My perception on real gas
As an engineer, I hate "feelings" not supported by hard data. 1/4 tank left, went with premium. With tank down to 1/4 again, came across a station offering 93 ethanol free and filled it up again. ...
Forum Discussion
Turtle n Peeps wrote:For us, both fuels provided good power. lap times were good with both. The gas power though got the oil hotter than wqas desireable.Huntindog wrote:Turtle n Peeps wrote:I have a pure apple to apples experience on this.
Maybe I should tell my buddy to change his car from an alkie car to a gasoline car if gas makes more power.
There is a reason alkie makes more power than gasoline. Especially in supercharged cars. Alkie has O2 in it and gasoline does not.
Alkie (or gasoline with alkie) also has higher octane which does wonders with power on supercharged vehicles.
In 97 or so, I joinned a sprint car race team. In the begining we ran a mini sprint, and the rules allowed either gas or alcohol. The car we had ran on gas. Power was not an issue.There were only 2-3 gas powered cars running, and we had the only consistant front runner. It was a bit of a hassle, as the alcohol guys were suspicious of the gas guys. When we had a good night there was always a challange as to our fuel being doctored. We had to have it tested often, always passing the test. We soon went to alcohol, partly because of the hassle, but mostly because the motor just ran too hot on gas. The alcohol carbs were huge, and the consuption skyrocketed, but the motor ran nice and cool.
The consenusus was that the volume of alcohol was shedding more heat out of the exhaust.
IDN, but I do know that power was not an issue with either fuel..It just took a LOT more alcohol to do the job compared to gas.
Yep Dog, we had sort of the same thing going on.
On cool days our gas engine could hang with the alkie boys. But in the hot weather we would flat out get left off of the turn. They would pull a lot harder because the alkie had it's own O2 on board the fuel unlike our gas. We also ran carbs so it would intercool the manifold which gave them even more power.
The alkie boys had a hard time to keep their handling in check because they burned twice the fuel (methanol) and that would upset the handling of the car later in the race.
They would burn twice the fuel and upset their handling but they would also make more power.
Just like life. Give and take.
OP here is a good article on gas & alkie. (Yes I know this is about methanol and the E in E10 is ethanol. And you will get more power out of methanol than ethanol for the reasons you get more power out of ethanol than gasoline.)
When we went to alcohol, there was a new issue:
Weight. The weight of the extra fuel we had to have in the cell. That made for many debates in the pits. How much extra weight vs. running out, and how it changed the handling of the car. The gas used so much less, as to make that a non issue.
