alternative fuels? (Page 1 of 2)

Street legal alt fuels, like E85 & biodiesel, have been used before in Lemons, no problem.

Dunno if the safety crew would accept anything more exotic(incediary), like nitromethanol or hydrazine...

If anybody shows up with hydrazine I'm packing up and going home. It's like carrying around an armed WMD. Don't even think about it.

No no, hydrazine and NTO are great stuff. No toxic products once its burned, just nitrogen and water. its only the unburned stuff that's bad for you.

Also make sure you document all the parts you need to replace to run your car on whatever fuel you go with, since they will be part of your build budget.

Well I want to make doubly sure that I can't finish a race.. so I've decided I'm going to ghetto charge the Jag V12
  I can buy junkyard turbo's and intercoolers for $75.00 each.. That's $150.00 and  aftermarket FMU's (used they sell for about $35.00-45, new they are only $85.00)   will allow me to enrich the fueling enough to take advantage of the boost..
  114 octane will keep the stock compression (7.8-1) alive
I'll need bigger injectors..  Stock is 38#'s/hr of which 24 is required to make the stock 300 hp. So If I switch to the 50#'s/hr injectors from the cars donating the turbo's I'll have plenty of ability to feed the ethanol..
There are a few other freebie things to do, ask me and I'll fill you in..
The cool thing is unlike most cars the injection system on a early  Jaguar doesn't work with a computer chip.. It's really easy to change.

Well Since I don't want to pay alcohol tax on ethanol I'll have to denature it at the plant.. that means dumping the required amount of Gasolene into it to make it legally denatured.  So it will burn visably just like the gas that has 10% ethanol in it..  Or E85 that is 85% ethanol..
Indy cars  get a special exemption to burn pure ethanol at the track   (Otherwise alcohol taxes would be put on it and it would be like burning Jack Daniels.. except Jack Daniels is only 80 proof and ethanol  is 200 proof.) 
 
   There are several reasons to use ethanol;
First it's 114 octane..
second is extremely clean burning.
third it runs really cool.
Fourth,  If you buy it direct from the plant that makes it it costs around a dollar a gallon.   Not $3.00 a gallon..
Now what do you do to an engine that's really cheap, needs Higher octane & cooler charge?

I suspect that either you've fallen for  the unreliability myth of turbos or haven't thought why turbos will make the engine live longer..
The Million mile engines ,Cummins big cam &Cat3406 are both turbocharged.. They rely on the boost pressure of the turbo to keep the engine running long past when a normally asperated engine would expire..
  First the reason turbo's have a poor reliability record is because racers want more,  and thus it's extremely easy to cross the line between enough and too much.
second untill Mark Donahue spent time at the Porsche facility to map the exact fuel requirements there was too much guess work involved in turbo's fuel requirments for any degree of reliability..
Fortunetly Mark Donahue was a fan of history and read the engineering data from the development of the turbocharged engine used in the Allison engine of the late 30's used in the famous P39. They developed the process where all modern turbo engines are fuel mapped.. 
  Today it's pretty easy with Computers.. the variables are entered into a a program and fuel requirements are  quickly printed out.. after that it is simple in early Jaguars to provide sufficent fuel that the engine will never go lean.. far simplier for a luddite like me than it would be to remap a computer program. 
The sweet part of all of this is the highest strain on an engine is during the intake cycle. that's when the engine is litterly trying to pull itself apart  where bearing loads are at the highest (yes far higher than during the power stroke)   plus during the power stroke the engine is loaded in the direction of the designed load (During the intake on noramla asperation engines  all that holds the engine together is the strength of the rod bolts.  In a turbo engine the loading is opposite, in the direction of strength, due to the pressure of the charge forcing the piston down.. (Normally asperated the suction is pulling the piston/rod apart)

OMGuar,
I like you. You are weird and knowledgeable. If you help others at the track as much as you talk here, you will be in line for the Lemons Competitor of the Year Award, but you really need to be asking permission for a lot of these things from Nick / Jay. When you get your answers, post them here so we can all benefit.

John

P.S. What is your real name?

Boost is meant to replace compression lost to leakdown due to engine wear?  I'm glad you edumacated us.

I look forward to the video of you setting Jay and the boys straight on all sorts of tech issues.  Don't forget to explain your engineering knowledge as it relates to cage design and fire safety.  Bring a lawyer buddy to intimidate them at BS inspection and during any trips to the penalty box.

EDIT:  Dear Lemons staff, please greenlight this team's application to any race.  I look forward reading about the penalty named for this participant.

Sorry, you're wrong. No way to sugar coat it. Air is 14PSI at sea level, so a turbo car putting out 7 PSI of boost is a 1.5:1 precompression ratio. 1.5:1 vs an engine's compression stroke of anywhere from 8:1 all the way up to 12:1. Far more load is put on the engine in the compression stroke then the intake stroke. As for cranks and journals not being able to take a load in that direction, the crank is machined to be symmetrical. Otherwise, there would be great friction in any motor.

Turbo's can be reliable, but putting a turbo on an engine that was mass produced with bottom dollar in mind is not reliable. Manufactures use head gaskets, studs, and torque with the greatest profit per engine possible. That is why warranties are void on cars if you add any performance parts. Jag didn't make the car for you to change it.

Well I guess you need to see things from a differant perspective..
First The Chance of a 34 year old car not known for reliability running in a race for 24 hours should have you rolling on the floor laughing..
Second if that's not enough, the chance of it finishing a 24 hour race with a ghetto charger system built from scrap  should cause you great glee.. snot blowing out your nose and tears flooding from your eyes..
Third most of the cars competeing get between 30-40 MPG driven normally.. the Jag V12 (early ones) got between 8-11 MPG 
Under racing conditions  while most competitors will be able to run about 2 hors that Jag will be in the pits every 40 minutes or so.. Cut that in half for ethanol and it would be in the pits every 20 minutes or so, maybe less if it actually made the full horspower the computer says it will.  So roughly speaking the car would have to make up  for 96 pit stops compared to 12 by most other cars..
  That's my secret.. I'll get them laughing so hard they will all fall off the race track and all I'll need to do is complete one lap..
  :0=)