made by a Californian firm, Clear Skies International. A web search found no sign of the device on clearskies.com, which advertises a solar pump.

A search on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website found no mention of magnetic fuel savers since a 1992 report saying it had tested more than 100 alleged petrol-savers and found "only a few that improve mileage and none that do so significantly."

However, this was before the Kynetik Power Pack was invented.

Mr Balasingham has supplied results of a later test by California's Automotive Diagnostics for the EPA, showing a 6 to 9 per cent increase in miles per gallon using the device.

He says he tried to get it tested by our Ministry of Transport but it refused to look at it. So did the nearest car manufacturer, Holden in Australia.

He tried to advertise it in the AA magazine Directions, but was told he should first get it tested by a university. He says the University of Auckland did not have the equipment, and Canterbury University wanted to charge $20,000.

AA technician Phil Silver says that even if the fuel savings are only a fraction of the 10 to 12 per cent Mr Balasingham claims, it would be worth his while to pay for the test.

His advice: "If this device works - even a quarter of the 10 per cent - then go away and get it tested, and by the end of the year Bill Gates will be your shoeshine boy!"

But Mr Balasingham says he cannot afford $20,000. "It's my wife who has supported the whole scheme. I'm mortgaged to my eyeballs."

Mr Hide raised the issue in Parliament after Mr Balasingham became one of the first entrepreneurs to get advice under the Government's new Investment Ready Scheme.

It was recommended that he should get the product tested independently, then approach potential partners, such as the AA, Toyota, the Motor Trade Association or Pit Stop

The engineering manager for the University of Auckland's testing laboratory, Keith Jones, says he would be able to test the device for about $2500 in about two months, when the right equipment will be ready.

The manager of materials performance technologies at the state-owned Industrial Research Ltd, Dr Barbara Webster, says there is evidence in the scientific literature that magnetic devices can reduce scaling in water pipes, and it is possible that they may have an effect on fuel.

But she says the effect on scaling appears to be only where there is iron or other impurities in the water. By analogy, the magnets may be effective only on fuel where the fuel system is contaminated by corrosion or other impurities.

A Wellington fuel technologist, Ian Moncrieff, tested "a legion" of similar devices when he worked for an engine manufacturer in Europe, and also found that any effect they had was only "a compensatory one for poor engine maintenance."