10% alcohol in Gas - what maintenence for older car ?

Certainly methanol and ethanol are precursors for formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. It has been my understanding that this is a problem only if the catalytic convertor is not up to temperature or not functioning as it should.

Formaldehyde is, without doubt, a carcinogen at certain levels. The company I used to work for made up to 800 tons of formaldehyde per day, and though it formed the basis for some of our products and we wanted to be protective of it, there was no doubt that long term exposure to fairly low levels of formaldehyde caused increased incidence of cancer.

Acetaldehyde, since it is also highly reactive to tissue, is also a material to be watched, although for years it was given, as paraldehyde in water solution, as a calmative medicine.

You are Professor Defeatist. I love alcohol precisely because it makes you solve the problem. That's why ALL the gasoline should have alcohol. Helping the farmers is a side benefit.

The reason precisely sized parts like jets, power valves, metering rods, needles and emulsion tubes are used is so you can figure out what a given engine needs once and repeat the setup. Hilborn uses pills and Cummins PT uses buttons.

The Fish carburetor was set up by a twist screw like the idle circuit on a regular auto carb. Upside: tuning easy. Downside: destroying valves and pistons easy. EGT gauges would have made Fish more practical, but most Fishes were bought by idiots and often never used.

you *can't* solve the problem without closed loop engine controls, and believe it or not, some of us still have vehicles that old and don't want to be bothered to retrofit FI...

nate

What I've come across in the last few days confirms your understanding.

I was digging up MSDS sheets from various oil companies, and somewhere along the line I encountered this exact thing. I cannot now remember where I found it, but it was stated explicitly that ethanol and other oxygenates are NOT added during manufacture, but are added much later on. The reason given was to avoid deterioration of the fuel.

If you wish to help farmers, beggaring non-farmers is a poor way to do it (tho' it's done all the time anyway...).

Ethanol is a pork-barrel fraud. Like most recycling, the viability of its economics is completely dependent on robbing Peter to pay Paul. Not only that, but Paul must be robbed from one pocket in order to put some of the money back into his own other pocket so he will think he's paying a competitive price for the stuff.

Well, *that* certainly explains a great deal about the, er, cogence and lucidity of your posts.

...and closed-loop engine controls *DON'T* solve the problem, they just compensate for it -- at a cost.

You can use E85 or M85 without closed loop controls as long as you tune for that fuel. You could gat a carb set up with two sets of metering and have a pull knob to switch, if there were a market for it.

There's a good book out on this that is several years old, John Ware Lincoln is the author. I think you should get a copy and read it.

Ethanol can be produced from ag products that are largely wasted now and methanol can be cheaply made from high sulfur coal. You have to have the market first.

Right, but "tune" doesn't involve turning some screws, it involves buying parts that probably most vehicle owners don't know where to obtain and also some trial and error not to mention some time with an exhaust sniffer and dyno if you really want to get everything dialed in just so.

That's a big if.

Your definition of "cheaply" is different from the rest of ours, I imagine. Why would I want to spend money and time to convert my vehicle to run on a fuel that is less energy dense, more expensive, and more corrosive than regular old gasoline? Not to mention that the parts to do said conversion aren't even available (unless you want to rejet to run *only* on alcohols) From a consumer's perspective that sounds like a bad deal to me.

nate

On most American carburetors for the last half century, the mixture screw was only for the IDLE mixture. Changing the off-idle mixture requires new jets or changing float level. I doubt if the float level adjustment is sufficient for LOTS of ethanol, such as E-85, but might be sufficient for 10-20% alcohol.

Only if you planned to stay a long time. Carbureted cars were tolerant enough to run a tad rich for weeks or months at a time at higher elevations. In fact, most cars from ~73 onward ran BETTER if taken from low to high altitude, because they were jetted too lean (to control HC and CO emissions) from the factory.

Weber parts? Never heard of that, since Weber is (was) part of Carter/Federal Mogul that would have been like GM buying crankshafts from Chrysler. Barry Grant and others make aftermarket parts for Holleys (and outright Holley-clones with internal improvements).

All good ideas, but in some areas that will run you afoul of emissions laws that require all ORIGINAL emissions equipment to be in place. Stupid, yes, because you can certainly make a car actually run much cleaner than 1970s emissions systems... but then most emissions laws that apply to cars after they're sold ARE stupid.

If you want to help farmers, get the government to facilitate EXPORT of surplus crops for profit, rather than impede exports. American farmers could damn near end world hunger, if the distribution system wasn't broken (deliberately by various national governments and otherwise). But don't expect them to do it for free- make it profitable for them.

Key word: Aftermarket.

No. Let the rest of the world feed itself. Let American farmers earn a decent profit, by having the organization and discipline not to overproduce. Tax the shit out of high-tech petrochemicals and go back to a higher-labor-content, higher-quality, more expensive product-the cost of the food has little to do with what you pay at the supermarket.

The Agriculture Secretary under Carter was asked what it would take to preserve the family farm. He told the truth: ban any tractor bigger than a 9N Ford.

Zimbabwe is the prime and most blatant example of why Africans starve. Either go in, slaughter Mugabe and recolonialize Rhodesia, and sterilize all males with an 80 or under IQ...or fence them in and let nature take its course.

I wipe my ass with Bono and the Gateses, who are in fact the creators of the problem. Let the big die-off happen-once.

The only problem for this is that it's more valuable for us here in the United States to have the Central American countries NOT slash-n-burn their jungle into farmland. By sending them food it relieves the pressure on them to do this and leaves the jungle alone, which we can then extract medicines and other products from that can only be produced in the jungle.

It is also cheaper for to grow food here then ship it to desert in the Mid East than for them to irrigate their desert and grow food there. It also helps to keep trade balanced since we want their oil.

Government subsidies to small farmers take a larger bite out of the taxpayers than subsidies to giant agribusiness farms. The truth is that it would be cheaper for the taxpayer to just let all the family farms go bankrupt and be sold to the giant business farms.

Africa has so many problems because the Europeans went in and drew boundaries with no consideration for existing tribal boundaries, and European missionaries went in and pushed Christianity onto the natives with no consideration for the existing religions. They basically engaged in a wholesale attempt to destroy the existing culture. That sort of thing isn't happening anymore but now you have a mishmash where some people in those countries are modern, and want to live in a modern culture, and the rest of them are foundering around. They no longer have the tribal cultures intact, yet have no history of a Westernized culture to learn from.

Ted

There is enough land for jungle and agriculture there if it is used properly. Jungle also produces exotic woods which are very valuable but the corrupt governments make proper use very hard. Slash and burn agriculture is a short term proposition.

Sub-Saharan Africa has a lot of problems but one of the biggest is their average IQ is about 70. Part of this is caused by poor nutrition but a major component is genetic, which you are not going to hear very often.

This is not to say all Africans are stupid. They are however very tribal, and some tribes are intrinsically more capable of living in modern types of societies. I agree missionaries were a very destructive species to be introduced for many reasons.

"Straightening Africa out" is a fool's errand. The human situation will take centuries to evolve, as Europe did from the time of Rome to the late Renaissance, and in my opinion our goals should be that of Gene Roddenberry's Prime Directive, modified by a discreet but forcible protection of African wildlife and other unique features from the base expediencies of the Africans as they evolve. The liberal Roddenberry would have been appalled, probably, but he's dead and we are not.

Where on earth did you get that?

Have you ever been to Africa, sub-Saharan or otherwise?