I read through some of the threads, no one seemed to ask this, so what would it take to make say, a 93 351 ethanol ready? I know my grand father put straight moonshine in his 81 Ford with a 302. He seemed to think all you needed were metal fuel lines. Granted, when he did put shine in, it ran loud as all get out, but it still ran. He put over 300000 miles on that motor before it finally started to give out, and every time he ran out of gas, in went a gallon of corn whiskey. My grandfather knows cars, but he did forget to look at the fuel guage. So, is there a special kind of injector needed for ethanol? The seals are the same, so they should hold up pretty good, put in a metal fuel line, that can take the pressure. Is that about it? Or is there more?

 

I dont think the seals are the same (but don't quote me on that)

 

If you mean more then 10% ethanol..

Fuel lines, gas tank, seals, just to name a few. You could get away doing what your grand father did. But it was only a gallon or two at a time and then mixed with normal fuel.
Ethanol like E85 will eat the rubber seals and fuel lines and the tank. I have an E85 capable vehicle, and after the fuel prices went up I looked into the E85. Its to costly to convert a vehicle to run ethanol thats not ment to. All the things listed above were from a E85 web site. And they warn people not to use it if your vehicle is not equiped to.

Oh, and by the way vehicles gets worse mpg when using E85 then when they use standard fuel.

 

Snake, what are you trying to end up with here ? A truck that will run on either gasoline or ethanol ?, or a truck that runs on just ethanol ( I'll presume you're looking at E85 ? ). Changed your truck to flex fuel staus would be tough. Changing over to E85 only, on the other hand is much easier, but if the engine were optimized to used E85, then using regular gasoline is no longer an option. DF, @ his Dad's house Dern, thats only partially true. Flex fuel cars use more when running on ethanol, but dedicated ethanol engines do not.

 

I was talkin about flex fuel, well, at least until ethanol grows more popular. Can't drive from Michigan to Tennessee from ethanol station to ethanol station

 

Snake, the flexfuel bit is a bit harder to do. I'm not quite sure how you would do it....the flexfuel trucks come with an extra sensor to measure the specific gravity of the fuel in the tank, and the computer in those cars then adjusts timing and fuel injector spray pulse to what ever the mixture in the fuel tank needs. There is a unit sold in Brazil called a 'Flextek' that you splice in between the injectors and the stock computer. I have never used one and don't know how well the work, but they sell well in Brazil. Have you looked at the E85 web site ? It shows where all of the ethanol stations in the country are. Depending on where you are going, you might very well be able to do an E85 only conversion, if you can plan your fuel stops. How much fuel can you carry ? I have a couple of 150 gallon tanks, and with one of those in the bed, I figure I have at least 1500 miles of range. DF, @ his Dad's house

 

Not true, ethanol or methanol only has about 55 to 60% of the heat energy that is in a gallon for pure gas. Heat energy drives the engine. A pure alchol engine can have higher CR ratio to help it some but it will always use a lot more fuel. Figure on a range of 40 to 70% more fuel usage. (it requires a much richer mixture too in a fuel to air ratio)

 

Snow, sorry to have to disagree with you, but you are mistaken. Ethanol, (and E85), engines not only can match gasoline on a miles per liquid gallon basis, they can beat them. The corn growers lobby used to give several colleges a new truck and let the kids convert a gasoline truck over to ethanol. The colleges that won the competitions always got better mileage on E85 than the stock truck did on gasoline. When you keep in mind the fact that ethanol has about 2/3rds the BTUs as gasoline, and still the kids were able to not only match but exceed the gasoline mileage, that tells me that it CAN be done. I don't think there is an 'Ethanol Vehicle Challenge' anymore, the car manufacurers have got it all figured out now. There just has to be enough demand, and I believe you'll see it in a few years, and Ford will be selling E85 only trucks that get the same fuel mileage as gasoline trucks do. DF

 

You are sadly mistaken and misinformed. E85 (85%alchol and 15% gas) has a LOT less heat energy than straight gas. (about 75 to 80,000 BTU vs 120 to 125,000 BTU for gas) It is the heat energy content of the fuel converted to expanding gasses that drives a IC engine. It takes about 10,000 BTU of fuel heat input per hr (at 33% efficency which is rarely achived anyway) per HP hour developed. You have to burn more fuel to get same output as this is simple physics/ I know some would like to beleive that there is a magic solution in a corn field but there is not. A few of the reasomns that diesel generally get better MPG is three fold, the first is it has a lot higher compression so it converts more of the heat to work thru additional expansion and the secound is that diesel fule has about 15% more heat energy per gallon too and finailly the third is that the fule is injected directly in cylinder for burning and is not lost to exhasut scanvanging as with a gas engine, You could raise CR on a alchol/E85 engine to help it some but it will never match the MPG of a gas engine or come close to a 11 to 1 gas engine running 93 octane because it lacks the heat energy content.

 

Like I can afford 93 octane. Well, I do put it in the Mustang, but it only gets filled up once a month.

 

I use 89 or better in all of my vehicles except a old 79J20 with 8 to 1 compression and I have for years.

 

Snow, sorry guy, but YOU'RE the one who is mistaken and misinformed. You have the correct numbers as far as btu's go, but that is only part of the story. The btus numbers reflect how much fuel is needed to boil a gallon of water in a certain amount of time. But we aren't interested in boiling water. The internal combustion engine uses the heat from combustion to push the pistons down. In an IC, as you stated, the thermal efficiency for a gasoline burner raely gets above 33 %. Thats true. Normal gasoline burners get about 25% TE. But ethanol burners that are built with 14 to 1 pistons have no trouble achieving 40% TE. So if we have gasoline @ 25% of 120,000, we get about 30,000 btus of usefull work. In the E85 or ethanol engine, we start with 80,000, and if we get 40% TE then the alky burner gives 32,000 btus of usefull work. But that is not all there is to it, there is also flame speed. Because ethanol has a faster flame speed than gasoline, more of the 'push' from the burn occurs when the piston is close to the top of the bore, so more of the work from the burn is captured and used to pish the piston down the bore. The only downside, if you must have one, is that a dedicated E85 engine is not able to run on gasoline only. I have 3 pickups at home, so I don't care. I'll have one for gasoline and one for E85 what about the third, I don't know yet. I drive whatever is cheaper. You might want to do a Google search on the results of the 'Ethanol Vehicle Challenge' - college kids were able to beat the factory mileage in their E85 trucks. I would have to imagine an engineer, like the OEs have lots of, could do even better. DF, @ his Dad's house

 

Your logic has merit but your comparision to boil water is poor because you have to heat the air too (BTU energy) to expand it and run the engine. Yes you can raise CR ratio to improve efficency some but you can with gas too if you use higher octane fuel. Alchol will never catch a gas engine in MPG and it will have starting issues in really cold weather too (below zero). Also, you could use propane which has a octane of about 110 and 13 to 1 CR or so and get a lot more MPG than possible with alchol because propane has about 25% more energy per gallon and it only weighs 4 lbs per gallon vs 8lb/ gallon for alchol and 6.4lb for gas. (yes you need a heavier tank for propane but it is more than offset by the lighter fuel weight). Are there alchol fuel vehicle for the masses in the future? Maybe but they will run on methanol made from coal, not ethanol made from grain because the amout of fuel needed could never be made from crop and it takes fuel to make it too.

 

Snow, I thought the boiling water explanation was great, 'cause that is how btus are defined. As to 'Alcohol not catching gasoline' for mileage, it not only can happen, it already has- and it was so easily achievable, the corn guys don't hold an Ethanol Vehicle Challenge anymore. It seems they and the OEs feel the tech issues have already all been figured out. About the hard starting, you have a valid concern. The colder it gets, the less alky wants to vapourize. There is also the issue that the alcohol that works best is the same alcohol that folks can drink. The government is absolutely terrified about the possiblility that someone might drink that ethanol and have some fun with it before they can collect a beverage tax on it. Both of those problems can be combated in the same way. The corn guys have been pushing for ethanol to be sold a E85- 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. That makes it undrinkable and the 15% gasoline helps the engine start more easily in cold weather. In some places, in the winter, E85 is really a 70% ethanol 30% gasoline blend, the extra gasoline being added for easier very cold weather starting. Methanol was tried as a transportation fuel, but it didn't seem to get much consumer acceptance. The ethanol guys are having better success, currently at least, and they are working hard at getting more efficiiiiient all the time. And it doesn't have to be made from corn. Brazil uses cane sugar. Sugar beets work well also. Henry Ford used and recommended potatoes. The Chinese are using several differant types of sorghum. If one uses genetically modified yeast, you can get ethanol from wheat straw, wood chips or sawdust. There is even a distillery out west someplace that is burning cow chips ( for real ) to heat up their mash pots. I think converting some of our trucks to ethanol ( or E85 ) deserves a real serious look. Oil isn't getting any cheaper, and we in the US of A have lots of farmland. Shouldn't we at least try it and see how well we can make it work ? DF

 

You completely mis the point here. It takes BTU's to heat the air in the engine to drive the pistons and a lot of them some you have to burn more fuel with alchol. Sure you can raise the CR ratio to try to help but you can with a gas engine too. Simple physic here, if you run three engine,with say 12 to 1 CR and one on gas (with a high octane) one of propane and one on alchol, the gas will get the best MPG because it has the highest energy content per gallon. followed by propane and last by alchol with its lowest content. If they would dump 87 octan and take it off the market, they could build engine with higher CR's for better efficency. WHen you conpare motor fuel, you must have common point of reference as in the CR ratio in engine because when you change that you change the whole comparison. Ethanol is just a flash in the pan because they could never produce 250 million gallons of ethanol a day to meet 25% of our imports or even 100 million a day for 10% (actaully about 500million and 200 million when you consider the fuel used to make it) There is not the resources to do it and never will be. People would like to believe that the answer to their big SUV is in a corn field, the promblem is that there are tens of millions of those things to fuel and it is just not doable. The answer lies in a coal based fuel AND vehicle that are a lot more efficent than some of the SUV's that detriot is pushing. No we do not need to all drive 40 MPG cars but then you do not need a CC 4x4 to go to the store either (or a 4x4 SUV)