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Hydrogen could save the hot-rodding world, according to one engine-tuning prophet. Will the performance world listen?

Engine guru Mike Copeland is worried about the future of internal combustion.

“It would take very little for our government to enact legislation that outlawed any kind of gasoline engine at all,” he said during a SEMA webinar Feb. 23.

“There are right now 90 million registered internal combustion-engine vehicles in the United States. That legislation could eliminate all of that. It could eliminate all racing. There could be no NASCAR, there could be no drag racing, there could be no road racing, no off-road racing. Any and all of that could be legislated out of existence.”

That’s a scary thought for a guy like Copeland, who loves racing and loves internal combustion. He worked at General Motors for 26 years making all kinds of cool cars and monster engines. Then he started Arrington Performance to make hot rod engines for customer cars, followed by starting Diversified Creations to save the world of piston power. How is he going to do it? One letter: H.

“The reality of it is we need another option. Hydrogen provides that option. My goal, my personal goal, the reason my wife and I are so heavily invested in this, is that we want to try and save this industry, the industry we love.”

While most OEMs are looking to electricity as the future—the next big thing after gasoline and internal combustion—Copeland doesn’t see electric cars providing the same thrill as ICE.

“Electricity is an option, it has its advantages. And this is certainly not to take away from that. But I don't know that people are going to go watch a NASCAR race with a whole bunch of cars that just go, 'Wheeeee' as they go by.”

Likewise, the NHRA needs more than kilowatts to get people excited.

“I was at the NHRA races out in Las Vegas, and Ford had a Mustang electric car, (the Cobra Jet 1400). They built a really nice car. It runs mid-eights, it's exceptionally fast. But when it came up to make a run, the line grew at the concession stand, because it's quiet. All you hear is a little bit of tire squeal and a little bit of whine. It doesn't trigger those senses.”

His solution is to keep internal-combustion engines but replace gasoline with hydrogen.

With numerous modifications, engineering and the right software, hydrogen can fuel a combustion engine and offer performance similar to what traditional ICE engines offer, but without the pollution.

Yes, this has been done before, but Copeland’s goal is to produce a kit that anyone can use to switch from gasoline to hydrogen. So he is starting with the 1948 Chevy pickup truck you see here, a truck that runs on H2 now. Copeland, with strategic help from Bosch, took it from 130-year-old gasoline internal combustion and turned it into a hydrogen-powered pioneer of performance. It was a formidable task.

“This is not like when everybody started going from carburetors to fuel injection in the ‘80s,” he said. All the parameters are different.

“We all know that the (air-to-fuel) ratio considered optimum for naturally aspirated engines is 14.7:1. We all know what the octane levels mean, roughly what kind of boosts you can get away with, what the timing curves are, and those kinds of things. That never changed between carburetors and fuel injection and all of those things. But hydrogen is all new. Everything we do, we're having to learn.”

His partnership with Bosch on the technical side has allowed the program to succeed, and when Bosch wasn’t there he’s made educated guesses.

Here’s what he made: The truck sits on a TCI chassis cradling a 6.2-liter LS V8 fed by a Magnuson 2650 supercharger. A McLeod clutch sits between that and a Tremec TKX five-speed manual transmission from American Powertrain. The hydrogen sits in a carbon fiber-wound cylindrical tank 50 inches long that was meant for a fuel cell-powered bus.

That 6.2-liter V8 has a lot of new internals: larger-than-stock Weiseco pistons for better cooling, accommodated by shorter K1 con rods and crank; the pistons have specific rings from Total Seal with gaps about the same as you’d find in a boosted or nitrous engine.

“They're opened up about 3/ to 5/1000ths from where we would traditionally set them.”

The camshaft is specific to the task, too.

“Hydrogen engines do not like pushing exhaust gas back into the intake. So if you run a big overlap or a tight centerline, you increase the opportunity for that and we didn't want to do that.”

On top are production LSA cylinder heads with Dhenkanal valves and 16 fuel injectors controlled by a special Bosch computer. A “traditional” LS-style coil sends a spark to a “traditional” cold spark plug.

“I'm using the same sparkplug we use in the COPO Camaro drag car and in the Challenger drag pack. It's a cold plug because we have no carbon, no carbon monoxide, no carbon anywhere. We don't have plug fouling issues, so we can run it really cold.”

The 16 injectors spray H2 into the intakes from two positions.

“We have eight injectors on each side over the port, and they spray straight in (to the cylinders). And because the hydrogen is so light, the vacuum pulls (it) right down into the cylinders. And then we have eight injectors in the traditional location, which are aimed at the valve—so just like you would do with any gasoline application.”

And how does all that work?

“We started out with a goal of 500 horsepower,” Copeland said. “Analytically, I determined I needed about 15 pounds of boost to get there. Now we're right at 20 pounds of boost at 6000 rpm.”

He didn’t give a specific output as the engine is still under development, but we could assume it’s making somewhere north of 500 hp.

Copeland showed a video of the truck on a wheel dyno at 5500 rpm. It sounded like an internal-combustion engine, complete with blower whine, except there was nothing but a little H2O coming out the tailpipe.

“There is no carbon monoxide, there's no carbon dioxide. When the fuel mixtures are correct, there's no hydrocarbons.”

The ultimate goal is nothing short of saving hot rodding.

“Our program is focused at creating a hot rod program and retrofitting those cars so we can continue, our kids can continue, and our grandkids can continue, to drive that ‘69 Camaro or that ‘32 Ford, or that ‘65 Mustang that's sitting in your garage.”

It could all work. Representatives from SEMA arranged to have representatives from the California Air Resources Board visit Copeland’s booth at the SEMA show in Las Vegas last year.

“SEMA brought CARB to me. They explained to CARB what I was doing, and CARB cared enough, we had a lot of conversations. They've added hydrogen to their acceptable alternative fuels. They have given me the requirements that I need to deliver to them, so that we can go to pursue a zero-emission certification for this package.”

Verification will follow soon at the SEMA Garage where tuners and parts makers can see if their new components meet CARB standards.

One of the first uses of this drivetrain could be to power the current crop of small-volume vehicle manufacturers. Those guys were left out to dry when CARB insisted they all use prohibitively expensive modern engines with modern pollution controls. Hydrogen-powered hot rods would be a way to satisfy both government regulators and enthusiasts.

Copeland says the cost of parts right now may be prohibitive but would come down as volumes increase. Likewise the availability of hydrogen, currently restricted to 50 or 60 retail outlets in California, would need to grow. Copeland is an optimist, a futurist and perhaps a visionary. Someday, your grandkids might thank him.

Are you excited about the prospect of hydrogen-powered hot rods? Please comment below.