Primer For Renewal

High-mileage, low-pollution modified car engine gets test

NEW YORK (UPI) - Federal Energy Administrator John Sawhill said the new LaForce double expansion automobile engine, whose inventors claim it cuts fuel consumption in half, will be an important breakthrough in the nation's energy shortage if it checks out in future tests as well as it has so far.

Representatives of General Motors also were impressed by the first tests of the LaForce engine in Washington. They said its technology appeared to be quite different from anything they had seen.

The engine, invented by Edward and Robert LaForce of Richmond, Vt., requires less than half as much fuel as a conventional four-cycle automobile engine.

By Norm Lockman Wilmington, Del. - Morning News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON A Delaware-backed inventor from Vermont has produced an experimental automobile engine that can get far more miles per gallon than conventional engines and doesn't require anti-pollution devices.

The "new" engine actually is a modified version of a standard internal combustion engine, except that it converts the engine into a miniature refinery and greatly increases its gasoline efficiency.

Edward P. LaForce of Richmond, Vt., the inventor, yesterday allowed the Federal Energy Administration to conduct a highway test on his engine and a standard engine. FEA engineers said the LaForce engine got 57.2 percent more miles per gallon at 30 miles per hour than the conventional engine. At 40 mph, the LaForce engine got 44 percent better mileage, according to Donald Armstrong, an FEA engineer.

John Bryson, chief of Delaware's Division of Environmental Control, who witnessed the tests, said he was impressed.

If it is as good as it seems, Bryson said, he would like to have all the cars in his division equipped with the LaForce engine. He urged the federal government to get behind the invention.

Another Delawarean, Melvin L. Joseph, the constructor-auto-racer-treasure-hunter from Georgetown, also was on hand for the tests. Joseph is one of the financial backers of the Vermont inventor.

The LaForce engine strips a less volatile compound out of gasoline before burning it. The compound, which LaForce calls "heavy ends" is then recirculated until it becomes a burnable gas and reintroduced into the engine to be burned.

LaForce, who has been trying to invent gasoline-saving devices for years, said the energy crisis has given his efforts new impetus.

He began with the generally accepted assumption that internal-com-bustion engines create so much pollution because they are very inefficient. The conventional engine is still primitive, he said.

With a device attached to a tractor engine, he discovered that a quart of unburned liquid could be extracted for every gallon of gasoline burned. The unburned liquid, a deep yellow, slightly oily substance with a strong paint odor, required gasification before it would burn as well as the rest of the gas.

LaForce concluded that all gasolines, produced under high-pressure, high-temperature conditions, become "unmanufactured" and broken down in the icy cold, low-pressure intake manifold. The result was separate highly flammable gases and the slow-burning "heavy ends."

Drivers of the LaForce-modified American Motors Hornet said they were amazed at the smoothness and responsiveness of the system.

On Interstate 70 in the Washington suburbs of Maryland, the LaForce Hornet and a standard Hornet, both six cylinder models, were each loaded with one-half gallon of the same gasoline. The LaForce engine, driven at a steady 40 miles per hour, got 28.8 miles per gallon, the conventional engine 20 miles per gallon. The same test at 30 miles per hour resulted in the LaForce engine getting 30.2 miles per gallon and the conventional engine 19.2 miles per gallon.

EDITOR'S NOTE

The views expressed in this magazine regarding the LaForce engine do not reflect the opinions and policies of the State of Arizona Department of Transportation nor the executive department of this magazine. It is not the purpose of this editor to become involved in any bias controversy. I believe that our readers are entitled to be aware of all parties involved.

The LaForce brothers deserve the help and support of every American in their fight for a fair trial by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The LaForce engine is designed for top performance using regular gasoline. In road tests conducted by qualified authorities under everyday driving conditions performances met with claims.

One thing the public is entitled to know: E.P.A. used a special fuel known as Indoline-30, an Amoco product not available to the American motorist. It is highly refined, almost negative in "heavy ends" normally part of consumer gasoline. Testing the LaForce engine, designed to use "heavy ends" for maximum performance, provided as unfair a test as one would receive from a modern maximum fidelity stereo recording of a Beethoven Symphony played back on a 1920 Victrola.

We reprint the following because we believe that the LaForce Brothers and their engine are the kind of primers our world-renewal needs. If it takes an act of Congress to give them a fair trial write your Congressmen and Senators.

We do not agree with those who hold that the LaForce engine will never happen because oil and automobile interests will pay a king's ransom to "bury" it. We believe that our brilliant inventor and innovator will succeed because he and his work coincide with a major crisis and a series of related crises which motivate acceptance of the innovation.

We are ready for the renewal which the LaForce engine indicates thanks in part to the Shahs, Sheiks and Emirs of the Persian Gulf States thanks in part to Presi-dent Ford who has warned the auto industry that they must design for lower gasoline consumption and control pollution.

The real irrefutable reason for the acceptance of the LaForce engine is that society has come to a point of crisis at which we must move on to a new solution or lose our equilibrium to a point where we may be off balance tomorrow.

LEFT TO RIGHT BELOW: Unique rock formations and unusual shapes have been carved by the wind. Some of them look like gigantic petrified mushrooms. About halfway down the face of White Mesa rests a solitary formation bearing a remarkable similarity to the Sphinx, casting its stony gaze across countless miles of arid desert. The painted cows of a more contemporary era are testimony that this land is inhabited by more than just stone creatures. Perched on the mesa's edge are two giant monoliths. The first is tall and slender, resembling a French poodle. The other gives the distinct appearance of a seal when seen from a certain angle.

The painter sees, feels and expresses dimensions of form and mood not generally attained by documentary photographs. Compare artist Buffalo Kaplinski's masterful portrayal of Sunset in Canyon de Chelly with photographer Ray Manley's panorama on the preceding pages. Both men, artists in their field, tell their storys through the medium which best extends their dimension of expression.

The Palo Verde tree in clouds of golden blossoms, the Sonoran Desert in spring. JOSEF MUENCH A quiet pastoral scene near St. David in southeastern Arizona. CARLOS ELMER FOLLOWING PANEL Pages 30-31 The last of the classic Apache cattle drives. After 1974 the prize herds of the Apaches will be transported by trucks. RAY MANLEY

LaForce brothers...their engine represents 28 years of work and courage.

By WILLIAM GILDEA © L.A. Times-Washington Post Service It did not happen overnight. For 28 years, Edward LaForce of Richmond, Vt., and his brother Robert, of Beaver, Pa., worked separately and together to develop an automobile engine the likes of which the world has never seen. They say they've got it now. Practically penniless for years, they labored under some of the most oppressive conditions imaginable. Each was evicted from his home for not keeping up with the rent. For months, Edward LaForce and his two sons-in-law worked on a centrifuge in a chicken coop, sleeping there at night as often as not. For 15 years, a milkman made his deliveries to the Robert LaForce household, but never left a bill. The LaForces think their suffering is over and that of countless others who might be helped by their invention. They say they have modied a standard auto engine so that it gets up to 80 per cent more mileage and some day will propel the biggest car Detroit can build at the rate of 100 miles to the gallon.

Their engine modification, they believe, is better in every way than the standard engine, is virtually pollution-free and needs no catalytic converter, can put auto workers back on the job, stretch the nation's precious oil supply and contribute significantly to the country's economy and ecology. Ignored for years as backwoods dreamers, the LaForces in recent days have been inundated with interview requests, from the major broadcast networks to the smallest newspapers, from Canada to Italy. They have been contacted by the departments of Interior and Transportation. By the Department of the Army. By Toyota and Mazda. By Israel. By the General Services Administration. By ITT. And they have caused Detroit to wonder if there might be something to this engine. Something important.

Edward LaForce, 59, the engine's principal inventor, is an extraordinary man, of that there is no question. He is 5-feet-11, 330 pounds. His heart is said to be the size of a water cooler. He laughs heartily, breathes heavily, talks precisely and thinks big.

"I don't know what his IQ is," said James Villa, a Vermont lawyer recently hired by the LaForces, "but it must be off the board. I've never met anybody who thinks in such large concepts."

LaForce said, for example, that he thought his engine could greatly benefit the power boat and light aircraft industries as well as the auto industry, and someday even revolutionize the generation of electric power with more economical self-contained, gasoline-powered electric generating units for each individual dwelling.

Born in North Ferrisburg, Vt., and raised as a farm boy, one of 16 children, LaForce began demonstrating his genius at a tender age. At 12 he made a light bulb, something not everyone had at the time in Huntington, Vt. That same year he built a wheelbarrowlike contraption to carry 10-gallon milk cans from the barn to where the milkman picked them up. "I think you've got a young Tom Edison here," LaForce said the milkman told LaForce's father.

LaForce decided to invent

Thus inspired, LaForce got serious about spending his life as an inventor. "The more I thought about what the milkman said, the more I wouldn't let go," LaForce said. "I decided to go ahead and invent things. Then I found that once you get on a course you can't leave it, you don't want to leave it." "As a youth, he believed that whatever he did manually in the course of a workday could be done mechanically," said one of the LaForce sisters, Mrs. Elsie Fiedler of Richmond, Vt. "Dad was a carpenter and every time he'd come back from a job one of his saws would be gone. Ed would be rigging it up so it could run by itself."

Edward LaForce's education was brief and downright explosive. As he tells it, and other family members recall, he completed sixth grade mathematics after one week in the first grade. His brother, Robert, six years younger and demonstrating similar brilliance, completed high school in Coraopolis, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where the family moved because of the Depression.

"In his senior year, the teacher asked Bob to take over the biology class and he did," a family friend recalled. "Then one of the teachers offered his entire life savings of $10,000 to send Bob to college and medical school, but the LaForces' parents turned it down. They didn't believe they should accept the money."

The two brothers began to work together and, in 1938, they put together an engine in an ancient Chevrolet that appeared to get extraordinary mileage. "They took the engine apart to see what they had done," a friend said, "but when they put it back together they had lost it. It never worked the way it did and they could never figure it out." During the war, Robert became an Army officer and had his interest in engines whetted all the more when he observed the poor mileage of tanks. Edward went to work at a Curtiss-Wright Aircraft Corp. plant in Beaver, Pa. At Curtiss-Wright, La Force was credited with about 300 inventions involving machinery, tools, jigs, dies, fixtures and mass production processes. When the company came under desperate pressure to increase the production of propeller blades to get planes off the ground in the war it turned to LaForce. He retooled 84 machines so they produced one propeller an hour instead of one every 36 hours.

Many have gambled on the engine. Of the some 5,000 people who are said to have given about $5 million, all on a handshake arrangement, almost all were small contributors like the customers in Salopek's market in Ambridge, Pa. "We must have 2,500 people involved in this area," said Fran Salopek, who said he's got the names written down.

Another concentration of investors can be found at the Congressional Country Club in suburban Maryland. This is because a member, Sherwood Webster of Bethesda, a believer for 15 years, has spread the word there.

The day after his appearance on Capitol Hill, Edward LaForce slept late in his hotel room. Sitting up in bed, he resembled a huge Buddha whose philosophies were eagerly awaited by his morning guests: His two lawyers, the two Webster brothers and son-in-law Joe Laramee, who, the day before, carried into the Senate hearing room a blue suitcase containing a jar of one of the engine's unique by-products heavy gasoine molecules, which make up about 25 per cent of gasoline from the pump. Normal engines waste this; the LaForce engine reputedly makes it usable and useful. In his consistently booming voice, no doubt audible rooms if not a floor away, LaForce asked the man bringing in breakfast if he would also send up sugar: "I use three sugars per cup and I need about 30 cups, that'll give you some idea."

Lawyer Villa winced at the seeming excess. He and the others are deeply concerned about LaForce's health, because of his weight and his tendency to get highly emotional. As Villa pleaded futilely for him to remain calm, LaForce recounted the years of frustration in his work and protracted differences with the Securities and Exchange Commission; hoped for success at tests of his engine at the Environmental Protection Agency facility in Michigan; pledged to find every last contributor to the engine; and said he would donate part of any profits to cancer research and other charities. When the group could find absolutely no way back to Vermont because of Thanksgiving holiday reservations, the Capitol Cadillac Agency, whose owner is another believer, sent over his biggest, shiniest model on loan.

way back to Vermont because of Thanksgiving holiday reservations, the Capitol Cadillac Agency, whose owner is another believer, sent over his biggest, shiniest model on loan.

Before he was driven away, LaForce said he wanted to buy the car so he could convert the engine and have a Cadillac that eventually could get 60 miles to the gallon.