What about the new gas?

Fellow bussers:

What about the new gas? I'm a little worried because I don't know how old iron mixes with the new gas.

I've been buying regular gas without alcohol for my '67 bus with a super beetle engine ('67 carb). I wonder if someone will comment on how it will run on the newly mandated gasohol? Will I have to make any modifications - carb, plugs, timing?

Should I maybe think about replacing the engine with one (single port, stock) that has been specially built for gas with alcohol for Washington State, not California?

Thanks.

And...

Beep Beep

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beep_beep
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I've used E-10 and E-15 in my vw's for over 12 years without any modifications or problems. I will be using E-50 to E-85 in my Puma this summer. VW's in Brazil ran up to 100% alcohol for decades. I love the stuff, higher octane (up to 105 in the E-85 blend), cooler and longer burn (better for head temps) and less emmissions (Oil is carbon based while alcohol is an organic compound which breaks down). Enjoy....Dennis

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"Den'sDogs

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Reply to
Dennis Wik

Have you actually tried E-85 in your Puma yet? I'd be surprised if it ran at all with the stuff.

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2

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">Den's> 1977 Puma

Those dogs SCARE me! But I'm sure they're very nice :-) Very nice. Nice doggies. Nice d...d... R_U_N F_O_R Y_O_U_R L_I_F_E!

Here I am with my boss and my bus, two of the most important things in my life. I call the bus "The Frog." The cat's name is Scourge, the name of the ship's cat in "Far Side Of The World" (Patrick O'Brian), which I was reading when this abandoned/lost cat wandered up my road and took over.

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Since we're sharing pictures:

My '67 bus:

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2001 -- old engine must be replaced:
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New engine, rescued from a'74 super beetle which had been wrecked many years before and was overgrown with grass and blackberry vines in a field. Compression was excellent, so it must have been wrecked shortly after a rebuild. I replaced the flywheel, generator, carburetor and bug muffler with same from the old engine, and performed a field modification to the transaxle (um, with a file) to allow the bolt behind the oil cooler to install:
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It's in and ready to go:
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Care must be taken to meditate and commiserate with one's ride after such a marriage between old bus and super beetle.
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BTW, this engine started on the first turn of the key and is still in use now coming up on its fifth anniversary in late June.

Zoom Zoom....

Beep Beep

Reply to
beep_beep

............Alcohol is also a carbon based molecule and petroleum is also an organic compound. All organic compounds are carbon based.

.........Ethanol-gasoline blends are just a government subsidy for agribusiness in my opinion............Petrolem based fertilizer is used to grow corn-----petroleum based energy is used process the corn into alcohol........Government subsidies are used in every step of manufacture, distribution and sale to bring down the cost of e-gas at the pump. Without a modern engine management system that adjusts mixture based on the resistance value of an 02 sensor, carbureted engines in older cars will run too lean on it which usually results in loss of power and poor mileage. The fix for that is to re-jet the carb and increasing the compression ratio of the engine would help use this fuel more efficiently as well. This is all dependent on the concentration of ethanol vs gasoline in the blend.......E-85 which has

85% ethanol blended with 15% gasoline won't work in an older vehicle without going to a carburetor which can be jetted properly to run much richer than normal and also you would need to get rid of all natural rubber in the fuel system from the tank to the fuel pump's diaphragm to the boots on your 1600 DP's intake manifold. The other potential problem for e-gas in an older vehicle is the rust problem in the gas tank and steel gas line that can result from the water absorption property of ethanol. This might not be real big problem in an area where the climate is dry and humidity levels average less than what many of us see here in the eastern states.

.......If all non-commercial vehicles were simply required to average at least 25 miles per gallon, you would solve the dependency on oil imports problem and get rid of a large portion of the emissions problem. I'd have to park 2 of my vehicles but I have 3 others that would satify that restriction easily. Here's another idea: Double the price of gas for vehicles that weigh more than 4,000 pounds and which don't have a commercial use permit..........bye bye Suburbans, Durangos, Hummers and Expeditions.

Reply to
Tim Rogers

The ever skeptical "Tim Rogers" emoted:

Yup. So, we gotta get that Solyent Green program rolling! Then you would have to be REAL careful with your inflection when you ask, "Whatcha running in the tank, Grandpa?"

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2

And those of us who use pickup trucks for work outside of our jobs....or tow race cars....or get loads of manure to fertilize our gardens...or pick up a pile of VW parts...or etc. Don't punish everyone just because of soccer moms, please.

Sneaks '68 T1

Reply to
Sneaks

...........Your concerns are reasonable. My simplistic suggestion would need a lot of examination of course and maybe get scrapped altogether. I have towed a notchback sedan for 300 miles in the past with an Altima and loaded it up with bags of gardening supplies on other occasions. Towing a large boat or a race car is a problem for a small vehicle though.

.....There are too many Americans riding around in 15 mpg vehicles with no apparent need to do so. The strain on the environment and the dependency on crackpot regimes in places like Venezuela is the result of this self indulgent lifestyle. The parking lot where I work is full of Tahoes,

4Runners, F-150's, Silverados, Navigators, etc., etc. Almost none of them are carpooling. Just driving around to work and home again in gigantic gas guzzlers while bitching about $3/gallon gasoline. It's just too stupid. I'd like to see a refinery built nearby here just to see some of them start crusading against what they themselves are actually causing.
Reply to
Tim Rogers

Okay, then, it sounds as if I'll be able to run a blend of maybe 15% to

25% alcohol/gasoline without doing any mods? The carb is easy enough to re-jet. Any suggestions on which size to use?

Thanks, Dennis and Tim, for your comments.

I wonder if there's a way to remove alcohol or most of it from an alcohol/gasoline blend? Distillation? Settling? Filtration? Then I can put the gas into the VW and drink the alcohol.

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Reply to
beep_beep

careful with wishful regulations Tim....it can bite you in the ass, when they decide all vehicles that we enjoy are old and inefficient enough to outlaw....we enjoy alot of freedoms here in the US....including our freedom to piss our money away how we want to...start to take away our freedoms and it won't be long till they are all gone...i, for one, won't support that...

Reply to
Joey Tribiani

Before everyone thinks that turning to ethanol is easy, consider a few things. First, your mileage will go down. Power will also go down. Warm-ups will take longer. If the cost of 25% alcohol is the same as gas of the same volume, you lose (but maybe the environment wins - who knows for sure?)

You may have to adjust your float bowl, change your choke to closer to a winter setting, and change your accelerator pump to a more generous squirt. Bump up timing about 2 degrees advance.

Starting in cold weather should be more difficult - depending upon how cold it is and your percentage of alcohol. (For 80% alcohol, 60F is "cold". I kid you not.)

If someone wants to run 85% alcohol (or better), then be prepared for one hell of a lot of modifications, beginning with higher compression (10:1 is good), and a huge modification to the fuel preheat system, and for folks where it gets cool, a supplementary gas tank of gasoline for starting, and a manual start-n-choke regime. Finally, once you convert a Bug engine to run on 85% alcohol, there is no going back to gasoline without unconverting unless you want it to go away Real Soon.

Reply to
2

............I was suggesting a mileage standard for new vehicles and possibly a price penalty when filling up at the gas station for certain vehicles that are often used for personal transportation but which are extremely inefficient in that role. Old cars are so few here in the northeast that nobody even thinks about them. I drive sometimes for more than a week without seeing a single car from the 60's or 70's and there aren't too many left from the 80's.

Reply to
Tim Rogers

i'm following you Tim...but, when it comes to regulation of anything, things seem to have a "snowball" effect....start out with "gas guzzler" type taxes/restrictions, then it gets backing from the green folks, then there are alot of folks lobying for more restrictions, because after all, if a little is good, then a shitload must be better....right? I, personally, don't wanna give up *any* of my freedoms just to control other folks urges....happens too much already....my wifes fairly new Mazda doesn't get much better fuel mileage than my old bug...but her's probably(definitely) doesn't do as much "enviromental damage" as the vw....hell her car is barely above your suggested starting point for penalties.... from what i have read on the web recently there is a "new" classification for the SUV's and such that will, in fact, make them have to conform to better standards concerning pollution and fuel mileage than is now required...they won't be able to take advantage of the "loophole" they do now by classifying them as light trucks.... maybe this will be something you are interested in...no links to post because i was linked through another message board....

Reply to
Joey Tribiani

We have already lost many of the freedoms that I remember as a kid, more then a few years ago. We never had to have a hunting or fishing license back then. I rode a motorcycle for years before I had to get a license for that. I remember when an inspection was done to your car it covered almost everything on the car now it is just a farce to get money out of you for the state. I have seen so many other small things slip past that have cost all of us a small freedom and they are always so small that most do not see it and just take it as fact. How about when almost every town had some kind of a race track and then someone moved in next door even though they knew that the track was there. Then they start complaning about the noise and away goes the track, the same goes for small airports. But people look at things like well it does not bother me so no problem, well just wait long enough and something will come along that does hit close to home and just who do you think will be there to help you. It sure will not be the people that lost their own small freedoms. If we all don't start standing togather then soon we will have to get some kind of card that will let us go to the crapper and make sure that you don't get too carred away and plug the sewer system or you will be billed by the city for cleaning it out. Joey it sounds like you and I can see thing as they are.

Reply to
Packrat46

And for non Americuns, gas is short for Gasoline, not what the Germans used in the concentration camps..

J.

Reply to
P.J. Berg

I'd like to suggest another lookm at the "efficiency" thing Tim.

Let's say you have a new corrolla (40mpg) and a new ......Hummer. I'm guessing the hummer gets max around 12mpg, and that's a lot for one of those bricks.

If a hummer carries a family of 6 to and from anywahere, it's getting six times the rated mpg, .......that'd by 72mpg........each person is moving the same distance, and would require a seperat vehicle if they wouldn't fit. (hummer will fit comfortably more than 6.)

Now, lets measure the toyota too. At 40 mpg, four people measurably comfortable, it gets ( when the same calculation is applied ) only gets 8mpg more..............the gap narrows as we add maximum capacity, and eventually the Hummer BEATS the corrolla.

Any questions?. ( other than the obvious arguments about single people driving the mega vehicle, almost all verhicles are used the same way)

Efficiency is relative when looked at in a different light.

I bet your toyota would lose eficiency at an alarming rate as the capacity is raised and the traveling weight is increased. Whereas the Hummer probably doesn't lose efficiency at the same rate with addded bodies...............

Just another look at it.

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MUADIB®

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The Peacemaking Meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.

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MUADIB

Ok I screwed that up in calculation.............LOL I was running my keyboard too fast.

But I think My direction is valid, however my calculations are not at all. That corrolla is getting much better mileage than my brain was. About double what my brain was,............but efficiency is still different as you rasie the occupancy and such. I'll just take the beating now and be on with my keyboard for a while............LOL More people moving in a bigger vehicle is more better in many cases , however an individual does better with a smaller car.

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MUADIB®

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The Peacemaking Meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.

Reply to
MUADIB

You can let the market drive price, but you should have to pay pollution tax like many states require their industrial base to do. Also figure in the cost of fighting Arabs when buying gas. Even Bush acknowledges a huge cost here.

I raise corn and thank you for your support. Wisconsin will never fight a war with the U.S.

Back to the original question: When I went to 041 heads my engine ran much better on 15% ethanol. I think they were even designed for it in Brazil

Reply to
Steve Henderson

light a match... it burns off. ;)

Reply to
KWW

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