Gas magnets: How well do they work?

MID-MICHIGAN (WJRT (WJRT) -- (11/21/05)--Everyone is looking for a way to spend less money at the gas pumps.

In this Special Assignment report, Randy Conat checked out a set of magnets that are suppose to increase your mileage by up to 18 percent.

Fuel Master is just one brand of magnets that claim to improve your fuel economy. You attach them to the fuel line just before the throttle body or carburetor. That can be a bit of a challenge. The label says it installs in less than a minute.

Don't believe it.

This is an old tape eraser they used to use here at abc12. There are some powerful magnet in here. You would take a video tape that you wanted erased, put it on the device and turn it on. The magnets are powerful enough they can rearrange the molecules on the video tape. That's the concept behind magnets on fuel lines.

The package label says the magnets cause clusters of hydrocarbons in the gas to separate. The fuel will burn more completely and cleanly.

"This magnet certainly is not going to be strong enough to break apart any molecules. The magnets are really not powerful enough to do much of anything. Common sense says even if I were able to somehow align the molecules, there's still a lot of turbulence between the point where you put the magnets and the fuel actually gets inducted into the cylinder. Any alignment you would have would be gone by the time you get it in the cylinder. So these things generally do nothing for your system at all," said Professor Greg Davis, from Kettering University.

Kerri Renz tried the magnets for nearly three weeks. Hundreds of miles later and five fill-ups later, we checked her mileage.

Question: Have you seen any improvements with your gas mileage?

"None," Kerri said.

Question: Are you disappointed?

"I'm very disappointed. The number of miles I drive to and from work every day, I was very hopeful that this would do something for me," she said.

If you still want to try Fuel Master magnets, they're available on the Internet for between $18 and $25.

Coming up at 6, we'll take a look at a fuel additive that suppose to improve you gas mileage by up to 35 percent.

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