[pachadwick]

I drove a BioEthanol Saab last week, performance was impressive with 180BHP on Ethanol compared to only 150BHP with plain gasoline. With all the gas shortages and environmental concerns BioEthanol seems like a good idea and it gives us more power as well.

I've heard that there are some technical challenges (materials incompatibility) in the fuel system, does anyone know whether our motors use "viton" synthetic rubber o-rings etc?

I did some further alternative fuel research which you can read about here: http://www.digitaltrading.co.uk/sr20ve/altfuel.htm Didn't they used to use ethanol in drag racing?

Tell me what you think, Paul.

 

[bj200sx]

i wanna know if this is true and works. the only bad thing for me and my swap was that i'm stuck with 92+ gas and with the prices sky rocketing, it blows.

 

[8870ssgti]

unless the internals are built of ethanol resistant material using this will deffinately degrade rubberised parts

 

[garyd]

I would be more concerned about your fuel lines than the engine. Nissan Australia do NOT reccomend any of the Pulsars, n10, n12, n13 (b12), n14 (b13), n15 (b14) or n16 (b15) be run on ethanol blended fuels.

Ethanol will also increase fuel consumption.

 

[b12sr20ve]

what percentage ethanol do bioethanol have? or is it 100%??

 

[Bjorn]

I've heard that there are some technical challenges (materials incompatibility) in the fuel system, does anyone know whether our motors use "viton" synthetic rubber o-rings etc?

ethanol is grain alcohol, i.e. 200 proof vodka, so finding compatible plastics isn't exactly a hurdle. In fact a few cars here run on E85 (15% gasoline/85% booze), so it's less a matter of ability than it is demand. Also, most stations where I live run 10% eth and the state is trying to up that to 20% (to help out the farmers). Alcohol has a lower energy density so you get fewer mpg. It also doesn't really increase power unless you take advantage of it's tolerance for high compression and ign advance. It also burns hotter, creating more NOx emissions.

probably the biggest reason it's not readily available is that the large corporate farming interests see how much oil companies can jerk around the public and have inflated the price of eth accordingly - why spend big money changing gas stations over just to trade one greedy monopolistic industry group for another

 

[UK-SRi]

The advantage of alcohol is being able to run 15:1 compression, that brings the power up past petrol levels, but you need bigger fuel pumps too. Also the piston crown always comes out clean.

Mike

 

[ZoliElo]

I should have read this thread first. I bumped another thread on e85 use in the SR20 but from this thread it seems as if the use of that fuel is not wise... Right?

 

[91SERious]

I want to here more about this. If any stations around here started offering E85, it would be interesting to see how it does if I could verify or replace rubber components. I'm gonna start searching for more info now!

 

[jerryeads]

Moonshine should not hurt the rubber stuff. BUT if you set up like I did with a JWT/Miko setup, you get to run 93. As I remember, moonshine lowers octane (???); if that's correct (please correct me if otherwise) you do NOT wanna do that to your JWT ecu'd ve. The upside is the gas greeders seem to so far be sticking with a 10 cent per jump difference - long time ago, when fuel was $1.50 a gallon 87and $1.70 93, that was a 13.3% 'premium' for 93. now that it's $2.90 for 87 and 3.10 for 93, that's only a 6.9% 'premium'. I don't have a clue why the greeders are holding to two dimes instead of 20%, but it's a RELATIVELY good deal for those of us who took that jump. - - when regular hits $5 a gallon this summer and 93 is $5.20, it'll only be a 4% jump. Whoopee.

 

[Ninety-Nine SE-L]

From what I've heard, Ethanol reduces fuel economy and increases emissions. This would mean 2 things:

1. Although it is cheaper, you'll burn more of it. Other than owning a VE, that's one of the reasons I switched to 93 octane. Everyone says I'm crazy for buying such expensive gas, but higher octane fuels allow less fuel consumption which means even though I'm paying 20c more, I'm prolly saving 28c because of the increased fuel economy. I can run my car at 14:1 AF on the highway and 13:1 on race day.

2. If ethanol is worse on your fuel economy, this tells me it takes more fuel to produce combustion and that ethanol contains less chemical energy than gasoline. If this is true, there's no way you're going to gain hp, you'll most likely LOSE horsepower, which also accounts for less fuel economy (you'll need more throttle).

If the saab was running more horsepower on Ethanol, this is prolly because it was built for ethanol, possibly some insane compression ratio.

jerry, I would assume that YES ethanol lowers octane ratings, but this is because octane is its own chemical. You're displacing it with another substance that produces about the same effect. Lemme put it this way, Octane is added to gasoline because pure gasoline is unstable at high pressures and temps, more octane means more stable fuel. Of course, octane chemically contains less energy than gasoline which is why you can't use too much of it, you'll end up losing power, not to mention pure octane is quite expensive. Ethanol, I would say is very similar to Octane, if not better (which is not necessarily a good thing). The only reason race fuel is "Race" because it's so stable that when you put it into a very high pressure engine, you don't go boom.

Anyway, this is my analysis. If you can find some info that counters my info, feel free to post it.

 

[jerryeads]

LONG time ago (and I'm old enuff to remember :tear: ) seems to me good ol' tetraethyl lead was added to slow the combustion process to (I think) enable retarding the timing to begin burn longer to increase the pressure of the explosion by the time tdc happened - without holing the pistons, hence allowing higher compression and hence more downforce hence more hp. Then they decided t-e lead was going to kill us long time before the pistons got holed so now we do other things. I THINK octane is a rating of something like burn time? If you look at the datalog for the jwt ecu equipped ve, the jwt makes fire as early as last Tuesday under some conditions (As I remember without going back to look it's well before 40 degrees eek2: ). As much as I fear what's gonna happen here in the next couple years, not without a whole lotta research am I gonna put moonshine in my flawless mikomotor. Thoughts, 99?

 

[Ninety-Nine SE-L]

I don't know much about leaded fuels b/c I'm too young to remember ...but I do know that leaded fuels are more efficient at producing mechanical power, your explanation may be right, but I'm unsure.

I don't think Octane is completely like that, although it may slow the combustion time a little bit. The main belefit of Octane is it's stability and resistance to detonation.

Like I said, this is my breakdown, but it's only an educated guess. Octane and ethanol are similar in this aspect:
They are both highly stable and add pressure/heat stability to gasoline. They also contain less potential energy than gasoline. In small amounts, they increase stability and increase fuel economy due to the fact that they resist detonation in lean mixtures. In slightly larger amounts, they will begin to decrease fuel economy as they produce less power and require more energy input. for example, you can run a super lean mixture, but you'll prolly need WOT to get going from a green light.

 

[iamhappy46]

gasoline/petrol has a higher calorific rating, than ethanol/LPG. These alternative fuels requires more volume of fuel to get get the same amount of power. They also have a higher octance rating and thus, are suitable for hi compression engines.

Therefore, if you can inject slightly more(run rich) OR run more compression, the same power output as gasoline/petrol is possible. You will require a set of colder spark plugs for it to work, if you upgrade the fuel system to suit ethanol.

However, if you do both(run rich+hi CR), there is a power advantage... which is why the Saab listed in the first post makes 30Hp more on Bioethanol.

 

[2slow4u]

This is a very interesting thread. I'm noticing most guys are talking about n/a cars i'm curious how this will work for the turbo cars? I have GTIR engine i'm curious if i'll need to change out pistions to the higher compression and colder spark and what lines i'll need to change out to keep from rotting out considering its an older car. Hopefully something good comes for us so we dont have to spend so much money on gas. GREEDY BASTARDS!!

 

[Ninety-Nine SE-L]

For NA, ethanol/octane allows you to run a leaner mixture or higher cylinder pressures (insane CR like 14:1+):
- From an economical standpoint: Higher amounts of these fuels will allow you, for example, to run a 15:1 A/F ratio w/o fear of detonating, ultra lean. Of course, you may lose 5-10 whp in the process b/c there just isn't enough chemical energy. The conclusion is, you will save fuel by running leaner, but the affects will cancel out if you have to run at a 10% more throttle all the time.
- From a performance standpoint, you can run crazy cylinder pressures, we're talking 15:1 CR, I'm sure you've seen dragsters running alcohol/ethanol, etc, it keeps their engines from lighting up the night sky. Since they contain less chemical energy, the horsepower benefits of the high compression have to outweigh the power loss of a less efficient fuel.

For Turbo, I'd say the affects are the same. Turbo cars have much higher cylinder pressures which is why you have to run rich A/F ratios. Ethanol would allow you to either run leaner or kick up the boost before your engine goes sky high.

I would have to say, however, a turbo car would prolly have more benefit to using ethanol based fuels because they already run rich and they technically have adjustable cylinder pressures. For an NA car to benefit from these fuels, you have to run incredibly high compression, which is probably why the saab in the first post runs so great on ethanol, it's not built for gasoline, and thus, gasoline engines aren't built for ethanol. Although both engines can apparently run both fuels, they run better with the fuel they were built for.

BTW, although Ethanol is a renewable resource, it's slower to produce. The thing about alternative fuels, is that they're alternative. Maybe only 1% of the population runs on alternative fuels and even that's divided to many categories: Bio diesel, ethanol, hydrogen, methane, LPG, etc. If these fuels became mainstream like gasoline is, they'd run out almost instantly and cost hundreds per gallon based on a supply/demand curve.

 

[UK-SRi]

This link will clear out some of the confusion about octane rating:

100 octane = 100% iso-octane, 0% normal-heptane
50 octane = 50% iso-octane, 50% normal-heptane

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part1/

Also look up

http://www.imoc.co.uk/technical/article/octane.htm

and

http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/downloads/naca_H2O.pdf


Mike

 

[jerryeads]

Thx UK - I was on my way to Google to start finding such stuff this a.m.

 

[91SERious]

http://www.sr20forum.com/showthread.php?t=154577


http://www.ethanolrfa.org/resource/facts/engine/


i really want to try out e85 on a VE, all I need is a VE!

 

[pachadwick]

Running Ethanol.....

I've been experimenting and I'll warn you that it's not all rosy. My first blend last week, 9 gallons of 97Octane gasoline and 1/2 gallon ethanol resulted in noticible power improvements but....... a week later I've had to replace my fuel filter and my fuel pump is rapidly deteriorating, starving the engine. I think that the Ethanol has scrubbed years of gasoline "lacquer" from the fuel tank & lines.

Tomorrow I'm replacing the fuel pump and another fuel filter.

However I'm not giving up. I'm looking at an Ethanol conversion kit from Brazil.

Will keep you'all informed of Progress.

Regards Paul

www.sr20ve.co.uk