Date: Mon, 7 Nov 94 18:26:33 EST
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: dcarment@ccs.carleton.ca (David Carment)
Subject: Re: Ethanol
Dave Kautz writes:
>
> > David Carment writes:
>
> > A Gas company up here in Ottawa has Ethanol blend at the same price as
> > regular. I asked him if it was good for air cooled engines and his answer
> > was it has 15% higher octane, runs cleaner and cooler. Any opinions,
> > advice, experience with using ethonal blend for air-cooled Vanagon engines?
> >
> > BTW its 55 cents CDN per litre up here.....DC
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > There was an interesting article in _Porsche Panorama_ about oxygenated fuels
> about a year ago. On vehicles with oxygen sensors, very little changes
> except fuel mileage which drops (there's less heat available in Ethanol). On
> vehicles without O2 Sensors, exhaust emissions were shown to drop along with
> driveability and fuel economy. The air to fuel ratio for ethanol is different
> than that for gasoline (numerically lower) so unless one can richen up their
> mixture the engine effectively runs lean.
>
> There was also considerable discussion of the corrosive nature of the
> oxygenators. Although not as bad as methanol, Ethanol is more corrosive
> than gasoline. The article suggested using gasoline containing MTBE (Methyl
> Tertiary Butyl Ether???) because it is less corrosive but I have not been
> able to find a gas station employee yet who could tell me what their
> company was using as an oxygenator. The article said that ethanol smells
> sweet and MTBE smells like formaldehyde. I think all gasoline smells like
> sh*t, so I haven't followed this up.
>
>
> Dave Kautz
> '74 Westfalia
> sh*t.
>
This is interesting and paradoxical, since we normally associate a leaner
running engine with higher fuel economy. But if I understand you
correctly, the engine will run leaner with Ethanol AND fuel consumption
will also increase. Is this correct? This plus the potential corrosion
could spell trouble, yes? DC --
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David Carment
School of International Affairs
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario
K1S 5B6
voice - (613) 788-2600-6662
fax - (613) 788-2889
Email address: dcarment@ccs.carleton.ca
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