Comments by "Thump Er the Sweaty Fat Guy" (@SweatyFatGuy) on "Donut"
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@ZaphodBeeblebrox042 even if they pass a law, this administration will do whatever it wants, and use the media to cover its tracks.
Gearheads like us are a small fraction of society, most people think of a vehicle as an expense, something they need to get to work. In the big scheme of things we do not matter to the government. People in large cities can ride the bus or train. The people like me who live in the middle of nowhere do not matter, not enough of us to matter.
They are trying to remove our ability to travel, to speak to each other, and they are going after our vehicles now. It will get worse, but going after the 'hotrods' is the same as going after the scary AR15s. They will use argument from ignorance, begging the question, and appeal to emotion, claiming "Why does anyone need a modified vehicle?" and the majority of people will agree.
The lockdowns are about that, limiting our travel and interactions, so they can monitor everything online, read what we are saying, and targeting the people who are organizing to resist and defend our liberties.
They don't see a reason for our modified cars to exist, the loud fart can and ironing table wings driven by idiot teenagers swerving in and out of traffic will fuck us just as bad as the morons rolling coal. They'll crack down on 'racing in Mexico' soon, and start impounding and crushing our vehicles.
Its what authoritarians do. Anyone who voted for those assholes is either an idiot, delusional, or ignorant. Welcome to the club filled with people the government wants to control. I've been in that group for a long long time.
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@manisandjr8435 a few years back Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa took the head of the EPA out to a cornfield, then explained to her that there was one acre of corn standing there. Then informer her that acre of corn makes between 200 and 500 gallons of ethanol depending on if its irrigated or dry land with a dry year.
She was under the impression that it required 100 acres of corn to make one gallon of ethanol, not that we get 2.2 gallons of fuel from a single bushel.
Then he went on to explain that using corn to make fuel increases food, not decreases it. You see when we ferment corn we use the part of the kernel livestock cannot easily digest, and leave the rest of it. What is left over is high quality animal feed, and cattle gain muscle mass 15% faster on the leftovers.
What Chuck failed to mention was that ethanol does zero damage to vehicles, burns so clean you can get over a million miles out of an engine with no appreciable wear, oil changes look new and the only reason to change it is because of thermal breakdown. It produces more power, has vastly superior drivability, withstands compression and boost, runs cooler so you don't need as much cooling capacity so your vehicle could be lighter, and the only thing it emits is CO2 and H2O as exhaust.
Now you may have heard the opposite of all that, so has she, but it is propaganda at best, and mostly misinformation that ethanol eats everything, wastes food, loses power, and other stuff.
Over 12:1 static compression you start getting better mileage on ethanol than you do on gasoline, while making a lot more power. With boosted engines that most people here like, (4 cylinders and such are the key demo for Donut) you end up using more fuel under power. Ethanol has its own oxygen, so adding more fuel also adds more O2, it compounds, so forcing another atmosphere in you have to add even more fuel to make up for the added O2.
That is the real reason you need to use more fuel, and why mileage drops in a low compression engine. You're not working the fuel hard enough with low compression.
Now try explaining all of that to some twat who sits behind a desk, with no concept nor understanding of what is going on under the hood of her minivan. Those people have no frame of reference for how much or how big something is unless they see it in person. Even then you can tell a chick that 3" is 7" and she will have no clue.
I've been doing the ethanol thing since 2007. I make it so I can run my engines on inexpensive fuel, rather than paying some gas station owner what he demands I pay for something that makes less power, clogs my engine with black carbon deposits, wears things out, and needs a catalytic converter to clean up the crap left over all while making more than 82% of its energy into nothing more than waste heat.
It costs me about ten cents a gallon to make vodka from tree sap, and about forty cents a gallon to make it from cattails. 87 octane is $3 a gallon now. I can drive a hell of a lot, with a lot of compression and power, for ten cents a gallon and a couple weekends of my time spent making it.
You need space to do it though, I have 13 acres of woodland, and a few hundred maple trees, so I have the room to do all of this. Someone in an apartment can get drunk for cheap, but not power a vehicle easily.
Never trust the government, they are clueless.
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@ZaphodBeeblebrox042 I'm old, 51years old, got my first car in 1982 when I was only 13. I have watched this happen over and over through the years. Two guns I bought in 1992 and 93 were banned by the first stupid ban that did nothing but run up the price of my shotgun.
I was into cars already when the EPA decided we gear heads were doing bad things by making our vehicles faster. SEMA managed to kill that idiocy several times in the last 40 years.
This year its different, the people on our side are no longer in office. The next election, the mid terms, will undoubtedly have the same spikes we saw last year, and states that have been red my entire life will find themselves with an underdog dem winning. They will get their 2/3 majority so they can amend the constitution at will.
When that happens, we will lose our rights. Not just to defend ourselves, but to do the things we love to do, like building, modifying, and driving cars.
In 1988 I enlisted in the US military and was sent to Germany. I was there when the Berlin wall came down and I have a large chunk of it on my shelf. I met people from the soviet bloc, the idea of being able to even afford a car, let alone do what we do with them, was something they could only dream about.
When they take over in two years, and can do whatever they want to us, it will be a matter of time before the parts dry up, getting a set of tires will cost a fortune, and you can just forget about anything aftermarket. The blackmarket for car parts will be a big thing, not quite as big as it will be for food, medicine, ammo, and other things, but you and I will not be able to afford a gasket set.
You only need to look at Cuba, Venezuela, and the soviet union to see where they are taking us. I've seen this before, in all those places, I know how it turns out and what happens.
I am not some tinfoil hat wearing nutter, I am someone who has seen the inside of the government, been there as history unfolded before my eyes, not watching it on a TV screen at home. I've seen this before, and I am concerned about the people in government. They do not give a fuck what we want or think. They want to tell us what we can and cannot do. Even if the bill passes and becomes law, they will not give a damn in two years.
There is a financial aspect to this too. I was alive and remember the rampant inflation of the 1970s. When gas was ten cents then a dollar, and the dollar stopped being worth much. 25 cents for a bottle of Coke when I bought my car, and by the time I graduated in 87 it was over a dollar. That is only 5 years.
Its going to be a lot worse this time.
I know I sound like the sky is falling, gloom and doom. It takes a few years for things to get better when this happens, but this time it might not get better... Well not in our lifetimes. 1917 to 1989 was a very long time for people to be ruled by the type of people we have in government right now.
It matters, more than guns, more than cars, more than hobbies. This is a wake up call for gearheads. If we don't do something about this government overreach, they won't stop taking from us.
Try getting someone in California to comprehend that.
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I've been looking for one of those tuner chips, off road Y pipe, and cat back for my car, but nobody makes them for a 1965 GTO with a 1970 455 in it wearing 1967 heads.. No I am not serious about the chips and pipes, but it has FiTech EFI on it. It runs on E85 anyway, (too much compression for pump gas) so its cleaner running than new cars. The state I live in doesn't test or inspect, but most of what I drive is older than 1975 anyway. So pre emissions, alt fuel, and is a mid 11 second daily driver all summer.. Fun times. They can kiss my ass as long as they don't go stupid and fine me for running vodka in a non flex fuel vehicle... which would be idiotic.
The EPA is run by a bunch of idiots who know somewhere around fuck all to jack shit about cars, fuels, and emissions. They know how to push pencils and rely on their own personal interests with advice from company representatives from the oil business to set policy. The heads are morons, some of the lower level people working there have a clue, but not the big wigs. I know more about this than they do.
I like clean air, rolling coal is stupid, but I seriously dig driving fast old junk, so I got into ethanol back in 2007 when 87 octane was $5 a gallon here.. because I can make my own ethanol/vodka from tree sap and cattails to power my vehicles... doing it this way is dirt cheap for me. The fact it runs cleaner so my engines last longer, and makes more power while running cooler is a bonus. I'd run the stuff just because its cheap and I can enjoy 13:1 compression with iron heads. Wanna know a secret? With that much compression I get better mileage from my 455s than I do on pump gas and 87 octane, with a lot more power.
Its not a good idea to delete the cat right now, they are being dicks, even if you run ethanol, methanol, methane, or hydrogen, all of which burn clean. They want us to use public trans or drive electric vehicles... probably due to them having financial interest in coal /natural gas powerplants, or mining for rare earth metals, lithium, copper, etc. Conflict of interest doesn't matter anymore
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@manisandjr8435 hydrogen is great for large vehicles and stationary power, provided you havfe something like geothermal or hydroelectric to break the hydrogen from the oxygen. Works good in large trucks and buses, because they can carry a large enough tank to have decent range.
Methane is even easier to produce and collect, but it has the same problem hydrogen does in that a 20 gallon tank for ethanol or gasoline has roughly the equivalent of 3 gallons worth of hydrogen or methane. Then you have the problems associated with flammable gases under very high pressures needed to liquify them. BLEVE is a bad thing.
You can run compression ratios in the diesel territory (20:1+) with ethanol, methanol, hydrogen and methane, and it increases the range considerably. However none of those engines could run gasoline, and the mass required for a dual fuel diesel to survive would make the 'green' powered engines too heavy.
The 15%-20% of gasoline in it is holding E85 back a bit, but 16:1 will work easily with E85.
Most people conflate ethanol with methanol, thinking they are the same thing made from different things. They are similar but ethanol has more to it than methanol, and you can drink ethanol in non muslim countries. Methanol will kill you. Also methanol is the fuel that requires all the special stuff, stainless fuel system parts, after run oils, can't sit overnight, and eats aluminum. No need for that with ethanol, its simply vodka.
Now finding accurate information on ethanol is a massive pain in the ass. Most places keep pushing all the erroneous stuff. you have to find one of us who have been testing, producing, tuning, and running it for years.
It takes a different thought process than gasoline to run ethanol. Yes you can run it like you do with gasoline, cold engine, cold fuel, lean it out, but you will be down on power and the mileage will go completely to shit.
You want the heat in the engine, heat in the fuel works great as it vaporizes faster, that makes more power and improves efficiency. Even a hot fuel vaporizing cools the intake charge making it more dense, so heating ethanol in the fuel rails makes that happen faster. To make the best power you want to run it around 7.5:1 AFR, best mileage will be somewhere between 8.5:1 and 10:1 AFR.
With gasoline you lean it out to make power, rich is safe but down on power. Ethanol will still run lean, even where gasoline normally does, but it will lose power and that will make your engine burn more fuel. Everyone who loses power on E85 to E100 is running it too lean or too cold, usually both.
I run a 195 thermostat in my GTO right now, but I have run 210F with the other set of heads that had higher compression (13:1). The problem is the Pontiac needs better head gaskets over 12:1, and they were more expensive than dropping the compression by putting on another set that only makes 11.5:1, since I have a set for both.
Daily driven 13:1 in a 7.6L V8 is a ton of fun, and you can give it as much advance as the engine wants. You have to run it really lean to get it to spark knock, otherwise it won't do it no matter how much advance you throw at it. I've tested all of this with worst case scenarios, doing nothing special, and using basic parts from the local stores for gaskets and fuel system parts.
The whole reason I got into running ethanol was to be able to drive my old cars and have fun with them. I can't afford to be throwing parts at it all the time, so if it caused any problems with carbs, pumps, engines, or anything else on my cars I would let you know and probably not run it. Sure I own four old GTOs but I am not wealthy, I buy rusted heaps and rebuild them.
Its fun being able to do so much of it myself, rebuild everything, repaint it, design parts, figure out combinations that work, and make the fuel they run on. It means I can do crazy shit for dirt cheap.
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@tommytomthms5 ah but you're missing something. That is 11 seconds NA spending less than $3500 rebuilding the engine, in a nearly 4000lb car. I've gone 11s with a 3900lb race weight for $4500 in the entire car, no turbos, no nitrous.
In the big scheme of things right now, 11s are not that fast on the track. Not many daily drivers can do it, and even fewer can do it dirt cheap all motor. Trust me I have much faster rides than the 65 GTO. Its my version of a cruiser, a grocery getter.
Sure you can go spend $50k or more to run what my beater does, and 11s is a lot faster than you think. Every kid with a Honda thinks he runs 9s in the quarter after all the Fast and Fictitious movies. Not many cars can do it stock, and my combinations use mostly reworked stock parts, like heads, intakes, etc. with a mild stall and a highway gear between 2.41 and 3.42. No blowers or turbos needed.
So lets say I put a turbo or two on one of my old dinosaur mills, and stuff it in one of the cars that would be around 2900lbs all up. I can still daily drive it, and at 14psi it would be making well over 1000hp and ludicrous torque, because what makes mine move is the torque. All the power is between idle and 5500 rpm.
Now if I take my fastest most powerful engine and boost it, then its an entirely different animal. You can see what boost does with the same heads I have on my engine on TV, same port work, everything was done by the same people in Tennessee, Shearer has the same heads I do, they aren't even the biggest port we can run. You know him as Big Chief. The Pontiac world is kinda small, we tend to know each other somewhat.
I run the E85 and high compression because I can, it improves mileage on E85 when you crank up the compression and it makes more power. Plus its cheap race fuel I can drive every day. Win-win.
There are lots of kids with the turbo cars around here (I'm in my 50s so a 30 year old is a kid to me, no offense) and so far none of them can keep up with my old beater GTO through first gear. The turbo LS makes lots of tire smoke, but he goes nowhere.
I have a challenge for you. Take $5k, any vehicle you want and can get for less than that because all you can spend is $5k for everything, and make it run mid 11s or faster on a Cooper 265 60 15 radial, not a drag radial... a regular hard street tire. Do something like that and you will grasp the concept of what I am doing, and realize its not as easy as you think. I am talking quarter mile times, not 1/8th. 11s in the 1/8s is pathetic slow. In the 1/8 it would be 7.5 or faster.
BTW its a lot of fun doing the low buck thing, but you have to know what everything does and why, and know where to spend money to get the most from it. Anyone can throw money at it.
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@Lotek117 The piston driven LSR record is held by Danny Thompson... yes with twin 426 style hemis. Technology has come a long way from 1960. The Pontiac had hemi killing heads in 1962, but they only built one set of those and they went on McKeller's 421. It was a set of SOHC heads. The RA V was a serious piece as well, the valve layout of the FE Ford, but with ports rivaling the hemi. Easy 800hp on a 428 or 455. A 455 with RA IV heads and cam is a serious piece.
Its not that they could not come up with something, its that they were not allowed to use it by GM. When Pontiac was 2# in sales only behind chevy with all the taxis, fleet vehicles and barely adequate daily drivers chevy sells, because Pontiac was the performance division, GM decided to hold them back.
Pontiac we not allowed under the table things like the copo, you could not get a 428 or 455 in an A or F body until 1970, when everything weighed enough to slow them down, and then only low compression round ports. GM really hated it when Pontiac would stomp a chevy, particularly corvettes.
If they had been turned loose like the Dodge boys were, it would be a completely different performance world today.
I am kinda thinkin I need one of those new truck hemis in my 70 Cuda... for science of course.
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You do not get wear in engines that run on 100% ethanol, they do this in Brazil and taxi cabs go a million miles on hydrous ethanol with minimal wear. My oil changes are once a year in my ethanol fueled vehicles. I put around 5000 miles on my GTO every summer, sometimes 10,000 when I take a long road trip. When I pull my engines apart to change cams, or heads for more power, they are spotless inside and I can't see any wear. I am a hard core gearhead, own around 40-50 vehicles most of which are older than 1979, the newest is a 2006 Gran Prix I got for $500 to drive in the snow and salt.
I build my engines, transmissions, carbs, and I do E85 Qjet carbs for other people. I have no problem taking something apart just to take a look inside. I beat the living shit out of my cars and trucks, no grandma putting around for me. I have 700hp single digit ET street cars with Pontiac engines, and my daily driver runs 11s with a 3.42 gear and no power adder. The reason I am into ethanol is I can make the stuff at home, no need to pay others for it, it handles high compression easily, and it makes more power due to the extra oxygen in it.
So while you are technically correct on most of this, there are many omissions, over simplifications, and incorrect assumptions in your video.
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@lawrenceartz8640 being born in 69, and driving mostly old stuff, I tend to agree with you. Around here I am forced to use 1998-2006 vehicles as winter beaters, if they rust in half from the salt I don't care.
I figure I might have 15 years left, best case. All the stuff I have been exposed to in the military, the chemical exposure from the first gulf war, and all the rest. I am actually surprised to have made it to 52.
I am all about running our engines on ethanol, that we can make ourselves and cut out all the middle men, but the EPA is about control, not the environment. I don't run my stuff on vodka to save the planet, I do it because its cheap, very effective, I can produce it myself, and I can run very high compression on ethanol in a daily driver. Mostly its being able to produce it myself that has me hooked on it.
With the way they have been teaching kids that marxism is the right way, capitalism and the bill of rights are bad/meaningless, to obey authority and ask permission for everything, yeah I see the USA becoming the USSA with no constitution. The rest of the world will have no choice but to follow along, and humanity will plunge into the abyss of marxist idiocy.
I am happy I will be dead, but my kids might not be and they will have to endure this stupidity for decades.
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My cars on ethanol sit from November to May because of the snow. I live in the north where people travel for hours to come here and ride snowmobiles. There is a trail running along the back of my property, I get snowmobiles and side by sides all the time. My cars are covered with snow, as in buried under it from December to April. They do not move. At all. I have zero problems with water separating and getting sucked into my carbs/injectors. Why? Because ethanol bonds to water and allows you to burn it with no detrimental effects. Its the same process as HEET and Drygas, which use methanol and isopropyl alcohol to do exactly the same thing.
Small engines, including two strokes, will run no problem on straight ethanol. The problem is, the two stroke oil yo mix with gasoline does not want to mix with ethanol. However, castor oil, canola oil, veggie oil, etc will mix with ethanol and burn in a two stroke. I have run my chainsaws on canola and hydrous ethanol for years. It does tend to start harder in cold weather, but they make more power than on gas, and everything stays very clean.
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While stationed in Germany, I bought a 1980 BMW 520 with a dead six in it. $200. A chick in my unit wrecked her 84-ish 525i on Bahn 5, so I bought that too. Swapped the 6 from her car into my 520. It is still the slowest vehicle I have ever owned, and that includes trucks. Sold it to my boss and bought what eventually turned into my street/strip fun toy that currently runs low 9s on pump gas with no power adder.. a 1979 Formula Firebird WS6. Lots of fun with that thing over the last 3 decades since I was stationed in Germany. I paid $200 for the Bird, mainly I wanted the rear disc brakes for a 10th Anniversary Trans Am I had back home that needed a caliper and both rotors. Those cars were dirt cheap in the 80s and 90s.
12 years later while stationed in Charleston SC I traded some 5.0 Ford rocker arms for a 1984 GTi. It was a fun car, my bud would take it out and bust on the Honda kids with the wings and fart cans, but eventually the injection crapped out so I scrapped it. It was my economy car for going to work on base, and bombing around town. My other car when the GTi was still alive that I used as a family car with the wife and two kids, and as a fun ride/long distance hauler, was a 1970 GTO I bought in 1994 for $1000 and drove home. It had a very mild 455 I built for $1800 that pushed that heavy ass car into the 12.50s with a 2.93 gear, with 8.8:1 compression, and no power adder.
It was fun driving the 79 Formula around Charleston when it was only a mid 11 second car with a mild 455, and the GTO running 12s, and having all the kids with cars on this list trying at stoplights and one of the four drag strips close to Charleston. Lots of flybys half a mile down the road well after I got out of it again. One Honda made it to within 4 tenths of my Formula, by gutting it, swapping some other engine in it, spraying a ton of nitrous at it, then chucking half shafts every week. I could hop in any of mine and drive them 1000 miles if I wanted to. But I bought a 98 Formula with an LS1 to use for the long distance trips. Mid 13s stone stock with 2.73 gears and an auto, plus 27 to 31mpg.
I like how the chevy and import guys spend so much money to go slower or as fast as I do with basic garden variety parts. They also need power adders, which are fun, but I would rather start with something already quick and throw a turbo at it. Someday I will boost a Pontiac, no need to right now though, but someday I will. Unless we all die in the commie revolution
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I saw the Atom on Top Gear and thought to myself, how much fun would that thing be with a Buick 3800 sourced from a $200 rusted out pos beater? I use front drive Gran Prix's between 98 and 06 as my winter beaters because I don't care if they rust in half, and northern Michigan salts the roads just a bit. I'm surprised grass still grows along the highways. Also its April 21s and I just got four inches of snow. The engines last forever though, and in the 1990s I worked in the plant that made the piston rings for them.
Now take the little 3800, crank up the compression by a lot, increase the size of the injectors by a considerable amount, then throw a GTP blower on and run it on E85, all while stuffed in something that is 1900lbs or so with my glow in the dark gelatinous ass strapped into it. The reason for the increased compression is to improve mileage on ethanol, not having to make as much is a benefit, and getting more power out of it as a result is a large bonus. I have an 02 GTP sitting here waiting to give up its guts.
The plan is to hand fab the chassis, rear engine using the factory cradle and struts, probably 3rd gen F body front spindles and struts, and since I can do sheet metal and fiberglass work, put a hopefully less than ugly body on it. A 3800 powered kart thing would be more of a test mule for my home brewed ethanol project than it would be a track car or something like that. No race tracks near here, so I want something stupid fun to drive other than my GTOs and Formulas. Gotta have heat so I can drive it more than in August, and that means having some kind of body work. yeah I produce ethanol to run my GTOs and whatnot, I make it with tree sap and cattails. You could drink it, but its better as fuel and hand sanitizer.
I am not sure if I will do this before or after the tube chassis Opel GT with a 700+ hp/tq Pontiac 467 I have in my 79 Firebird, but I want to get it done soon. The Opel is my idea for no prep, since its a rusty heap of shit at the moment and I don't give a damn about it. Can't fit much tire under those even with a tube chassis, I barely fit in the tiny things. The Banshee was OHC six powered, this would be stroked RA IV powered with lots of aluminum. Now if I spend the coin and get an aftermarket aluminum block, well, then I can throw a hairdryer or two on it and make ludicrous power.
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My solution came about in 2007. you know, the last time gasoline was $5 a gallon. What is my solution? A 13:1 compression iron headed 462 cube Pontiac engine in a 65 GTO.. and soon other more aerodynamic cars, but for now the 65 is my daily driver in the summer. Race gas compression, right? So how is $12 a gallon race gas a solution for $5 pump gas? Its not. If you are up on the turbo and racing thing, you know I am not running gasoline.
I started running my cars on E85, and that allowed me to crank up the compression and run the engine hotter so the fuel vaporizes better in the ports. E85 still isn't my solution though, since it has gasoline in it, is sold by the gas stations, and they decide how much they have to get paid for a gallon of it. My solution is producing ethanol fuel from tree sap and cattails. I have over 300 maple trees on my land, and cattails can be found almost everywhere there is water.
About now you're saying , but sweaty fat guy, it eats everything, gums up everything it doesn't eat, and uses twice as much to make less power.... if you have listened to what some people say about it.
My 70 GTO has been on E85/E100 since 2007, original tank, steel lines, and I run Qjets, Holleys, and other carbs I convert. Zero problems and I don't do anything special, plus my cars all sit from October to May due to snow and salt. With the 13:1 455 running a Qjet carb, and making well over 550hp/600ftlbs, turning a 700R4 and 3.42 gears, it got an easy 20mpg mixed city/highway. Sure, you can do that with EFI in a modern car with lightweight parts, and sealed bearings holding up low profile tires that severely reduce rolling resistance... plus the aerodynamic improvements of new cars. Also the new cars need a blower to do what mine does NA at 6000rpm while making a ton of grunt from idle to 6000.
From 1995 to 2010 that 70 GTO had a 455 with 8.8:1 compression, that pushed its 4100lbs into the mid 12s with a 2.93 gear, and it got 18-19 average highway mileage. I ran the 10% in it all the time until it got a purpose built 455 with lots of compression to run ethanol.
The 65 gets 17mpg mixed with a 700R4, 3.42 gears and Qjets and FiTech EFI. Why does it get less? A 70 GTO is more aero than a 65 GTO.. considerably more aero, but also it has a 455 with 11.5:1 compression which costs some mileage over the 13:1. Last year I went to a 3.08 rear and a Th350 because the massive 455 grunt broke the 700R4.. and the GTO gets the same mileage that way. Plug in 3300lbs race weight, 550hp, and see what ya get for an ET. Thats my daily driver. Its been on E85 since 2018, zero problems with it too.
I had a 400 with 7.8:1 compression in the 65 for a few years, turning a Th350 and 2.56 gears, it got a best of 15mpg on pump gas. Bigger engine making a lot more power and running ethanol getting better mileage... hhmmm how does that work?:
The key is static compression ratio and maximizing torque between idle and 4500rpm. Around 12:1 is the crossover point where E85 and gasoline mileage are the same, provided everything else is the same and you only raised the compression. Also I can utilize the heat to get better mileage than that. The common thing is a 160F thermostat running gasoline, because it likes to ping/knock when its too hot, and diesel.
Ethanol has no such problem, so I run a 190 or 210 thermostat in my engines. As the fuel vaporizes under the carb or EFI, it cools the intake charge, making more power. The compression works that fuel air mix harder, producing more low and mid range torque, and ethanol itself makes more torque from idle to about 4000, and slightly more through the rest of the rev range. With the inherent low end grunt of a Pontiac V8, they lend themselves well to all of these changes. I can run however much advance the engine wants, no worries at all about ping/knock.. sure its rated at 105 octane but it acts like a hell of a lot more.
New cars have no problems with ethanol at all. That yellow wax and crud you find left over, is additives they put in. There is no waxy yellow gunk at the bottom of a whiskey or vodka bottle. Its not ethanol causing that stuff, its additives. I am not the only one to discover this fact. Read this:
https://www.onallcylinders.com/2018/05/25/ask-away-jeff-smith-e85-pump-gas-additives-not-ethanol-cause-corrosion/
Ethanol is simply very high proof vodka. Its the exact same chemical compound found in beer, wine, whiskey, burbon, and trace amounts in those fruity drinks the girls like. Its all the same stuff.
I have two engines in the works right now. One is a 505 cube Pontiac that should make 850hp without a power adder.... and ludicrous torque. Its similar to Big Chief's engine in the crow, but without the turbos and methanol. The other one is a 3800 Buick V6 that I plan to raise the compression to around 12:1 and increase the boost quite a bit, probably open up the heads too. Its going in a tube chassis car like an Ariel Atom with body panels.
I have a couple LS engines, both 6.0s, that are getting some of my other tests along the lines of Smokey Yunick's hot vapor engine, but only the fuel will be heated. Its easy to do on ethanol, and I will demonstrate if it works or not this summer in a 2007 Silverado that will be hauling cars around the country. $400 beater trucks are great test mules. The other is in my 76 C10 parts chaser, Its a cool truck and my goal is 30mpg from it.
I will be tapping my trees starting Sunday, and collecting sap to make fuel this year. The plan is to document it all on my channel and show everyone else how to do it, how to make fuel, convert vehicles, what happens when you utilize the heat and raise the compression... all of it. Because I love these old cars and I can't afford $5 gasoline. I can afford ten cent a gallon ethanol though.
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The average yield per acre is 328, that includes dryland, which relies on rainfall and has low to mid 200 yields, and irrigated which is over 500 gallons per acre of corn. 660 x 66 ft or 208 x 208 ft is one acre which might sound like a very large space to someone who lives in an apartment, but its small when you realize the miles and miles of relatively flat ground where farming happens. Getting 500 gallons of fuel from a small space actually works rather well.
Also, the ethanol process uses only 1/3 of the kernel, the starch, which is undigestable by cattle, chickens, etc. What is left over after fermentation/distillation is called distillers dried grains, or DDGS. People, cattle, and other livestock can eat that, and its healthier for all involved than straight corn is. Cattle will burn out if you feed them straight corn, it has to be cut with something else, or fermented in silage to break down the starch. Cattle pack on muscle 17% faster on DDGS than they do other feeds with whole cracked corn in them. Thus we can make more food while we make fuel.
However, there are other sources of starch/sugar we can use to make fuel. Cattails produce anywhere from 1000 gallons per acre to 10,000 gallons, the highest when used to remediate waste water, and the lower from streams and ditches. Cattails are incredibly difficult to kill, and they grow profusely, plus they clean water of nitrates.
What I use to make my fuel is tree sap. Its very easy, no enzyme required, collect the sap, get it to 10% sugar content by removing a little water, then add yeast. Wait a week, and run it through my still. What is left over is biodegradable, and I reuse most of my water.
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Considering I can collect tree sap, ferment it, distill it, then run my vehicle on it with very high compression ratios and boost, and then out perform the Tesla for about $10k to build everything including the stills, fermentation, system, engine, then stuff it in a cheap car.. and it costs me ten cents a gallon to make tree sap vodka. When you burn vodka in an engine it produces H2O and Co2, that means there is no black carbon deposits clogging the engine and fouling the oil. Read that as it doesn't wear out.
I'm talking 550hp/600tq from a 7.4L V8 that gets 20mpg in an old muscle car (that is with a carb, a Qjet no less, not EFI), and I can rebuild engines like that for around $3k. Im getting the parts together to do it with a 3800 Buick V6. Those things are like cordwood. The fun part is getting 13:1 compression with one of them. The plan is to build a ladder car like an Atom, but with fairings to improve aero, and power it with Buick V6s, both supercharged and NA.
Yeah I am a bit more into cars than putting a CAI and a fart can on it. Hydrogen is some cool stuff... but $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and all I need to make ethanol is water, yeast, sugar, or starch with an enzyme to convert it to sugar so the yeast can eat it, and about a week for the yeast to do their thing.
Kinda hard for city people to make their own fuel living in an apartment, so you guys can drive the slow stuff or ride the bus.
FYI you can do fuel cells with ethanol too, if you want electricity instead of torque.
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Atomization is a spray like from a garden hose, its still liquid in varying size droplets. Vaporization is like fog, its no longer in the liquid state, its a vapor. Emulsification is adding air into the circuit to start the atomization sooner.
Boiling points decide when a liquid turns to vapor. Everything has a boiling point, even rock and steel. Some are higher than others, some lower in temp. Lower the pressure on the liquid, you lower the boiling point temp. Raise the pressure and you raise the boiling point temp. You can boil water in a styrofoam cup at room temp, if you lower the air pressure around it. The higher in altitude you go, the lower the boiling points are. Evaporation of water starts to happen across the temperature range as long as its above freezing. Water is kinda cool since it doesn't always act like other liquids.
Gasoline is made up of various chemical compounds with boiling points between 80F and 450F. Its hard to get it to vaporize as a result. It takes time to vaporize it and needing 450F to do it means it will not get the chance until the combustion event, and then it is too late.
Why does it matter to an engine? Well its about surface area, more surface area will burn faster, more completely, and therefore cleaner. If you can vaporize the fuel you will use less fuel to make the same power, because more of it goes to actually pushing the piston rather than going to waste heat. Gasoline in a normal vehicle is around 18% to 20% efficient, in a lab under controlled conditions they can improve that somewhat, but real world consider it well below 20%. That means 80% of the energy goes to waste heat and doesn't power the vehicle.
Large droplets have less surface area in a given space than a vapor has. If you pour gasoline into a glass jar and light it on fight, you will see the flame is above the liquid, because it is burning the vapor coming off the liquid. The liquid doesn't burn, the vapor coming off it does. Dump it on the floor and you increase the surface area by a lot so the flame gets larger.
Vaporize it so it is a fog and you have no large droplets, its in a different state which vastly increases surface area.
Gasoline is relatively slow burning, especially race gas because it doesn't vaporize well. Even when you introduce it to the relative vacuum of the plenum/intake port, it doesn't want to vaporize well. On cold days it does it less effectively than on hot days, but with gasoline you have other things to consider.. like its propensity to ignite when it wants to due to heat and compression rather than when the spark is introduced. Dieseling, detonation, and spark knock.. its breaks stuff and its why diesel engines are built so heavy, because the combustion event happens when it wants to rather than when we tell it to. They also need high compression to get diesel to ignite, that also requires heavier construction.
Lots of people are trying to build hot vapor engines that run on gasoline right now. The problem is they have to heat the fuel to over 450F for it to fully vaporize, and the lighter stuff is going to boil into gas long before that. So you get bubbles... and 450F is well out of the range of these engines, except in the exhaust system. Do you want to run your fuel through the exhaust manifold first? That is a not a great idea, very high pressure fuel, more than 100psi to keep the lighter components from boiling running through a exhaust manifold to get enough heat. Can't run it back to the tank either, and your injectors have to be able to withstand that temp. It just got VERY expensive and complicated.
On the other side you have ethanol, which has a superior latent heat of vaporization, meaning it cools the intake charge as it vaporizes. The boiling point of ethanol at sea level is 173F, so you can get it to fully vaporize in the intake manifold as it hits the relative vacuum with only 200F fuel temp and 60psi to keep it from boiling. Well within the operating temp of our engines. You can run the engine hot, like 230F coolant temp, heat the fuel to 200F, and even heat the air coming in past the throttle blades, and ethanol will still cool the intake charge making it more dense for the combustion event.. and you will get better mileage than gasoline doing that as well.
Throw 20:1 compression in on top of the heating/vaporization and you increase mileage and power well above that of gasoline engines, and possibly above diesel engines as well... but in a lighter, easier to cool engine that makes plenty of power.
I am doing that with Pontiac engines with anywhere from 11.5:1 to 13:1 static compression with iron heads and cam timing that builds as much cylinder pressure as I can get. I've surpassed mileage and power over pump gas engines of the same size, and the cool thing is I can go from 7:1 all the way to 13:1 on a Pontiac 455 with just a head swap. So I can do it with the same car, engine, trans, rear, etc. Only the heads and fuel change.
20mpg and 550hp near 600ftlbs from a 7.5L engine running ethanol through an old Qjet carb in a 1970 GTO that weighs 4100lbs and doesn't have all the nice friction reducing things like modern sealed wheel bearings, low aspect ratio tires, lightweight drivetrain components, and reduced rotational mass. It ran mid 11s with a 2.93 gear behind it.
I am working on a couple vehicles with less weight and far better aero than my GTOs. Click my name on here if you want to see them and follow my fuel project..
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The BTU content of ethanol is mostly irrelevant, unless you plan to heat water with it. BTU is how fast a fuel can raise the temperature of 1 pound of water 1 degree. Look it up, that is all its measures. Over 80% of the energy in gasoline goes to waste heat, cars are lucky to get 20% of the energy to move it, in the real world they are around 17%-18% with EFI. With a carb, ethanol is 40% efficient, meaning it only loses 60% of its energy to waste heat.
The mileage difference is due to ethanol being an oxygenated fuel, you add even more oxygen when you add more fuel, so its a compound interest sort of thing and you have to throw more at it to make the AFR work. You will lose mileage with a low compression engine on ethanol. Its just not working the fuel hard enough. Crank up the compression well beyond what gasoline can handle, to around 12:1 static and you get the same mileage as gasoline with LOTS more torque in the low to mid range RPM. That is why my Pontiac engines run so freakin well on it, they make all their power between idle and 6000rpm. 500ftlbs just above idle is super easy, and its still making 500ftlbs at 6000. Its hard to imagine when you have a tiny engine that needs high rpm to make power.
16:1 compression is easily handled by E85, meaning $2 a gallon fuel will outperform $8+ race gas and you can drive it on the street. My daily driver 65 GTO has just under 12:1 and the 70 GTO has 13:1. Ethanol will still run at 5:1 compression, and anything up to 26:1 with straight ethanol. Its an amazing performance fuel, and its cheap.
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Man, if I gotta spend $10k to get into it, I am not gonna get into it. Thats more than the budget for most of my entire builds.
Back in 2014 I pulled a 68 LeMans Sport out of a Nebraska pasture for the princely sum of $300. I rebuilt a Pontiac 400 for it from the stash of stuff (I've collected from junkyards and people throwing them out), that cost me $1900. Chucked a Th350 behind it with an 8.2 BOP posi rear. Rebuilt the drum brakes, suspension, and painted it satin black with $60 worth of tractor paint. A couple years ago I threw together another 400, but with a used stroker crank turning it into a 461, and some used Edelbrock heads set up for a solid cam. Now I have $3200 in the engine, and about $4100 in the entire car. Home made fiberglass front bumper and hood, manual steering box from a 65 LeMans 4 door, manual master cylinder, and gutted everything it doesn't need. Made a radiator support from an old aluminum screen door, and all that dropped 800lbs out of the shell. I gotta weigh the thing now.
If you're willing to do some work and don't care what it looks like, you can still build some seriously fun stuff. I got a couple Opel GTs last year, $750 chassis kit from Jegs, some welding, cutting, pasting, and throw spare parts (like one of my 455s or a cammed 5.3) in them... and yeah thats going to be a project very soon. That will be after I get the 76 C10 running with a 6.0 swap, which is the focus after I get the trans installed in the 65 GTO I did a frame off on for less than $15k... and it was the rustiest heap of shit you've ever seen. Its 455 is gonna break this poor little Th350 like it did the 700R4s, but the Th400 needs a driveshaft length I don't have.. yet. There is a 72 Ventura sitting here, rough as hell, but its gonna be a sleeper that looks nearly stock with an undisclosed displacement Pontiac under the hood.
Cubes are the easy and cheap way to go fast, just put them in the lightest car you can.
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Top Fuel dragsters and Funny cars don't run on gasoline. They run on methanol and nitromethane.
Ethanol does not increase the cost of gasoline, it lowers the price of pump gas by being an exceptionally effective octane booster/enhancer and ethanol is super easy and cheap to make. Just adding 10% of it raises 70 octane ultra crap gas to 89 octane crap gas. It also helps keep the engine and fuel system cleaner. Most problems associated with ethanol are actually due to additives. I have tested this extensively over the last 14 years and Jeff Smith of HotRod Magazine and Summit Racing On All Cylinders tested it for a year, you can read all about it here:
https://www.onallcylinders.com/2018/05/25/ask-away-jeff-smith-e85-pump-gas-additives-not-ethanol-cause-corrosion/
Ethanol is simply vodka, or if you age it in a barrel then its whiskey. The same stuff we use as a race fuel and I run in my daily drivers, is the exact same stuff you get in a bottle or can to watch the big game or talk that chick into getting naked for you.
Gasoline is all dirty. The black carbon deposits caked on valves, piston rings, and polluting the oil all come from gasoline. If you run your vehicle on straight ethanol, hydrogen, methane (CNG) or straight methanol, your oil is not going to turn black unless the engine was previously run on gasoline. Methanol runs very cold, and that means you do not boil condensation out of the oil that collects in every engine due to the heat cycles. Also unburned methanol ends up in the crankcase oil, diluting it.
When running ethanol or methanol you have to get enough heat in the engine, takes some doing on methanol because it cools the engine more as you run it. Ethanol allows you to run a 200F thermostat and boil the water out of the oil in your daily driver with 16:1 compression and iron heads, or 13:1 with 25psi..
Right now ethanol sells for less than $2 a gallon, E85 is around $1.80 here when pump gas is $2.20 for 87 octane, and 92 octane is $3.90 a gallon in my area. So in my 65 GTO (11.3:1 455), 70 GTO (13:1 455), 79 Formula (10.5:1 467 with 700hp/tq) 68 LeMans (12:1 461) and my bolt on only 98 LS1 powered Formula, I run E85 or E100 I make myself for less than 50 cents a gallon, from tree sap and cattails. The 70 GTO gets about 20mpg, the 65 has really bad aero and gets 17mpg, but both of them run mid 11s in the quarter. the LS1 has a lot more power but loses about 2mpg... when I am not beating the snot out of the poor thing.
Ethanol makes more power than gasoline too, even in low compression engines, but you are going to burn a lot more in an 8:1 engine than you would in a 13:1 engine with the only change being the static compression ratio. Around 12:1 with iron heads the mileage equals out between gasoline and ethanol, the loss in mileage with flex fuel vehicles is because they have to be handicapped with low compression to run gasoline, that that hurts mileage on ethanol, and the programs in the EFI are set up to give less mileage on ethanol.
If you lose power running E85 to E100 its because you probably are running it too lean, its a mistake lots of people make when they switch. It also causes drivability problems if you run it too lean, and too lean is over 10:1 AFR. Best mileage on E85 is around 9:1 and best power is around 7:1. You have to run more ethanol because it has more oxygen in it, its not a BTU thing. If you work the fuel harder you make more torque, more torque means its easier to get the vehicle moving, easier to move means less throttle angle to make the same power, and less throttle angle with more power means better mileage.
That is how I get 20mpg on E85 with an old Qjet on a dinosaur 455 with iron heads making around 600ftlbs between 2000 and 4500rpm. At 5500 its still making over 550ftlbs, so its not like its all done at 4500.. but it will push a 2.56 gear in a heavy car no problem.. but the transmissions are not a fan of that.
Go ahead though and spend that hard earned cash to buy race gas for your car that only needs 90 octane... or spend a lot more for that 12:1 engine you could be running on pump E85 for dirt cheap. Doesn't bother me, because I am not trying to sell you anything.
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How would you like to drive a 450- well over 550hp naturally aspirated vehicle, that doesn't require a large cooling system and gets 30mpg running on a fuel you can make yourself that is carbon neutral and does not pollute since it only makes CO2 and H2O when you burn it in an engine?
Here is the short version of how. Take nearly any V8 5.0 or larger in displacement, (any engine will work, but you get more power from larger engines) crank up the compression over 13:1 but keep it under 22:1, add an EFI system that allows you to heat the fuel in the rails to around 200F before the injectors, but after the return line, you don't want to heat the tank. Place the injectors farther up the intake runner, more like a carb introduces fuel at the start of the runner, the modern EFI intakes aren't intended for wet flow, but you can introduce the heated fuel farther upstream to ensure it has plenty of time to vaporize and cool the intake charge. Direct injection won't work so well, its a bandaid for gasoline.
Now run it on E98 to E100. You'll get more power, cooler operating temps, a cleaner engine, vastly cleaner exhaust, and better mileage doing this.
If you do not denature the vodka with gasoline, and instead use some other substance to make the government happy, you will only produce CO2 and H2O. No, it is not new, vehicles ran on ethanol before they ran on gasoline. Prohibition made it illegal to produce ethanol in the US, leaving only gasoline for transportation fuel. Who sold gasoline? Standard Oil... who owned Standard Oil? John D. Rockefeller. Who gave $4 million to the temperance movement that pushed a constitutional amendment through to ban the production and sale of ethanol in the USA in 1918? John D. Rockefeller.
Did you know the Model T was dual fuel? To run ethanol you increased the ignition advance with a lever where a modern turn signal is, and richened the carb with a knob on the dash sorta like an airplane. To run gasoline you retarded the timing (a lot) and leaned the carb. The gasoline setting produced more heat and cars overheated more often, to all the damn time. People preferred to run on ethanol because it made more power, was more reliable, ran cooler, and they could make it themselves rather than paying Rockefeller..
Nearly every farmer had a still before prohibition, so they could make fuel for tractors, antiseptic, and mix it with easily made turpentine for light before electricity. You could also get good and drunk on it. It was more cost effective to turn your grain into ethanol/vodka to ship it to market than it was to more it as grain before trains were invented and railroad laid everywhere. That was the reason for the taxes on ethanol, and why bootlegging is a thing.
I make my ethanol from tree sap. Maple syrup is far more valuable, but I don't eat pancakes or waffles, and I drive my 65 and 70 GTOs with 455s a lot. I get 20mpg with a carb and no heated fuel in the 70. The 65 is really bad on aero so it only does 17-18, but it has a ton of power. I'm doing a more aero vehicle or two to see how far I can push it with the heated fuel rails and EFI. GTOs are kinda bad over 50mph.
One vehicle will be LS powered (possibly a tube chassis 73 Opel GT), the other will have a 3800 V6 with as much compression as I can get out of the poor little thing, might throw the GTP blower on it I have sitting around. Then its going in a ladder car like an Ariel Atom I am designing that will have some body work to clean up the aero so its not as bad as Leeroy. Drag is bad for mileage mmkay.
I'll be doing a video series of the builds and how its all done.
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damage.... heh. I have been running hydrous ethanol, with 4% to 15% water still in it as it comes out of my still, and E85 since 2007 in my 1970 GTO, with the original tank and hard lines. The 1968 LeMans has been on it since 2015 with the original tank. The 1965 GTO since last summer after I completed a frame off rebuild from a very rusty rolling shell. The 1998 LS1 powered Formula has had everything from E0 to E100 run through it without modifications.At 50% the 98 Formula throws a lean bank code because the ECM has tight parameters, but at 30-40% it makes a ton of power. Larger injectors and a retune and it will run E100 no problem.
After a decade running hydrous ethanol and E85 I have zero problems with corrosion, eating rubber parts, and actually all of it lasts longer than it did on gasoline. No stainless, no special rubber, just basic NAPA and Advance Auto rubber fuel hose, and whatever electric pump will hand with my 455s.
Water in ethanol fuel is not a problem at all, until you get to about 30% - 40%, then it starts to pull aluminum into suspension via electrolysis over a rather long time. Water and ethanol mix together in such a way that yo have to run them through a still to separate them, and if yo add 1 gallon of ethanol to 1 gallon of water, you do not end up with 2 gallons, its a bit over 1.75 gallons. They bond at the molecular level, and that allows you to burn water that collects in the tank from heat cycle condensation.
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I hated the two of these I saw... because I know cars far too well to believe any of it.
In 2001 I was deployed to Kuwait, 9/11 happened and we were stuck on Camp Doha for the next 7 weeks. The first Fast and Fictitious movie was out and we could go watch it for free. We went to see it out of boredom. At this point I had been building hotrods, muscle cars and had a low 11 to mid ten second 79 Pontiac Formula I built. 455, ported heads, mild stall, fun stuff. I had been running nitrous and built some boosted 5.0s for guys for a while, but didn't need it with that one as a 175 shot gave it at most .2 in the quarter.. maxed out on gearing. So I am sitting there and watching this flick, and my brain is screaming at all the BS I am seeing. It completely pulled me out of 'suspension of disbelief' which you need to enjoy a movie. The wannabe car guys were all talking mad trash and believed it..
The military trains us to spot things out of place, uniforms, people doing things they shouldn't, things that weren't there yesterday, any incongruency. I happen to know cars, as I was an ASE certified master tech, and ASE master machinist at that point. Don't need the certs now, so why pay for them? I had the certs because I ran a shop building engines, transmissions, changing gears/setting up rear ends, building carbs, modifying EFI, and generally making shit go faster in the late 90s. NAFTA sent all the manufacturing jobs to Mexico, so I had to enlist again after being out 7 years. Yay more wars.. so much fun and excitement.
The combination of my knowledge base, the real world experience with turbos, nitrous, superchargers, and understanding math when it comes to gear ratios, top speed, acceleration and the relation to engine RPM, made these movies unwatchable.. Knowing how fast the fastest imports were at the time made them hilarious. Out driving the beater Formula and having kids in fart can and wing Hondas trying to race me was most amusing. That thing would stomp most street bikes of the time, liter bikes were a challenge with small riders. I saw lots of ricer flybys a mile from where we started, then they'd go on their forums and brag about it.. the turbo Neon kids were the worst though, my god they were slow and pathetic, thinking 14s are SUPER fast. Hell tens was slow as fuck where I came from... the land of 1320Video. My car was 4th fastest street car in the Nebraska town I lived in, but not even top 100 in the state... and that was in the 1990s. now its even worse.
Gone in 60 seconds with Nick Cage is just as bad. Yes most military movies suck to me too, since I know that as well. So car movies, war movies, and anything else where I am not ignorant of whats going on are hard to watch.
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