Date:         Fri, 18 Oct 1996 23:55:41 -0500
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         bighouse@socomm.net (Ken Hooper)
Subject:      Re: busses, environment, etc. - stats?


>point where alcohol might be even less expensive than gasoline.  But the fact
>remains that a pound of alcohol has about half the energy potential of a
>pound of gasoline.

Alright, but why do dragsters run it? Surely it's not in their interest to
carry a lethargic fuel when weight means so much to them. I've always
wondered that. It's attractive to me personally because it doesn't require
extensive modification and expense, like LP would. But if it's half the
calories, what would happen if I reefed on the compression and played with
the dwell and experimented with the spark quality?

I've read all this stuff--you'll take a mileage hit, you'll take a power
hit, it corrodes your hoses and diaphrams, it's hard to start in the
winter--but I've never known anybody who actually *tried* it. This all just
seems to make its way into the common knowledge by osmosis. I wanna try it.

>Even if the cost were reduced to the point where alcohol
>was less than half the cost of gas we would be faced with the practical
>problems, such as fifty gallon fuel tanks and taking half an hour to refuel.
> I'm not saying we couldn't live with it, but...

But I had a Plymouth Fury that had (I think) a 36-gallon gas tank (it
needed it, that car must have weighed six thousand pounds). This doesn't
seem like the biggest problem...

>Now guess what happens to those marvelous 'low emisson' figures when your
>fuel efficiency is cut in half?

Well, your CO2 would double but nothing else would change.

--Ken
  68 Westy