alcohol fuel ?

just wondering say you had a 1000hp motor on c-16 how much power would you gain by switching over to alcohol?

probably loose power unless you switch to m-3 or m-5... what I understand is m-5 is equal to Q-16



Randy

Depends...too many variables, compression, CID, Carb or injection, Cyl heads yada yada yada. GENERAL consensus is that big HP motors tend to make best numbers on gas. Whimpy little motors like mine tend to respond well to the added torque of Alcohol.


TJ

On my former dragster I ran regular old alky, generic, but the same as M1. A460 headed 588, injected deal. When I sold it to Phillip he put a carb on it with Q16. The car ran basically the same. Certainly close enough for weather/track conditions to make the difference one way or the other.

Too many factors.............whats the motor/car set up? type of racing etc?

@ 1,000 HP an alky carb will kill it.

sorry should have seid methanol yes like vp m3 or m5 , dont have a specific combo maybe a 598 a headed motor always though methonal would make more power than gas. learn something new every day

Lem Evans wrote:@ 1,000 HP an alky carb will kill it.

....and not just a little bit............."Ill designed".............

fstrthnu373 wrote:sorry should have seid methanol yes like vp m3 or m5 , dont have a specific combo maybe a 598 a headed motor always though methonal would make more power than gas. learn something new every day

In certain applications it can, in some it can't.

I will take on gas any day with m-5 , injection, and a high speed lean out . I have never personally seen anyone with injected regular methanol slow down .

A big carb will not physically work correctly with methanol .

"I will take on gas any day with m-5 "
That day will come......weed hopper.

fstrthnu373 wrote:sorry should have seid methanol yes like vp m3 or m5 , dont have a specific combo maybe a 598 a headed motor always though methonal would make more power than gas. learn something new every day

You talking carb or injection?

KY JELLY wrote:I will take on gas any day with m-5 , injection, and a high speed lean out . I have never personally seen anyone with injected regular methanol slow down .

A big carb will not physically work correctly with methanol .

after getting my system flowed I will be adding a high speed.................not enough down low, too much up high...cant see how it ran as good as it did lol.

Lem Evans wrote:"I will take on gas any day with m-5 "
That day will come......weed hopper.

Whats that supposed to mean Rooster poot ?

richter69 wrote:

KY JELLY wrote:I will take on gas any day with m-5 , injection, and a high speed lean out . I have never personally seen anyone with injected regular methanol slow down .

A big carb will not physically work correctly with methanol .

after getting my system flowed I will be adding a high speed.................not enough down low, too much up high...cant see how it ran as good as it did lol.

that's what tuning for mph alone without egt's will get you

I think what matters most is the engine combo that you're using. Methanol generally runs better on something running under 6500rpm, above that gasoline will make better high rpm torque and thus more horsepower. I would say that if the engine was large enough to make 1000 horsepower at say 6000rpm that methanol would probably be better.

A lot of the problems that people have when running methanol vs gasoline come from having a very poor carburetor package and or injection setup. Methanol should not chug-a-lug and run ratty when compared to gasoline but everyone seems to think it should for some reason.

If you have a cam that works well, and you are making 1000hp on gas, it will not work well with alcohol. M3 is a complete waste of money.

The only thing M3 is good for is the fumes are very tolerable............great for an indoor event such as monster trucks and such. Other than that no hp gain over the plain rot gut.

We had a customer's 615 CI BBC on the dyno years ago, and switched it from Methanol (pair of toilets on a tunnel ram) to gas. After Nozzle and pill changes, It produced the same amount of horsepower, but at a much higher RPM, but did not produce as much torque and not as early in the RPM range. THe other thought that some had was the volume of Methanol required in a N/A application at that horsepower and cubic inch took up too much runner volume in the heads and intake runners. In those days I always wondered why you didn't see more T/S- Promod Nitrous guys running injected alky with Nitrous.

I don't think that fuel by volume is ever the problem because even with methanol fuel it's at a ratio of about 3500:1 air to fuel.

Dave

Are you saying that the piston speed is what effects this , not enough time to burn , etc ? If that's the case the engines stroke would have more to do with it than the rpm its ran at.

I know my engine is never below 6500 rpm after it launches , shifting at 7200 and crossing the line at 7300-7400 in the 1/8 . I also have tested 4:30 and 4:86 gears back to back and back to them and it runs better with 4:86 than 4:30 , so if it were an rpm thing I would think mine would have ran faster with the 4:30's , but it does not , the mph is even lower along with the 60' time . I guess these are not proven facts but my real world results.

I doubt winged sprint cars are ever below 7000 rpm either

I don't think piston speed in the engine has much to do with anything except for durability at high rpm. I think that with most people's experience methanol is superior at lower rpm yet inferior at high rpm when compared to gasoline fuels and at first this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Getting oxygen into the engine becomes increasingly difficult as RPM increases, methanol requires less oxygen in order to burn a given amount of fuel so it seems like it would be BETTER at high rpm, yet it is not. Why? I think it must be because getting the correct amount of fuel into the cylinder and having that fuel be in a usable form, a vapor that can burn efficiently and effectively to make power it what's not happening for whatever reason at high rpm. The design of the injector, carburetor, ports or combustion chamber/piston must all be big factors. How can they be made better? In a general sense it seems like the engine or engines overall are using gasoline more effectively than methanol and that if those engines used methanol as effectively as gasoline methanol would be superior than gasoline by a wide margin when it comes to torque and horsepower output.

I wonder too why the whole picture completely changes with the addition of a blower. Could it be that since the speed of a chemical reaction depends on the temperature at which the reaction is taking place that methanol's lower performance at high rpm is strictly temperature related? If so what characteristics does the engine have when running nitro methane? Is it even worse than methanol about dropping off at high rpm?

I agree with you that volumetric efficiency falls off at high rpm and that is an advantage as far as a few dyno hp #'s are concerned carb gas / alcohol wise , but you take that same engine and use injection instead of a carb where it is possible to move that high rpm fuel curve to what it needs to be and I bet you will find different results.

Methanol has a bigger tuning window than gas due to the physical burn rates , so we have to be fair here and realize that we must get rid of nearly twice as much fuel as volumetric efficiency falls off. I do not think that is possible or feasible to do with a carburetor.

I think the better more efficient cylinder heads will show less difference between gas and methanol , but its because they will get more oxygen into the combustion chamber , if you put in the time and be fair there is no reason that a favorable methanol a/f ratio can not be found to produce just as much hp unless its a high velocity intake tract that slings the methanol out of suspension.

I would bet everything on a pro stock engine is designed to run on gas because its mandated by the rules , it would be interesting if they could run any fuel they wanted to see if they would change anything , but that is just me thinking.

[quote="KY JELLY"]Dave

Are you saying that the piston speed is what effects this , not enough time to burn , etc ? If that's the case the engines stroke would have more to do with it than the rpm its ran at.

I know my engine is never below 6500 rpm after it launches , shifting at 7200 and crossing the line at 7300-7400 in the 1/8 . I also have tested 4:30 and 4:86 gears back to back and back to them and it runs better with 4:86 than 4:30 , so if it were an rpm thing I would think mine would have ran faster with the 4:30's , but it does not , the mph is even lower along with the 60' time . I guess these are not proven facts but my real world results.

I doubt winged sprint cars are ever below 7000 rpm either
[/quote
Seems the 562" wants a loose conver. and a high launch........seems it is not acting like the usual methanol engine. May be the huge butter fly has low air speed below 6,000 rpm.

that does make sense, but Charlie's 533 liked the higher launch with the alcohol carb also.