Methanol in a forced induction mini????

[mr dann]

It appears that Methanol is really cheap, you can get 820L of it on ebay for £320, which works out just short of 40p/L, so that says that it's even cheaper from a ind chem supplier. I've been getting more and more pissed off with how thirsty my mini is and then chucking in that octane booster shite. I was bored and remembered something from Clive Trickey's "more mini tuning". Running a mini on Methanol, the snag was that it required a high compression ratio to get the most power out of it, the high latent heat of vapourisation caused carb icing and it dissolved the castrol R causing bore wear.

I was sat in bed one morning debating which ex-girlfriend should fill my mind for my morning wank and then was unable to do it because I had struck mental automotive gold. It seems to solve the problem of expensive fuel, high compression ratios, boost heating and all the other crap which dogs a turbo engine.

Here is the problem, in order to get the right AFM, you need to re-jig your jets to run 8:1 Air Fuel, this is different from your ideal 12.5:1 and the jets need doodling with in order to achieve this, so, thankfully if you have your carb jetted for your engine, a few calculations and careful turning on a micro lathe should see you straight back in business. Another beauty is that it confuses modern cars so it's unlikely to catch on/jack the price up. The exhaust is peculiar and interferes with the oxygen content=confused lambda sensors. So, the stuff is massively knock resistant, burns cool = no radiator problems, for christ sake, they even took the fan off because it was unnecessary. I think the engine ran at about 74 deg C. One of the snags is that you need to get heat into the mixture to avoid problems, what better way than a big pump. I also suppose it does away with the freeze/thaw damage on the turbo as the waste is cooler also. Perhaps it would require jigging to get the turbo spinning up right but as you could run a higher ECR, a big exhaust valve ( hell, I'm good- doesn't need to be sodium filled) would get a big fat pulse out nice and sharp.

I'm pretty stoked as I have a really nice race head which I should be able to run as is, with no decompression plate, no problems with shagging up the combustion chamber with a big dished piston.....

It appears everyone is a winner. I'm going for 205L of methanol for £90 first and see if I can get it to work. Detonation isn't a problem and melted pistons are impossible, I think. The high CR's mean that you can give your bearings a hard time though. Modern oil required as well as castor or mixed distillates tend to dissolve/burn which isn't good.

Well chaps, in good old Stuey tradition, I'm one of the first ones to talk about it and then the last to do it. I'm going to be on the case pronto with this, if anyone else gets there first, I'd be interested in hearing how you got on.

Stu

PS:- I think there is something to do with fuel lines which is a snag. It's do-able though. AND, there is also a problem with the engine getting methanol in the oil and that buggering the bearings up. Probably an excuse to use an evacu-sump which is easy to rig as well.

Tell me what you think.

[Pigeon]

8:1 is a tad lean of stoichiometric, I think the max power ratio for methanol is about 5:1... I can't see it being any cheaper than running it on petrol, especially if you're not already making regular trips to Manchester So economically the satisfaction will be limited to the good old Cornish tradition of depriving C&E of their loot But that need not affect the fiddling-with-engines satisfaction...

You're planning to run blow-through and use the heat from compression in the turbo to counteract carb icing? Sounds like it should work. Of course, me being me, I'd use a water-jacketed carb in suck-through and put that deltaHv to best use

Fuel lines: rubber is no good, saturated hydrocarbons or silicones are fine AFAIK, for metals I found this:

www.intox.org said:

Methanol is not corrosive to most metals. Admiralty brass, high silicon iron, naval bronze, nickel-resist and silicon copper have excellent corrosion resistance (less than 2 mils (50.8 um) penetration/year), while carbon steel, types 304/347, 316 and 400 stainless steels, copper, brass, bronze, aluminum, nickel, lead, tantalum, titanium and zirconium have good resistance (less than 20 mils (505 um)/year).

[chuntington101]

i hear you need to run about twice the volume of allky to petrol to get the same level of power! but thren on a boosted engines it great! supper low intake temps and very little debt!

also consider that you will need to flush the lines regularly as alkky is very crosive!

thanks Chris.

[HiRich]

I play with methanol in early post war cars, so some notes:

- 40p/litre sounds good, but less so when you are using twice as much.
- No melted pistons? Bluff. If we go a fraction lean, the piston is the first thing to go, and in a matter of laps.
- Contrary to that intox report, methanol rots aluminium. We have to empty the tank after every race, and wash the system through with petrol for the winter.
Also, it will be pretty obvious that you are running methanol, it has a much more crackly exhaust sound.

As a project it could be interesting. But to bank on using it, you might find it very risky.

[splatspeed]

get a diesel and run it on chip fat like everyone else

[wildoliver]

From memory doesn't it burn invisibly too?

[stevieturbo]

Turn the lights out, and you can see a blue flame. With lights on, it is pretty much invisible...

There would be potential for more power, running methanol alone, but as stated, you will use twice as much anyhow.

So cost would be pretty much the same. Milage from a tank would be halved though, so you would need to carry twice as much. And as unlikely as it is, if Customs found out you were running a car without paying the road duty on the fuel, they wouldnt be your friend

[Pigeon]

HiRich said:

Contrary to that intox report, methanol rots aluminium. We have to empty the tank after every race, and wash the system through with petrol for the winter.

Yeah, their definition of "good" corrosion resistance - "less than 20 mils (505 um)/year" - isn't really what I'd call "good". That's half a millimetre a year, which is a lot of thickness off the wall of a tank.

[GreenV8S]

Is there anything that can be done to protect an aluminium tank? I imagine it would be near impossible to anodise the inside of a tank, but maybe there is some other treatment that would protect against methanol?

[slinky]

There's a couple of methanol burners in our drag racing class..

Sat in the pairing lanes at Santa Pod on sunday behind one was rather lovely.. it's a highly tuned 4 pot and was sat there blowing a 2 foot plume of purple flame..

OK.. so the marshall's were on the verge of grabbing an extinguisher and putting it out.. but it did look lovely..

One major problem though is what methanol does to your oil!

slinky

[Pigeon]

I think the most effective method would probably be to cut the top off the aluminium tank and use it as a shell to conceal the presence of a high-density polythene tank within from prying legal eyes...

[chuntington101]

good point slinky! i think due to the AFR ratio and the viscosity of meth it gets into the oil more than pertorl does. over time the oil will thin and thats not good, esp on a turbo!

Chris.

[slinky]

It's something you see many times at the strip... Oil that looks very much like custard... and you always know it came out of an alky burner!

slinky

[stevieturbo]

Ive heard talk of getting an alu tank, filled/lined with some sort of plastic bladder, which would protect it.

The RC Developments Evo, runs solely on methanol.