Back Yard Race Fuel (DIY)

[WHITER33GTS-T]

but does it properly mix? I see separation issues as one is water based and one is oil based.

just because Martin Donnon says its ok does not mean its gospel. This not a dig at Martin as i have a lot of respect for the man...its just not everyone is correct 100% of the time.

Thats why I asked as when I emailed them asking about if it separated he said they just mixed it the used it....

[Lithium]

Kindof on this topic, a mate of mine has an R32 GTSt with a stock RB20DET which he has been building to go as fast as possible on a budget. At the moment it is running a stock RB20DET, a cheap T3/T4 on the stock exhaust manifold, stock intake manifold, a GTSLink ECU, Mitsubishi VR4 fuel injectors and a Walbro fuel pump.... essentially quite a basic setup. Unfortunately still running the stock diff/axles/gearbox too....

It was initially road tuned to 20psi on BP98 and with that it went well as it was, busting out a best of 12.4 @ 115mph. We ummed and ahhed about the best way to get good gains safely for minimal cost (as many do) and settled on going to an E33 blend which we had hoped would allow us to squeeze a bit more out of it without having to upgrade the fuel system.

We ran it up on the dyno initially at 20psi on BP98 to determine the starting point, and it kicked out a fairly respectable 247kw @ hubs with quite rich afrs. All looked well, so we drained the BP98 and mixed up our E33 batch for it and poured it in and got to tuning. We were pretty pleased to find that we didn't have to pass our 85% "cut off" for injector duty cycle, and particularly happy with the 294kw @ hubs result we ended up with - also 200-300rpm better spool and way more torque across the board to boot.

So far its only had one meet where there wasn't that much traction and the owner was taking his time a bit in light of the weak R32 drivetrain just to see how it went - he ended up with a 12.1 @ 118mph off a 1.8x 60ft which isn't too bad going for a 4door R32 with simple enough mods. For the last run of the meet he decided to give it the full beans, but it snapped an axle so we didn't get to see the 11 we were hoping for

Anyway I thought it might be a bit of an interesting story - especially as there are a few people out there looking for more power cheap, or squeezing horsies out of the old RB20. Dyno plot for perusing:

[tm_r33]

so why have several people said it send their knock reading crazy???

both mentioned readings up around 100??

[sydking]

surely you would need a tune for this?

Are people doing ratios to full tanks of fuel.

WHich woul dbe like 20L of this stuff and teh rest 98.

[N1GTR]

May as well just go to a United servo and get some E85 and not have all the messing about

[discopotato03]

I don't agree , the less the ethanol content the less of a high volume fuel system you have to have . If you could buy E20 or E30 from the pump I think the results and consumption could be better than many think .

[badhairdave]

May as well just go to a United servo and get some E85 and not have all the messing about

Old thread is old, e85 didn't exist.

[N1GTR]

I don't agree , the less the ethanol content the less of a high volume fuel system you have to have . If you could buy E20 or E30 from the pump I think the results and consumption could be better than many think .

Well you can, if you have a zeitronix and a jerry can of E85, it's easy to make exactly E20 or E30 in each tank

Just the effort of having the jerry can is a pain of course compared to just pulling up at a pump.

Old thread is old, e85 didn't exist.

Yep, that was sort of my point but yeah didnt word it too well haha

[discopotato03]

In my opinion the whole ethanol thing in pump fuels , for the masses , is driven by eco nazis and those in the fuel supply who seek to rip us off . They want you to believe that 10% ethanol makes your pleb fuel significantly cheaper but when you work out how far you don't go on it your effectively going backwards . Ethanol doesen't give the same burning heat value as ULP and its heated air and fuel that drives you down the road .

I really hate legislation thrown at cars nowdays because it forces the once optional things like stability control/hand bags/ABS on evertone yet flex fuel capability is something very few cars get . The socialist greenie crack addicts are hypocrites and if they were genuinely interested in the environment AND the cost of living it would show in cheaper high ethanol content fuels and flex fuel capability in everything .

I think the current situation is that most cars can about stomach low percentages of ethanol in ULP without causing internal damage , because they were designed to work with ULP specific AFRs running higher percentages of ethanol burns them long term . If however flex fuel cars were using 20-30% alcohol you could see a benefit from ethanols advantages without the disadvantages of running it in ratios as high as 85% .

Pun intended the burning question is where is the trade off in ethanol fuel percentages for most current production engines ? Is it 20% 30 40 ? Obviously the higher the ethanol content the more specialised the engine and its fuel system/tuning needs to be .

From a replacing petrol point of view E85 could be seen to be a good start , from getting the most performance with the least agro viewpoint I think a lot could be achieved with lower percentages than E85 .

A .

[GTSBoy]

Ethanol blend fuels and their supposed eco benefits are a slippery slope to start walking. There is no chance in hell that producing ethanol to burn in cars is environmentally better than using oil. Any time that arable land and water are used to grow anything for furl rather than food is stupid. Even the ethanol streams that start with agri-waste materials are not particularly efficient paths for manufacturing fuel (ie, a lot of CO2 goes into the air just to get the straw/bagasse/whatever-the-agri-waste-du-jour-is converted from potential stock feed into useable ethanol at the pump).

It's all lies, designed to make someone clever rich.

[discopotato03]

It can all be argued both ways including shipping crude oil around the world and refining it into 1001 usable products . I would prefer people not fall into the trap of believing that every scrap of a plant crop material is exhausted when making ethanol alcohol from it . Plenty of usefull things are left over from the process to fuel man and beast as well .

Personally I'd rather see Australian farmers hang onto their land a grow sugar cane or corn for ethanol because selling out to the Chinese so they grow food for their own screaming hoards does SFA for us here .

What I will say is that the left wing socialists goal of producing less C02 emissions is a crock because its a known fact that E10 gives lower consumption figures that straigh 91ULP - in this case its used as a spreader or landfill for fuel volumes . Epic fail you could say .

As a means of reducing the reliance on imported crude there is some merit but you have to produce huge volumes to make it viable .

As a performance fuel it can work well but the legacy is that many vehicles out there couldn't cope with much more than 10-15% ethanol and understandably the fuel suppliers don't want to deal with clots that used the wrong fuel .

The thing is if you can make fuel grade ethanol dirt cheap people will find ways to use it , LPG is rapidly going through the roof price wise and a cheap alternative is needed to replace it . I wonder if a simple gas carby can be converted to meter ethanol so the taxi and fork lift mobs could use it ? Creating a market can be one of the ways to make it happen .

[GTSBoy]

Nah. Liquid fueled cars have to go the way of the dinosaur. There's going to have to come a time when the inner city & suburban vehicles will be legislated to be electric (of some sort) and only long haul stuff gets to be liquid fueled. Or some variation of that sort of idea. It will cause a massive upheaval, but I can't see that you can get from where we are to where we need to be as a smooth transition.

And all of this discussion ignores the possibility that climate change may throw an enormous spanner in the works and prevent people from even growing the food that they're used to in the places that they used to do it, let alone crops for fuel. It could all go to shit very quickly for all we know.

[sneakey pete]

RE: CO2 emissions for biofuels

You are forgetting that the CO2 produced by the burning of said biofuels has already been taking out of the atmosphere by the growth of the plants themselves.The only effective emissions are the creation process+transport etc. At the moment E85 produces about 5% less than normal oil based petrol. So yes, there are a lot of emissions producing the stuff. As the emissions of electricity production and transport goes down, so does the emissions of biofuels, theoretically its possible to get them down to zero i guess.

Also as far as i know all sugarcane based ethanol doesn't use the sugar part of the plant at all, only the waste part.

As for liquid fueled vehicles, there are still a lot of usages that can't be replaced by electric vehicles now or in the foreseeable future. However bioethanol isn't the only way to make liquid fuels, you can also use coal to make oil or methanol. That doesn't reduce emissions but if you don't have any oil its certainly good to have.

what this all has to do with backyard race fuels i have no idea

[discopotato03]

It was just intended to give a bit of background on why there is ethanol blended in some general use pump fuels and why its only around 10% - mostly . The driver is green optimism at best .