RE: I converted a glow engine to run on E85
Hi Bill,
I may be asking an obvious question that you've considered, but how much is grain alcohol going to cost you? I'm assuming you'd have to buy grain alcohol from a hardware store for probably 8-11 dollars a gallon...
If I were living in an area that didn't have E-85 I think I'd try to make a glow engine run on the gas/glow mix of mainly gasoline with some standard glow fuel mixed in to fire the glow plug. There's a whole thread on the basically 2:1 mix of gas/glow. The only reason I'm even messing with E-85 is because it is found at my gas stations locally for almost a dollar cheaper than gasoline. Can you buy grain alcohol for $2.09 a gallon? That is the current price of E-85 in Colorado Springs, and it's sold at about eight gas stations in town, all of them Western gas stations. I have begun to run my cars on half E-85, half regular gas, with no problems. At my 6800' altitude, my injectors can keep up with the increased flow required for running E-43. There's some conversion kits out there that consist of a computer plugged in between the car's ECU and the injectors to fire them more frequently so that E-85 can be run in almost any car 20 years old or newer. Check out Change2E85.com to see what I mean. -Tom Edited to correct web addy.