Checking in on Elio

Lately, all I've been reading is that the Elio is a flop and/or scam.

More: http://www.adamsautoadvice.com/2014/09/elio-motors-scam/

And with the gas prices down, people are buying Hemi's again.

Now maybe if they drop a hemi in the Elio, I might be interested.

good link

I plan to make my prediction of Elio's resounding success on 4-1-2015.

I still like the original.....

Getting 80MPG out of an engine is not all that hard.

Just take a small car and put a small carburetor like one from a push mower on it and you're good to go for 80+ MPG!

Down side is you are not so good to go for much over a few 10's of MPH on a good day.

Another method to dramatically reduce gas consumption is to use a modified carburetor like the ones frequently used in taxi cabs of the 40s-50s. They were simply two hemispheres that formed a spherical orifice inside the throttle body. So, regardless of the throttle position, you always had a controlled blockage. This modification didn't affect the idle or any other properties of the auto, but provided vastly reduced fuel consumption at the expense of performance.

Do you have any more detailed information on the carburetor you discussed?

I'm afraid that was back in the 1950s. It was an old Plymouth flat-head, 6 cyl. I traded the old carb. in for a rebuilt one and noticed a dramatic decrease gas fuel use and a decrease in performance, although in all other respects the car ran well. I told the parts manager about this and he checked the numbers and told me that the rebuilt carb. was a taxi model made for this purpose. When I looked inside the butterfly, It became obvious that two sheet metal hemispheres had been attached to the shaft with the same screws used for the throttle. Since the car was not used for performance, I used that carb. for many years. It performed as advertised.