Alcohol fuel and bicycle engines

Norman

Norman

LORD VADER Moderator
Guys
You all want more power speed etc. Alcohol has been talked about in the past on other forums. I'll tell you all a little that I know about it. It is lower in BTU but you can cram more in the cylinder for each power stroke that is one of the reasons for a power boost. You and run very high compression as it will not detonate like gasoline will and more but i don't want to go into detail.
Ok now the down side your mileage will go to heck. The stuff will eat fuel lines and seals. It will also eat the aluminum. It likes water and will draw water out of the air and rust up the internal bearing or any steel parts. You need to use a special oil in the premix oil as your regular oil will bead up and not mix. Caster oil will mix the last bottle I bought was $8.00 for a pint. Some synthetics will mix but all cost more than the oil for gas. Some synthetics cost about $20.00 a gallon or more. You all getting the urge not to use alcohol yet? Its recommended to drain the alcohol out of your engine after every use and flushing it with gasoline to keep the alcohol from eating up the engine and to stop the rusting of steel parts that will follow. That means even the fuel tank. Last time I bought alcohol fuel it was over $3.50 a gallon and that was 7 years ago.
So you still want to use it?
If it catches fire in the day time you will only know you are on fire cause of the extreme heat you will suddenly feel that can't bee good. You will not see the flame, at night it burns a pretty blue.
Nitro you don't want to mess with. That will cause you more trouble than its worth instant engine melt downs if used wrong or nasty explosions.Its not cheap either. Fumes can contain nitric acid and that will eat lungs and skin. I don't know if you can buy the stuff pure any more in bulk after 911 unless you have a nitro burning fueler or a licence for the stuff . I haven't tried. You might even get on one of those watch lists if you do buy some.
Did I talk any of you out of it yet? I hope so. But if you just got to try alcohol I warned you. I still have a alcohol fueled go kart and would like to sell it PM me if your interested. I could modify a stock carb to run on alcohol by drilling the main jet and testing but I'm not interested in doing that right now. When alcohol and the Castor gets cheaper than gasoline and its oil I'll go alcohol but not until I'm sure of it. Something for you all to think about. If you want to smell and hear alcohol and nitro go to the NHRA drags you will be blown away and you won't trash your engine.
Norman
 
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Re: Alcohol fuel

I'm about to introduce alcohol to my blog but in a different way. There used to be a magic trick when I was a kid. You could soak a cotton ball in I think a 50/50 mix of alcohol and water then light it. the liquid would burn off and leave the cotton ball untouched. That was a good trick.
 
Re: Alcohol fuel

i am going to introduce some alcohol to my lips lol.
my thought is fast burning fuels are not good for a bicycle engine or any other engine unless you are made out of money and have lots of time on your hands to keep replacing the engines. yes we all want to go faster but their is a limit which can be reached without going to very hot and explosive fuels.
 
I been with Norman a time or two when he introduced alcohol to his bloodstream. It's a fun show...............................:D:D
 
The only thing I don't like about alcohol is it you need to change your fuel lines b/c it will melt regular fuel line. Has anyone tried alcohol with their stock carb? Just wondering if it will work.
 
It will work if you drill out the main jet but don't do it it will wreak your little bike engine I mean that in a very sincere way.
I too am testing the effects of alcohol in the bloodstream tonight.
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa. good and cold. if I get enough in me I'll try that trick soaking my underware in alcohol and lighting it on fire isn't that what you said to do? DEacon rotfl(?)rotfl
Normie
 
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Rumor has it Norman and Cruiser are, while we speak, doing some experiments with alcohol. I think they may even be trying the cotton and fire trick too. Hey Normy now that would make a great video..................
 
rotflrotflrotfl yup i am enjoying myself tonight. got beat up bad at work. planes everwhere then the military decided to go up and play in the a-10's. not fun at all mixing students in single engines with military fighters. famous words "tower was that for me":eek:
 
I got a buddy I've been riding with some that is trying to get over his fear of ATC. It's pretty funny. Uh, er, ah, uh, uh Amarillo approach. He holds the button down a minumum of 2 seconds before he starts talking. I feel for you guys....................
 
If I was doing it I'd say Ok all you sob's it the hogs againt everyone that would be a good sight to see. Those hogs could fly into a cessna and spit it out their exhaust pipe. I'm dreaming but I'd like tosee a hog open up with its nose cannon. Some of the major parts for its cannon were manafactured in my home town in Illinois. The barrels big enough you can stick your thumb in it. 20mm I think it a bad boy machine down and dirty Tough as nails from what I saw when it was in the desert war in Iraq. Kind of like a timex take a licking and keep on ticking.
Norman
 
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i feel for the pilots that are afraid to talk to us. i have had 7 planes go down since 1975 and 6 were because they were afraid to call us untill to late. those 6 got lost and ran out of gas. don't see that to much anymore with gps. i try to get all students to visit the tower and it helps alot with their fear. should maybe take your friend to the tower one day. it really does help
 
Cruiser, thats exactly what my instructor did with me. He took me up into the tower in OK City. I got to visit with the guys up there and you know what. Ya'll are just regular guys. Of course I've never been afraid to talk to anyone, in person or on a radio. I guess just different personalities.

Oh and just to keep the thread on topic, I think Norman made some excellent points on alcohol use...............
 
And too boot I doubt these little nasty engines will make that much more power on alcohol, especially with the supplied carburetor.
 
You might be surprised but its really a pain if you do go to alcohol. If you don't take the precautions it will screw your engine up and can take it out very quick it will melt that piston to the cylinder in a heart beat if run lean or make it spit the rod out side. You might need to go to an adjustable carb they will cost almost as much as the engine kit. All the carbs I use for alcohol have an adjustable main jet. Even the simple old posa jet carbs had a mixture adjustment on the main. It even has a fixed main under the mixture screw that you had to drill out to 0.048 to 0.062 range fine tuning was with the mixture screw under power. I tried it on the stand one time and I had to build a new engine over revved it with out trying. Spit the rod right outside the block. The outlaw engine is using a tilliston carb drilled for alcohol and has adjustment for low and high speed . You can run alcohol but be ready to burn one up they are not forgiving,lot more to take care of the flushing will wear you out.
 
Some of the crazy things when running alcohol is when the engine is idleing, if you can call it that, it spits raw fuel out of the exhaust, sometime you smell formaldehyde cause of incomplete combustion, which is a cancer causing agent(but only in the state of calif.) so those of us who don't live there have nothing to worry about. Right?! We all like to smell those kind of fumes don't we?!!
but then again.No I'm not going to alcohol.
 
Norm is 100% correct. I used just a little nitro and had a wrist pin go out on me. I have used fuel fragrence, which I think is mostly alcohol but you use so little that I have not had any problems and the kid's down the street love it.
 
Alcohol in a 2 stroke is a bad thing, but in a 4 stroke is OK.

I used a 4 stroke engine for this test.
I tried a little denatured alcohol from walmart and it worked. It just worked, far from great. It ran lean so I adjusted the needle valve and that helped. It still idled like crap but oh well. IF you get the engine to start,dont kill it.Or you'll never get it to start. I started my engine on gas then it ran on alcohol.

Alcohol doesnt smell as bad as gas. At least there is 1 good thing.
 
Ethanol isn't worth it. Just on the top of my head, here are its disadvantages:

1. Ethanol is a cleaning agent and as such, will scrape off rust in your fuel system and the rust can clog it up.
2. Ah, but don't worry if rust is scraped off. Ethanol attracts water to metal surfaces and will result to rust.
3. Some sealers can be dissolved in ethanol.

Oh, and don't get me started on what it does to the environment. While it only produces 1.94 CO2 kg/l, it produces 19% more greenhouse gases than lead-free gasoline. (Source: alcohol fuel)
 
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