Alcohol fuel

I've managed to keep the driver running on alcohol for extended periods of time. Does that count? In all honesty, the driver (let's call him "silly foreigner" so as to not cause him any troouble by using his real name) was NOT operating a motor vehicle during the experiment, so technically he wasn't even a "driver" at the time it happened.

I wonder if any of that made sense.

Jan

...I had a few beers then drove around the field.... =-)

...Gareth

I drive my radio control nitro truck drunk, street race, and have been known to leave the scene of an accident, I tend to over correct and roll it over.

A couple of the Marathon stations here have E85 for sale. Haven't seen any VW's pulling in for it yet.

Charles in Palatine.

The limit of my "knowledge" on the subject is probably somewhat overshadowed by it being knowledge back in about

1975 era and is just a hit & miss memory now... Seems to me that the required air to alcohol ratio is somewhere around half of the air to gasoline ratio. You'd have to significantly increase all carb jets as in about double and your driving range would be cut by at least half (if my recollections are anywhere close to correct - haven't needed to recall that for quite some time!) Back in the oil embargo days with gasoline rationing BS there was quite a bit of experimenting with alternate fuels. -BH

I'm thinking the octane rating is waaayyy up there, too and maybe an increase in compression ratio would be needed??

You can buy an alcohol running bug engine in Brazil. Compression is way higer (thicker pistons, different heads) and carb jets are also different. Early ones had a small tank of gas for starting, once warm you switched to alcohol. EFI solved that...

Brazil required their vehicles produced in their country to run on alcohol for several years. Among the vehicles built their and ran were Ford, Chevy, Chrysler and Vws. One engine offered on the Puma was an

2100cc alcohol fuel burner with a 12 to one ratio and hp of 195hp. It was never exported. Some German Diesels ran on soy oil and alcohol only in city buses. It is amazing that none of the car manufactures remember this. While in college we asked Ford to provide us with some specs on alcohol engines that they were building and recieved a response that the engines from Ford of Brazil were not compatable with us standards and no information was available. And I could go on and on but the 2100 cc alcohol burner I mentioned was a factory built vw ac motor. Dennis

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Here you go:

Greetings,

Gerrelt.

Backwards?

I mean from the point of view of how many gallons to carry in the vehicle and weight consideration.

How about natural gas?? I don't mean farting either. Ha!

The way the US economy works, we are more likely to see hybrid electric/gasoline engines rather than alcohol engines. See, there is more money to be made shipping our most likely source of alcohol - grain - overseas than selling it here as alcohol fuel. Look to private, unaccountable companies like Cargil who have better international intelligence than the US government for some insight. Hell, there's more US-style profit to be made importing Toyotas to use here. How our economy works is _not_ intuitive. Think short-term, as in infantile mentality and that's how it works here. It has nothing to do with long-term efficiency or concern for our grandchildren. If it did, we wouldn't rely so much upon oil for traction.

Storage is one huge problem. Can't really hydrite it.

Lots of postal vehicles use natural gas or propane. I recall some articles on the conversion process in old VW Trends or Hot VWs magazines...

Seems like the problem with converting to alcohol would be a source for the fuel. I know there are places to get propane or natural gas.

Just wait until August when bottom-shelf booze will be cheaper by the gallon than gas here (USA). :)

I've been using gasohol for years. I'm looking more at no gas, just alcohol. Not sure why you would consider alcohol going backwards. It's a renewable clean burning fuel.

Randy

My source of grains is right next door. All I really need to do is make a still and start experimenting. I have found quite a few websites on the subject. Pretty cool stuff.

Randy