Gas Powered Vacuum Sucks Hard Anywhere

[mdavis19] found himself in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity, needing a strong vacuum. That happens to us all right? His solution was to hack together a gas powered monster vacuum. He found a shop vac at a yard sale and promptly discarded the motor and filter. Some minor modifications to a leaf blower and a plywood mount finished the job. He now has absolute sucking power as long as he has fuel. He describes how this is going to be used for gold prospecting, though it would probably work just as well on pet hair. If you’re going to use one around the house though, you may want to find a way to mount a filter in it, and wear ear plugs.

36 thoughts on “Gas Powered Vacuum Sucks Hard Anywhere

  1. Why would you need a filer? The Blower i have from homedepot is designed to collect leaves and small debris. just poke a hole in the side of the house and put a tube for blowing the dust outside, your done. Never have to empty a canister or anything.

  2. Why would you need a filter? The Blower i have from homedepot is designed to collect leaves and small debris. just poke a hole in the side of the house and put a tube for blowing the dust outside, your done. Never have to empty a canister or anything.

  3. He probably never mounted it with the dust filter, which would be understandable if your planning on only moving the air/particles from one place to another.

    Overall though, this is a sweet design and a worthy hack.

  4. Vacuums should last you more than 30 years. With maybe 25 years left to go on oil, I don’t see this as very practical. I’m sure you can tell I don’t see modern vacuums as very practical since they rarely last past the first belt replacement.

  5. @bigd145

    I don’t find vacuums practical as they are very bad for indoor air quality.

    The carpet holding disgusting skin and fecal matter, dirt, etc is bad enough (ever removed a carpet?), but stirring it around is worse yet.

    I know of the “hepa” filter things, but they do nothing for the dirt “beaten” in the air by the beater brush.

    The only vacuum I can get behind is the one that exhausts away from the indoors completely, and as a bonus it would have plenty of suction being a house-based unit.

    1. Could you fill me in on mods done to leaf blower and does it suck water like dredge I have that figured out just not gas powered part please help thank you I live in Georgetown ca and also plan to use it for gold prospecting I will show you good spots if you help me

  6. This really needs the filter, and it wouldn’t have been that hard to mount; I suspect he got the used vac without a filter and didn’t bother to hunt one up. As it is he will blow much of what he collects right out the exhaust, and if it’s sand he’ll be abrading the impeller of his lawn blower too.

  7. I love all appliances gas powered.

    Current project: gas-powered blender.

    I’m having a lot of trouble miniaturizing. Coupling the vertical engine with the blender cup is easy. Doing it without having a massive, massive extra humongous waste of device volume is hard. I thought maybe just do it with a Wankel and make it huge? But how practical is that? :P

    Yeah anyone want to give me an idea? I need a bigger cup and a smaller engine. But I want good horsepower…

  8. gas powered…seriously? should we really be spending that much time trying to make more gasoline powered products?

    2-stroke or 4 you’re still just utilizing the intake/exhaust of a standard combustion engine.

    how in the heck do you find yourself that far from an electrical outlet while needing a vacuum anyway? lol

  9. so a gas powered blender… use a weed wacker, retain the flexible drive shaft and use that flexibility to attatch it to the teeth that mesh with the blender cup. they work quite nicely and make a fine icy beverage while camping

  10. I know several real life full time gold prospectors. None of them need vacuums. Though it’s a novel idea, keeps down the electrocution factor while prospecting. 99.99% is done around rivers and streams. Once again for the people bitching about vacuums indoors. Did you even read the article, or just start ranting after looking at the picture?

  11. @barry99705, I did have a real comment, but it didn’t post, it may have been too long or something.

    I think this is an awesome idea, if you add it to a 33-gallon trash can and use a long tube to keep the noise away from you.

  12. SSD? http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/flash_memory/40_pin_ide_flash_modules

    $21 for 1GB. Use XP Embedded or XP with Enhanced Write Filter. Or Puppy Linux etc.

    I like his bravado, but he should have started with a lower power processor 89w isn’t a good one. There were 65watt and 35watt models available of the AMD processors.

    Kudos for the massive heatsinks, that was awesome.

    I would love to have a mini-ITX based system with one of the huge (10-heatpipe) towers on it, based on a cube with an acrylic stand for the convection flow.

    Use low-voltage processors and a silent power supply like these: http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/.f

    If you leave the HDD inside, you might as well have a very slow 120mm/140mm fan going.

    I would do some calculations and see what kind of surface area a Thermalright 120 Extreme or Scythe Mugen Infinity have, just use them whole, one for the video card too ;).

  13. Lol, I thought people would be trying to hack away from gasoline… nonetheless that’s pretty sweet. And Dan I want to see that gas powered blender, that would be a whole new breed of “will it blend”. You could throw in gold bars and get powder! ^_^

    Then you have confetti ^_^

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