Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadeTreeMech
Sadly, I fear our esteemed friend is unwilling to relent on the evils of ethanol.....
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Exactly if its bad for his Chrysler product its bad for all other vehicles.
We know this not to be true, but he may well be getting exactly what he is posting, I am worldly enough to know there can be reasons for fuel economy increases from simple and not apparent things. The reason for his economy increases could be something other than he realizes.
But we also know that certain vehicles for whatever reason perform poorly on alcohol. I tend to believe on most vehicles that are newer than 1975 its because of the motor not being in perfect condition. However my 1970 subaru 360 on ethanol gas gets mild vapor lock which leans the mix and burns holes in pistons, no good way around this has been found on a variety of gravity fed engines including my subaru which has an unfortunate and uncorrectable routing of the fuel line.
That said my subaru does get fair fuel economy on ethanol, it just tends to lean out and ping after it heats up and for me thankfully shut off before self destruction. And it appears to be true of all Subaru 360's. This is also true of other historic vehicles, but his I wouldn't qualify as historic.
The thing is he is also exaggerating the implications of his test, just because his set of cars behave one way after a water wash does not mean all or even many cars will behave the same way. Knowledge is knowledge It is possible that others may benefit from water washed gas though or potentially desludging and retuning their engines as a result of this thread. If it works for him let him run with it. I would like to see several years of his water washed gas data side by side with several years of plain alcohol and plain e0 gasoline usage gas slips.
Also I was told on another forum that water washing gas in of itself (with or without alcohol) may cause a bit of a fuel economy improvement as it increases apparent octane levels (aka you never get the suspended water out and this reduces the likelyhood of detonation)
Using water washed gas can also cause slow pitting and corosion inside the carb and motor though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 123
As for electric cars I like them and have worked on building/converting EVs but they have their own problems. Most electricity produced is not clean or green and very inefficient to produce. Another problem with EVs is batteries, what about all the energy to mine refine and ship from other parts of the world. What do we do with all the dead batteries?
UFO as for cellulose ethanol I am not buying into that just yet. Millions of dollars have been spent on research over many years and still no tried and true method for making it. Also the one who patents the organism/process to make cellulose ethanol has all the control.
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Billions were spent on fossil fuels before they became perfected and commonplace. I am not against investment, I am against poorly managed investment though. We need many alternatives to start removing the monopoly placed on us.
And your coal comment is plain wrong, coal powered electric plants run about double the efficiency of a typical car, meaning less fuel and less carbon per unit of energy produced are required by the coal plant and thus even the coal plant is less polluting than the average gasoline engine. (assuming they follow the law regarding pollution controls which some ignore like the local Weston 4 plant that rather pay fines than use scrubbers on its brand new facility)
I would personally prefer to see coal plants required to vent their exhaust directly into an micro algae pond for the purpose of creating biofuels. Forcing this would clean up coal and increase the available amounts of feed stock biodiesel oils. (heck they may even find they make money on the venture)
Biofuels are real and to me could be a viable alternative if they were perfected (production methods) or if our motors were perfected to use them. I also could never understand why e85 cars don't use a variable valve timing system similar to the prius to take advantage of high compression with e85 and lower compression for e10 compatibility.
Most everyone here knows the current corn ethanol system is a rather mixed bag to say the least, I can't in my heart discount negative emotions toward it since it takes a lot of explaining to show its worthwhile and does have negative downsides because we are doing it wrong AKA fertalizer, pesticides, poor farming practices and poor production methods. I also can't loose hope that better methods, better sources of and even better types of biofuels won't be developed over time overcoming pricing, pollution and efficacy issues.
Cheers
Ryan May
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