Hi, folks. i did some search on this message board about running mini-trucks on alcohol. most threads are quite old, looks like not much experience with such a thing. however the question is not only about ethanol only, but running on alternative fuel. any ideas are very welcome
Most ethanol/alcohol..will eat up the seals and fuel lines,carb gaskets,fuel pumps,injectors....it's just not good news unless a vehicle has been designed to use it...if you want a safe alternative,go for propane/natural gas
ummm how about E85 and E10 fuels which are quite common and contain alcohol? i read somewhere that most cars since 80' designed to work on mixed fuels. also racers using methanol by some reasons. and i am thinking to use butanol as replacement of petrol at some stage, but not much info avaliable. i wonder people not so interested in these things...
Most cars will do okay with a tiny % of ethanol..but even e85 e10 needs specially designed gaskets and seals to keep them from being destroyed....not to mention the lower fuel economy from alcohol based fuels this can explain it better http://www.fuel-testers.com/list_e10_engine_damage.html
Japan didn't require that vehicles for domestic use be able to use up to 10% alcohol until 2010. I believe that the problem where the air cut off solenoid goes bad on the Honda ACTY's is because of the alcohol in US gasoline. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13610746/ns/business-autos/
I guess you're trying to say the solenoid when bad from age but I bought a brand new solenoid from Japan and it went bad in 6 months.
I don't have personal experience with e85 in older vehicles, however I do have experience with seals going bad from improper fluids. It's a huge problem when you consider the startling amount of rubber etc that could be destroyed/affected. I think you'll find the racers that run alcohol are running rebuilt engines that are purpose built to withstand the intended fuel. Just my 2 cents, I personally wouldn't risk your little truck z
OM, you bought it from Japan or made in Japan and bought from Japan? zardos, thats true, but if you want to get more HP from 660cc you have to change fuel.
stuff I think (don't know... just think) its more a problem of the rubber components that break down in the presence of alcohol. z
ethanol attacks some seal materials and also gakets, the seals need to be specified to work with ethanol, normal petrol seals will swell and soften, and fail eventually - so the fual system in particular nees to have been designed to handle this fuel. Alcohol fuels have higher octan ratings, typically aroun 108 Ron, so a higher compression ratio can be run, with greater ignition advance to increase power over fossil equivalents. However the modifications such as increasing the compression ratio would be incompatable with gasoline.
what i learned a long time ago was that alcohol can handle much higher compression but will eat about twice as much fuel. so you would have to design the engine to handle running the alt fuel and only run the alt fuel. i always considered cost per distance and i couldn't calc it to be a better solution. the last part below i haven't researched recently. One liter of ethanol contain 21.1 MJ, a liter of methanol 15.8 MJ and a liter of gasoline approximately 32.6 MJ. In other words, for the same energy content as one liter or one gallon of gasoline, one needs 1.6 liters/gallons of ethanol and 2.1 liters/gallons of methanol. The raw energy-per-volume numbers produce misleading fuel consumption numbers however, because alcohol-fueled engines can be made substantially more energy-efficient. A larger percentage of the energy available in a liter of alcohol fuel can be converted to useful work. This difference in efficiency can partially or totally balance out the energy density difference, depending on the particular engines being compared.
