Running Methanol

Can any one answer if running methanol is harder on engine components than gas ?

im aware of the corrosive properties with running methanol and the more frequent oil changes and important to completely draining the system after each day of racing.....

im running blown injection and have enough capacity in the system to inject the extra volume of fuel required and the ignition system is MSD which is fully adjustable.

i was talking to someone yesterday at a rolling road day at the local dyno shop regarding switching to 100% methanol, and they reckon the motor would make approx twice the amount of power V gas and it might over stretch the strength of the internals and the motor would fail ?


Ive never really heard of that before and cant believe it would produce twice the power on methanol

any views or advise would be appreciated

thanks


mike couch

 

Twice the power on methanol?? I don't think so. Actually methanol has LESS BTU's than gasoline. However you run approximately TWICE the volume of methanol - maybe THAT'S what they were thinking.

Harder on parts??? I don't think so. Methanol is actually more forgiving - not on parts but on your tuneup. Horsepower is harder on parts!!!

 

you might see 10% more power. It is cooler running. for it to be effective you should run a higher compresion.

 

A good rule of thumb is 7% more power than you make on gas. We've thrashed this one before. You gotta have good piston rings,"total seal", a really straight cylinder bore, hard *** valve guides,and the least amount of aluminum **** in your fuel system as you can get by with. Hope this helps >>>>.

 

That was my thoughts exactly,

i think he saw a modern boosted car run a 20% mix and made 40 bhp more on the dyno.......

proberly thought by adding all the 20% up it would be making 200+ more bhp

no thats cool

im proberly going to get a slot booked on the dyno and run it up next month i'll post up the results gas V methanol

mike

 

All things being equal, no, methanol won't double (and may not even increase) your hp or be hard on parts. Methanol will, however, burn at very high C/Rs like 14-15:1 with out detonation/preignition and that, of course, will increase hp and be hard on parts.

 

We've found with our motors that we gain around 15hp on methanol. What I liked was the increased torque numbers. I'd rather have grunt off the corner than the big top end HP #'s. At that end of the track the round spinning thing in my hands will increase lap times more. One thing is you have to stay on top of oil changes. On methanol I'd change oil every night rather than every week. It seems that no matter how thorough you are draining the carb the oil still gets contaminated.
Methanol is harder on fuel system parts, especially seals and O rings, because it's a drying agent. They make a top oil that helps with this problem and lubricating the fuel pump.

One thing I really like about methanol is the engine runs cooler. With gas you it seems the temp climbs every time a caution comes out, which means turning the fan on and off. We have to run gas now due to rules, but given a choice I'd be on methanol.

 

Like the others have said, methanol likes big compression. Just swapping it out on a gas engine would probably have little benifit. Stepping up the fuel pump, and the nozzles to feed it is definatly nessecary. On our sprint car engines, we recomend to every racer that after the nights racing, pull the air filters, pull the plugs, and spray some WD-40 down the injector and into the sparkplug holes. Then spin the engine over with the ignition off. Getting the little bit of lube into the cylinders and the injectors prolongs the life of the engine. If you've got a carb, run the bowls out of methanol, refill them with gas to keep everything from drying out. Should make cold starts easier also... Just some thoughts...

 

You can make quite a bit more HP on a blown motor with methanol. You can raise the static compression and run lots more overdrive on the blower than you can gasoline. While I will agree that you will probably only see 0 to 10% increase on a naturally aspirated engine it is a whole different ball game with a blown motor, especially when you start adding port nozzles and 40% overdrive ratios.

 

Thanks for all advise

like I said im going to throw it on the dyno next month play around with it see what happens,
i have had the car on the same dyno not long ago, they save the power runs on the computer so will be interesting to compare the two together.

cheers

mike

 

Keep it on the fat side, unlike gasoline, you won't lose a lot of power running rich. Lean, however, can hurt pistons rather quickly.