Back to simplicity: Would carbureted ethanol-only cars pass new car emission tests?

[user removed]

The Finns (from Finland) pulled a Russian T34 tank, with German capture markings out of a bog where it had sat from 1944 to 2008. They had it running in 2 hours, on the fuel in the fuel tank and I think it was sold on ebay.

I had a 1971 Honda CB350 that sat from 1983 unitl 2011 (28 years), got it running fine, replacing only the petcock, fuel lines, float valves and seats. Even the carb float chamber gaskets were good. I even rode it on the original tires.

I doubt you could get an ethanol carbed vehicle to pass current federal emissions.

I do like the SU type carbs that had a single fuel delivery point without any accelerator pump, variable venturi type carbs are neat but I don't think they are even selling motorcycles (at least in Cali) with carburetors.

Drove the wifes Kia Sorento home yesterday from the DC area, most of the time the cruise was set at 69 MPH. Got home with the factory MPG gauge reading 33.3 MPG.

45 years ago I got that same mileage in my 59 Bug eye Sprite on average with a 998 cc engine and weighing just over 1000 pounds.

You could run a lot higher compression in an alcohol fueled engine. When was the last time an indy car was carbureted?

The DB601 engine in the WW2 era ME109 had direct fuel injection as did their pre war grand prix cars (not sure if they were direct injected or port injected).

regards
Mech

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Drove the wifes Kia Sorento home yesterday from the DC area, most of the time the cruise was set at 69 MPH. Got home with the factory MPG gauge reading 33.3 MPG.

45 years ago I got that same mileage in my 59 Bug eye Sprite on average with a 998 cc engine and weighing just over 1000 pounds.

Let's see now. Per some quick Googling, the (2014) Sorento weighs 4807 lbs, and has a cross-sectional area (width * height) of 4964 in^2. The Sprite is 1460 lbs and 2504 in^2. So 3 times the weight, twice the area, yet getting the same mpg? Must be some efficiency gains in the engine, no?

(The sad part, to me, is that this implies that you could build a Sprite equivalent today, and get 60+ mpg from it, yet nobody does.)

As for reliability of carbs vs EFI, yeah, if you are planning on surviving an EMP or similar, carbs win, but I would suggest you might have more pressing problems. Otherwise, I've lots of experience cranking & cranking & squirting starting fluid into carbs, trying to get them to start, then having them stall at idle. I've never had an EFI car that didn't start in about 2 seconds of cranking.

[Big time]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Ever worked on a carburetor? They are not simple.

Yes but everything is one place unlike EFI in tank injection pump, undercar pressure regulators, underhood endless sensors, under dash computer, more underhood air valves and actuators, ad nauseam

If unrepairable you can easily unbolt the whole carb yourself, throw it away and bolt on a new one usually for less than the price of a new EFI injection pump, ECU or some other components.

Originally Posted by niky

The price of a car is often reflective of the resources used to build it. That a gasoline powered car can use more than its worth in fuel over its lifetime, even considering that taxes and profit margins on fuel are much lower, as it is sold in bulk, speaks volumes about where more oil is used in a car's manufacture.

(Also note the high level of plastic, rubber and steel recycling in a modern car.)

Yes but automakers can buy energy (oil, electricity) cheaper than the average Joe can do at the pump.

Also speaking of price as an indicator of energy spent in production a carburetor is cheaper than EFI.
And that was decades ago, before China began cheaply mass producing everything.
Imagine how cheaply priced would Chinese made carburetors today! Instead of deep cleaning you could just replace the carb every year or two. Used carbs could be sent to developing countries for they to clean and refurbish them.

Originally Posted by freebeard

It's not just that. Using your petro purchasing power to squabble with other folks is also WRONG.

I don't get it.
What did you mean by that?

Originally Posted by jamesqf

To the original point, EFI systems are much simpler than carburetors, especially the ones used on automobiles from the mid-50s on. If you've ever taken one apart, you'll have seen that they're a maze of passages filled with jets, valves, springs and such, which all have to be sized right - and clean - to function properly. Then you have to painstakingly adjust things by hand to get mixture & idle speed correct, except that 'correct' only holds for a particular elevation & temperature range. And don't even get me started on trying to balance multiple carbs...

I know but would ethanol clean burning compensate for that?

Originally Posted by jamesqf

EFI is brilliantly simple by contrast: a simple pump squirts a measured amount of fuel into the cylinder, while a sensor measures the exhaust and uses a feedback loop to correct the amount.

Theoretically is simpler. The implementation is way more complicated.
BTW Fusion energy is also simple in concept.

Originally Posted by elhigh

A high-altitude nuclear strike will cook your EFI while nothing short of a direct lightning bolt (or a solid whack with a big hammer) will disrupt the function of your carburetor.

Why worry about an atomic bomb electromagnetic field when programmed obsolescence will render EFIs unusable.
Programmed obsolescence is a weapon of (wealth) mass destruction...

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

The Finns (from Finland) pulled a Russian T34 tank, with German capture markings out of a bog where it had sat from 1944 to 2008. They had it running in 2 hours, on the fuel in the fuel tank and I think it was sold on ebay.

I had a 1971 Honda CB350 that sat from 1983 unitl 2011 (28 years), got it running fine, replacing only the petcock, fuel lines, float valves and seats. Even the carb float chamber gaskets were good. I even rode it on the original tires.

I doubt you could get an ethanol carbed vehicle to pass current federal emissions.

I do like the SU type carbs that had a single fuel delivery point without any accelerator pump, variable venturi type carbs are neat but I don't think they are even selling motorcycles (at least in Cali) with carburetors.

Drove the wifes Kia Sorento home yesterday from the DC area, most of the time the cruise was set at 69 MPH. Got home with the factory MPG gauge reading 33.3 MPG.

45 years ago I got that same mileage in my 59 Bug eye Sprite on average with a 998 cc engine and weighing just over 1000 pounds.

You could run a lot higher compression in an alcohol fueled engine. When was the last time an indy car was carbureted?

The DB601 engine in the WW2 era ME109 had direct fuel injection as did their pre war grand prix cars (not sure if they were direct injected or port injected).

regards
Mech

Good.
Now compare the resale value of the 59 Bug eye Sprite with the Kia.
Resale value / depreciation is often an indicator or very long term (10+ years) maintenance costs.
What you don't spend in fuel you will end up spending in repairs (if you keep it for many years) or depreciation (if you sell it quickly).

AFAIK the less depreciating mass produced car in America is the Jeep Wrangler not fuel efficient but God they are long-lasting and easy to repair. At least the previous generations were.

[bryn]

the jeep was a single purpose vehicle.

what it had going for it:
go almost any where. cheap, light, small, easy to fix.

problems:
terrible at speed, incredibly ineffecient, uncomfortable, and unsafe

they only fixed the few things that were actually a benifit. now it's expensive, heavy, big, and hard to repair, with all the same problems.

of course the kept their value each new generation got worse

[user removed]

http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/f99017.pdf

First NOX reg was 3.1 grams per mile, currently .07 grams per mile and going lower.

I turned 13 in 1963, the year of the first emission control, positive crankcase ventilation.

Leaded gas, engines that were very tired at 100k miles, wheel cylinders blowing at 20k miles, manual drum brakes, bad accelerator pumps that could get you killed trying to get across the road, 55,000 deaths a year on US highways, windshields that decapitated you.

Current NOX regs are 1/44th the amount of the original 1970 regs.

Read the linked history to see what had to be done to reduce emissions and how much the oil and car companies fought against regulations.

Triple the oil change intervals, engines lasting 3 or more times as many miles, close to 20,000 fewer deaths per year in the US.

From the perspective of working in the repair industry for 30 years and remembering how much a single antique car STINKS just following it down the road today.

Even someone who is as critical of govt as myself realizes how much has changed, when I look out at the sunset from my front porch and I can still remember the brown haze in the 60s, 70, and 80s.

I can also remember the last days of carburetors, vacuum hose nightmares, driveability nightmares. Christ, you could not even get a brand new car to move under it's own power until you let it run for at least 3 minutes or it would stall and die, in 1973.

regards
Mech

[freebeard]

Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
It's not just that. Using your petro purchasing power to squabble with other folks is also WRONG.
I don't get it.
What did you mean by that?

What? Explain myself? That might spoil some insightful wit about needfulness wreaking destruction on middle-east oil fields.

Jeep kind of lost it's way along the years, but help is available in Myrtle Creek, OR

[P-hack]

fuel injection is much simpler to troubleshoot accurately. You pop off an injector, put it in a beaker, and make sure it sprays the right amount vs time, and double check the spray pattern. The air delivery by itself is rarely in need of troubleshooting. The electronics are way more reliable to boot and the computational power fits on a $3 chip.

In a carb, who the hell knows what is actually going on, you have fudgy circuits that fudge overlap different "speed" ranges, sorta, and screws and a dirty air filter can throw the A/F off, or a small induction leak, or change in altitude, or change in temperature or humidity, cornering, in addition to all the circuit/jet/needle/air bleeds fudge...

No, carburetors need to die for over the road, and they did, and lets keep it that way. EFI is infinitely more precise over a wide variety of operating conditions.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Big time

Good.
Now compare the resale value of the 59 Bug eye Sprite with the Kia.

OK. Doing a quick search, I find them - the Sprites, not the Kias - listed at up to $31,500 (OBO). Considering that you can get the base Kia Sorento for under $25K NEW, I think your resale value argument has a few problems :-)

[niky]

Originally Posted by Big time

Yes but automakers can buy energy (oil, electricity) cheaper than the average Joe can do at the pump.

It's cheaper to buy energy in bulk than piecemeal. Which is why it's better to spend more of that energy at the point of production than to have to spend more energy in keeping the vehicle going down the line.

Of course, there's a point at which it doesn't work out... for example, with certain hybrids or EVs which require so much up-front investment that the end-users never see an ROI. But with the price of extracting, refining and transporting the fuel that the end-user puts in always rising, and with the way in with which production energy costs can be met with non-oil or non-coal resources, the balance will keep shifting further

Originally Posted by Big time

Also speaking of price as an indicator of energy spent in production a carburetor is cheaper than EFI.
And that was decades ago, before China began cheaply mass producing everything.
Imagine how cheaply priced would Chinese made carburetors today! Instead of deep cleaning you could just replace the carb every year or two. Used carbs could be sent to developing countries for they to clean and refurbish them.

We have them. A cheap Chinese carb will cost you little upfront. But in the end analysis, the question is whether a carb will ever be as economical over a few hundred thousand miles as EFI.

Granted, there's a happy medium with EFI. Stuff that relied on a lot of vacuum sensors and fragile MAFs, that curious mix of mechanical and electronic controls, were troublesome... but a modern EFI system with direct ignition control and more robust MAP sensors doesn't cost all that much, and the savings over a lifetime are enough that even cheap 100cc scooters are now going EFI. With the fuel economy benefits (say, around 50 km/l (117mpg) versus 40 (95mpg) km/l for the best of the carbed contingent, you can ROI within a hundred thousand miles. Much less if you drive in traffic exclusively. Carburetted scooters are veritable gas guzzlers in traffic.

And you don't need to clean or rejet an EFI every few thousand miles to keep up that fuel economy, either.

With EFI, a lot of the complexity is due to emissions regulations and other requirements. Current automotive EFI systems are ridiculously complex, with evaporative systems, direct injection, cooled EGR, tumble-swirl systems, variable valve timing, etcetera. A carburetted system with mechanical ignition control built to meet the same standards would probably be as complex and intricate as a modern mechanical watch, would come out of sync all the time, and would be hell to repair.

[dustyfirewalker]

Originally Posted by Big time

With cars becoming more complex

Would a new car designed to be run only on ethanol (E85 or E70 blends) equipped with a carburetor
Carburetor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Posted that in case younger members don't know what a carburetor is.

Suppose the car has a electronic jets in its carburetor, an oxygen sensor, secondary air injection (smog pump)
Secondary air injection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and catalytic converters if necessary

Would that pass new car emission controls as ethanol is much more clean burning?
Are there laws allowing less stringent emission tests for Ethanol-only new cars?

New cars are said to consume more oil to build than the fuel they will burn in their lifetime.
So to be truly green a new car not only needs to burn little fuel, it also must be long-lasting, easy and cheap to repair.

If so, then it looks like the 70s oil crisis was "solved" wrong
Instead of warmongering the middle East to TRY to get cheap oil then the solution was to continue with landyachts but convert them to ethanol and reforest American deserts.

i like what youve been posting and thinking, i dont know much about the emissions from an ethanol fueled vehicle, and you might want to consider what happens when you step out the ideal A/F ratio, both rich and lean. both efi and carbs have advantages. efi can offer better mileage, precise response, and cleaner emissions just based on sensor feedback. the real problem you run into is if you try to get the engine to operate outside sensor readings, example: lean or rich O2 readings that cause the computer to act in undesirable ways. or if you try to get the entire electromechanical engine system to operate in ways outside its originally intended parameters, (different fuel, performance mods) also cost of efi is higher than carbs. efi can offer areas of flexibility that carbs cant with the ability to tune them, and the ability to change the tune on the fly.

carbs on the other hand operate purely on mechanical function. based on fluid viscosity and the path it flows through with difference in pressure you get an A/F ratio at a particular throttle setting. pretty easy if youve got a clean carb and you can read the engine performance and adjust accordingly, you can get rich lean or perfect by adjusting your jets and rods, a few springs and diaphrams, adjusting setting screws, and you have decided your fuel curve. they can somewhat adjust for altitude and temperature but not as drastically as efi. i hate to say it but alot of guys who REALLY know carbs reffer to them as toilet bowls haha its just too simple of an analogy to draw sometimes





both have their headaches if your not thoroughly familiar with what your working on. (efi vs carb, not toilets )

from the sound of what your trying to do: a cheap easy way to get clean tailpipe emissions and a cheaper fuel (E85) its possible. if you just choose the right materials for your fuel system, the right carb, and the right vehicle you could have a good combination for not that much money that does what you want. i dont see major auto makers trying this approach, and i know for a fact engineers design for obsolescence (some of it is safety related, but alot is economical in order to sell more). their game is making money, ours is trying to save it in a clean way. perceived obsolescence is another game thats played aswell, who doesnt think about getting the nicest and newest "thing"?

i also know for a fact more energy is consumed in building vehicles than they burn in a lifetime, we were talking about this the other day in class(materials, design and manufacturing processes), its sad to me to know thats true and see cars in dealerships getting hailed on and pushed to people who cant really afford them, and flooding the auto market when most of the vehicles designed today are IMHO ugly blobs, that are designed to break, pee oil every 3k miles (by-pass oil filter anyone?), consume expensive replacement parts, and ultimately made to save as much money as possible when being built, i heard from a good source if gm or ford can save 1/60 of a cent per car based on a design mod, they are interested in making the change... so basically we get an over priced lego car that average joe cant figure out how to fix and its going to fall apart before he can pay for it..

im not completely sure if i agree with the landyacht and ethanol solution, i really like the idea we can get ethanol from renewable sources, but until we can take pretty much any sort of biomass/trash and let some super enzyme yeast effectively digest it into 20-60% ethanol, or even higher, im stuck on how we burn alot of energy to get it. maybe a solution is solar stills consuming trash? plenty of improvements to be made.

i love big cars, its really great to have room for all your junk, all your friends, having some beef to what your driving, but i also agree with reducing weight where possible to avoid burning excess fuel, even though i have 400lbs in bumpers, 500lbs in tires, and the v8 / 1ton driveline in my bronco in my mind its about strength, and offroad/onroad compromise.

so dont think im trying to rain on your parade you have a great idea, if we can just get higher yields from ethanol brewing then its more realistic.

also not trying to brag, but i think if your interested in exploring this clean burn, renewable/cheap fuel, simple, durable, easy to fix, long life vehicle option i invite you to check out my thread, those are things i absolutely believe in ive gone to alot of trouble to incorporate various ways of doing things right so they dont break later, and if they do break they are easy to fix, along with Keep It Simple Stupid, and im shooting for operating on flammable liquid wastes..