Methanol

Hi, does anybody here ever tried to run street car on methanol (or methanol mixed with gasoline)? I can get the methanol about three times cheaper than gasoline in the place where i live (taxes), so I'm very interested in this posibility. The engine would be some late seventies/early eighties 305 or 350 Chevy V8 or something similar. Can anyone give an advise whether it can be run on methanol and in case it can, what modifications should be made? Or would some other engine do better with it? (heard that late eighties Ford 302s are factory allowed to run on m85 - 85 per cent methanole / 15 per cent gasoline) And how it would affect power and fuel mileage? Thanks ...

Ford FFV's (offered in Ranger, Taurus, F150, and E150) will run on M85 (or E85 for that matter).

if you want to do it yourself, you need forged internals, slightly higher compression, and different timing (I believe retarded timing but not sure).

You may run into mixture issues. The stoichiometric mix ratio for methanol is about 10:1 or maybe even more, like 7 or 8:1. You'll need to increase your fuel delivery by 40-50% and most street carbs aren't capable of doing that even with their fattest jets. Also keep in mind that Methanol will eat most fuel system components for lunch. You'll have to have a dedicated electric fuel pump designed for meth and all of your seals, gaskets, and float seats will have to be modified. I think there are problems with brass and alky, so you might have trouble finding non-brass internal parts for a street carb. Many race carbs are easily tuned for methanol and come with the appropriate parts, but its tough getting one to run on the street. They're more designed to dump enough fuel at WOT and they sometimes have sincere trouble anywhere else.

Its also not very safe for street use because its incindiary [sp?] meaning that it will burn without external oxygen supply. It carries enough of its own oxygen that it can explode in a sealed tank. This is also one of the main reasons why it takes so much more fuel to be stoichiometric than gasoline. Its also the reason why winter blend gasoline returns noticeably worse MPGs... the lighter alcohol that's blended in with it requires more volume of fuel to keep the mix stoich. Your O2 sensors compensate by injecting more fuel. Its also why winter fuels are called "oxygenated" since the alcohol blended in carries its own oxygen. Great for the environment, terrible for performance use. I know it has issues with zinc so your gas tank can't be galvanized. None of your fuel lines can be rubber.

You could solve many of these problems with EFI, but again you're limited to race-only injectors that have been properly constructed with special plastics and santoprene or butyl seals. You might have trouble finding ones small enough to run a street engine... or maybe you could use four large race injectors batch fired in a TBI setup.

The one big problem you'll have with Meth is that it absolutely destroys oil. After one pass on a dragstrip, 18 quarts of synthetic oil gets turned into a viscous slurry of pastey, engine-eating mess.

Please don't think that I'm being discouraging. I would love to see it done. I'm just trying to show you some obstacles that will need to be overcome.

Come to think of it... I have seen Methanol on a street car. Actually I read about it so I don't know how well it actually worked.

A guy had an NSX and wanted to turbo it with a stock 10.2:1 assembly. He added two turbos, and staged a second set of injectors to come in under boost. The secondary injectors squirted Methanol to compensate for the incredibly high compression that it created. It was a completely stand-alone system requiring its own computer, pump, tank, injectors, etc, but in theory it should work great. Its also possible that the oil contamination isn't a big issue up to a certain mix level, but I know that pure-alky cars are terrible to their engines.

That NSX methanol injection was probably mixed with water and injected under heavy boost only as a secondary intercooler. Ripp mods makes supercharger systems that use the water meth mix under heavy boost conditions to extremely reduce intake temperatures. Check it out...
http://www.rippmods.com/products/products_list_details.asp?menuid=3&productId=243

Nope, the methanol injection was just injection that came in over like 2 psi of boost. It was just mathematically injected to keep the proper stoich with gasoline, but provide enough fuel and detonation tolerance to keep it balanced.

I'm pretty sure that the write-up was in either "Maximum Boost" or "EFI installing testing and tuning" but I'm not sure. They used two Aerocharger VATN turbos and twin intercoolers.

curtis: and were you writing about pure methy or about m85 or simila mixture? Or is there any difference?
So it seems that that carbureted Chevy won't be a good idea for this, but two friend of mine are going to test the m85 on '86 and '90 Town Cars. They say that those cars should run on it without mods - do you think it will work?

I was talking of pure meth. What are the ratios of the mixture?

Provided the compression is high enough and the injectors are capable of delivering enough fuel, they should run on it. He can expect some tough times getting it to run cold turkey, but the computer will probably re-learn. A good example; on my friend's camaro we replaced his stock injectors with higher flow units. It wouldn't start at first because it was too rich, so we got it running by preheating the coolant temp sensor in some boiling water. The computer was still using the base fuel maps for pulse width and it was way too much fuel.

After a while it settled down and relearned a new map. The ideal way is to reprogram the computer. The spark maps might need to be drastically different. Anyone else know the flame speed difference between gas and alcohol?

They should run, yes. Run well... probably not. Maybe if you found a drag race forum where they burn alky, someone there would have the tech you need to tune it in after you've tested it in the Lincolns.

They want to run on M85 (85 per cent meth, 15 per cent gasoline), but they will probably start with something like 30 per cent meth and rest gasoline to see how it works. If it will run, we'll try more meth ...