earlwb

Using methanol or ethanol, or both mixed together, in the car engine has been done for many many years already. You only need to install larger jets in the carburetor so that the carb will handle the increased fuel flow. Now using glow plugs isn't so common, but some others have done it previously already too. But using spark plugs might be better for reliability in the long term though.
Here is one source on how to do it http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_...nol_drane.html
He goes over lots of things you might have not thought of yet too.
this one too http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id32.html

KeroPower

Excellent articles. Very informative. I have stumbled across those before while surfing the web.

I knew manypeople have run carengines on ethanol and methanol successfully, buut I never thought anyone had actually used glow ignition. I would definately like to see that. I am not sure what the benefit of glow ignition in a car would be. I mean weight is not an issue like in model airplanes.

This may sound odd, but in a recent experiment I put a Super Tigre .40 carb on my 6 hp push mower [8D]. I am using the stock gravity feed tank with a long curling fuel lineto prevent the fuel from just running out the throat of the carb. Mows just fine through all the fall leaves at about half throttle. It idles well too. Niceand slow.Right now I am just running gasoline. However, I wonder how well it would run with a glow plug adaptor and an OS F plug (since it is a four stroke engine) on straight methanol? I mean would the glow plug actually stay lit?

The strangest part is that the ST carb was always pretty sensitive on the ST .40, but on the mower it is easy to adjust.

Altered1

Man, this is not where I though this thread would go when I started it  

378

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Different engines have different preferences I guess. My aunt's '72 F100 with a 302 V8 runs fine on 87 as well, but my dad's previous '84, which he sold years ago and also had a 300, ran noticeably better on premium. It'd tolerate 87 but it made it known it was merely tolerating it. 'Course back then premium was 1.55/gallon so it wasn't a big deal, nowadays that thing would have had to just suck it up and deal with it.

Have you been able to locate any parts to convert both engines to unleaded compatible? I imagine having to add lead substitutes in both lest you ruin the valve seals in 40-50K is a bit annoying.


I live way out by the smith county line, about a mile away. Waaaaay out in the sticks. These days it's getting pretty crowded, it's just about a suburb of Murfreesboro. Can't tell you how friendly people are seeing as I keep to myself unless absolutely required, but I don't notice very many idiot drivers. They still keep to I24 and Briley Pkwy for the most part.

Here everything has to adhere to the same emissions standards. A 2009 Bugatti Veyron and a 2009 Chevy Aveo have the same emissions standards to meet. That's often why supercars lose HP here, the Veyron was about 983HP in US trim if I remember correctly, mostly because they must be fitted with a catalytic converter and mufflers to meet emissions regs.

It's actually part of why we don't get many European cars here. Renault has tried, there's a few floating around from the 80s, but emissions regulations pretty much doomed them. They weren't really that good to begin with, but that was the final nail. They needed more modifications to meet emissions regulations than the demand stated they were worth, so Renault just gave up. Fiat seems to be doing better, though I haven't seen any 500s on the road my dad has. They own Chrysler so they should have it easier than Renault did 30 years ago, and I think the 500 would be able to capture the "D'aawww, that's a cute wittle city car" market and sell okay.


As for CO2, here it's only measured. There's no regulation regarding it's production and no taxes based on it. We do have a gas guzzler tax on new vehicles sold that get less than 20MPG combined, but that has nothing to do with the CO2 produced and is a one-time point of sale tax.


Here running on oil is often applied to cars with half a million miles on them. The owners can't afford repairs, nor can they afford a replacement that'd be any better, so they're forced to drive it into the ground.

Sports cars...Hah, 45HP is laughable even for a factory stock car. Americans love power, if it doesn't have at least 200HP it won't sell very well. Only two ways around that, absolute bargain bin budget heaps of junk that wouldn't even sell well in Europe(Chevy Aveo for example), or a pickup truck with enough torque to pull a mountain off it's foundation. Our sports cars have 400+ HP. Stonking great V8s, wonderful noises, wonderful smells, bald rear tires and a lot of tire smoke from the back end. They may not handle as well as European ones, or indeed handle well at all, but we don't care. Big V8, loud, sounds nice, smokes tires, doesn't cost much to buy, great fun.


Though it should be said that there's plenty of Americans who're into corner carving. Despite what my choice for DD is I'm one of them. I love muscle cars as much as any red blooded American, but I also love cornering, so I'm just as interested in cars like the NSX as I am in Chargers and Mustangs.

earlwb

Yes you are correct in that Renault had serious QC problems and along with failing to meet emissions regulations, they gave up the US market.
Fiat, on the other hand, ran afoul of US terrorism laws when Khadafi, the ruler of Libya, bailed out the failing company and bought a large shareholder interest in the company too. Libya was a terrorist state at the time. So Fiat wound up banned in the US at the time.

On the old leaded gasoline engines. You normally would get a set of new valves (mainly the exhaust valves) so that the valves could handle the higher heat range of unleaded fuel. Otherwise the valves would burn out fairly fast. You also may have had to lower the compression ratio if the engine was running a high compression as well. I don't remember anyone putting in valve seats as well, but it has been many years since I messed with them though.

A engine burning alcohol would more easily pass emissions standards as alcohol is a much more clean burning fuel than gasoline. If I remember correctly, it wouldn't need a catalytic converter either. I'll have to study that more though.

earlwb

Years ago we used to convert edge trimmer and leaf blower engines over to glow engines. At the time the largest glow engine was the OS .80 and the Fox .78 engine. So if you wanted to go bigger you had to invent your own large scale plane engine. The only problem I ran into was the converted engines usually used a relatively low cmpression ratio and thus had trouble idling unless you kept the glow plug lit or used higher nitromethane percentages in the fuel to compensate for it. Thus if 5% didn't work OK you ran 15% or 20% nitro glow fuel or used a on board glow starter. We used to use a simple battery on board setup with a on/off leaf switch on the throttle servo. With a large scale plane you had plenty of room inside to do such things anyway. We didn't have CDI electronic ignition systems at the time, so converting to glow was a great way to lighten up a engine by pulling off all that extra stuff like the flywheel, etc. Anyway, those engines all worked out quite well running as glow engines. The Perry Carb was the typical carb we all used at the time. But using any other carb was quite common too.

378

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My dad has told me countless times about how he nearly bought a turbo Renault in the 80s. He was test driving brand new ones. First one had no boost, something wrong with the turbo. Salesman insisted it was just one oddball so my dad tried out another one. Same problem. He gave up, went to the Ford dealer and ordered a pickup instead.

that I had no idea about. I just simply didn't think Fiat operated in the US at all until they bought Chrysler.

It may be engine dependent. My uncle built an AMC Gremlin with a proper AMC engine, and the heads he used had leaded gas valve guides in them. He put modern seals in but the right bank still pisses oil past the valves and fouls up plugs. I'd always heard that you could get away with just seals and guides to convert one for unleaded...lol. Learn something new every day I guess.

Mhm, alcohol does, indeed, burn cleaner. Matter of fact you can burn straight alcohol indoors. The only reason we can't run our RCs indoors is the emissions output of the lubricants and the nitro, those are the components that pollute. If we had a closed sump, pure methanol burning four stroke we could run glow engines indoors without issue.



In theory an OS F and pure methanol would run quite well. Those mower engines also idle around 1400RPM by default so you may not even need on-board glow. The fuel mileage will plummet but it will burn cleaner and make more power, so if straight methanol is easy to obtain I see no reason not to use it.


Perhaps fitting two glow plugs right next to one another will help with flameouts?

You can also retain the existing ignition system, that spark plug will ignite methanol just as happily as it will gasoline. You may need to tinker with the plug gap a bit but other than that it should run fine. You won't get as much of a power boost this way, however, as the glow plug will advance and retard timing as appropriate while the spark ignition system on a push mower is fixed at, usually, about 20-30 degrees before.

earlwb

You know, I had almost forgotten about it. But years ago at the time, the converted edge trimmer engines worked Ok, but they tended to have problems at idle with glow plugs. But in hindsight now, the first problem was I used to make my own glow plug adapters for the engines. But I mounted the glow plug on top so it had a recess on the inside to get to the combustion chamber. In hindsight, I should have counter sunk the glow plugs deeper so they would sit more flush with the bottom of the adapter. That would help the compression a little too.  The other issue was the glow fuel. At the time we never thought about using less oil in the glow fuel with the engines. But when I think about my experiences with the big SuperTigre engines, the edge trimmer motors would have run much better with reduced oil percentages in the fuel. Especially since most all of the edge trimmer motors have needle bearing rods in them too.

I have a Ryobi 30cc 4 cycle engine edge trimmer I was going to use as a airplane motor. It has a oil sump, so inverted flying isn't done for very long. But it ought to work well in any case. I was going to hook up a CDi ignition to it, but I think I'll go ahead and put on a glow engine carb and make a glow plug adapter for it too. Then just run it as a glow engine. Our local hobby shop sells straight methanol by the gallon too. So this should be fun.

 

jessiej

A lot of people now don't seem to realise that up until 1947 all model engines were spark ignition and many were converted to glow simply by substituting a glow plug for the spark plug and removing the timing mechanism. (Thus screwing up the collctor value for future generations).

jess

KeroPower

Most websites that sell eletronic ignitions also sell glow plug adaptors for two cycle gasoline engines.

That Ryobi 4 cycle sounds fun. I would love to see a video of it running.

I wish my local hobby shop sold methanol by the gallon.

378

My Feedback: (4)

Mhm, that would have helped tremendously. Kind of hard for the flame front to do it's thing if it had to run through a narrow corridor before it hits the combustion chamber.
Don't hold me to this as I don't know for sure, but I believe those engines have a clunk and pickup pan on the oiling system that lets them run inverted for a decent stretch without exploding. Certainly would be a useful feature for an edge trimmer that's likely to get tilted every which way. Barrel rolls and short stints inverted likely won't hurt it.


If they're splash lubed the only thing you have to worry about is whether or not the oil control ring can keep the oil in the sump, if anything splash lube will be more effective with the piston literally throwing the oil back at the crank and rod on every down stroke.


Baaaaaah, who cares about collector value. Better an engine die by lawn dart than die by rotting on a shelf, I say. The only engines that belong on shelves are those who are so crummily made they won't run and models of engines that do.

earlwb

I think you are correct. They have some sort of a way to let the engines handle tilting, etc. I haven't taken the oil pan off to look yet.

Yeah I tend to put a engine into retirement after I wore it out or heaven forbid, crashed it. If the engine still works I have a huge urge to use it on something.

downunder

Not really, what had to be changed were the valve seats because the leaded fuel would deposit a microscopic layer of lead on the valve seats which cushioned the impact of the valve seating. Without hardened seats the valve would pound its way through giving what's called valve seat recession. This only happened because the seats were machined into the as-cast iron. When leaded fuel was phased out, Chrysler (for one) solved the soft cast iron problem by induction hardening the material where the seats were to be cut.

earlwb

Yes I think you are correct. My memory must be faulty on it nowadays. But I remember having problems with the valves more than the valve seats.
But it might have been unique to the engine I needed to convert at the time.
I looked it up and found this article about it http://nortonownersclub.org/support/...eaded-unleaded
The article mentions the abnormal wear that occurs with valve seats and it also mentions that in some cases valves had the problem too.
Oh yeah, I did ride and own a few Nortons many years ago too.

aspeed

I think you can get pressed in hardened seats for V8 motors.  They need a counterbore and get pressed in.  It is a fairly major job.  I just wait until my heads leak like crazy and get newer style heads and use lead replacement once in a while until then.  I have a 1932 Austin Bantam coupe sitting in the garage that originally had 20 HP. Some of them went 60 mph.  Maybe a model motor could get 20 HP?  There are some 150 cc monster motors around that could convert to glow fuel.

jessiej

[/quote]
Baaaaaah, who cares about collector value. Better an engine die by lawn dart than die by rotting on a shelf, I say. The only engines that belong on shelves are those who are so crummily made they won't run and models of engines that do.

[/quote]

I tend to agree, as I run all my old and collectable engines, cars, and motorcycles and shoot all my old firearms. Still it is nice to find and run an engine as it was originally made. Points and all.

(I will also admit that I am not adverse to turning a buck on certain items should someone want it mote than I.

jess

jessiej

I have used additives that are supposed to function as lead. Don't know if they really work.

I had BSAs, Triumphs, a Royal Endfield, but no Norton. Yet. On my bucket list along with the Ariel.

jess

downunder

Yep, when I converted my Chrysler 383 to run on LPG about 25 years ago I had steel inserts fitted to the heads. BTW, I wasn't quite correct earlier when I said the lead cushioned the impact of the valves. What the lead does is to put a barrier between the valve and seat to stop the micro-welding of the hot exhaust valve to the cast iron seat. This welding means that the next time the valve opens it tears a microscopic piece off the seat and this is what causes the recession over time. Obviously this only happens when the engine is running at high loads when the valve temp gets high enough.

378

My Feedback: (4)

Heh, good, good. I wouldn't hesitate to modernize one if it meant it was more enjoyable to run though. I've got no qualms about ripping a column shifter out of a 50's pickup truck, tossing the three speed that went with it into a dumpster and installing a modern Tremec six speed in it's place, and I'd have no problem converting an old gasser to glow if it meant it'd run better. I'd also find a way to fit a carb, as I don't have any intention on flying models where a venturi would be applicable.

ArcticCatRider

My Feedback: (6)

I have had great luck, and have created alot more great luck by putting in the time with my glow engines.

In fact, it has been a number of years since I have had a flameout. Keep in mind I run stock set ups. I don't run lean, I don't look to push the envelope. Is all I look for is decent power, and reliability.

I've been running glow 15 years now, and I've come a long way. Years ago, it used to be a surpise to me if I had a day of flying without a flame out. Now, it will be a big suprise/disappointment if I DO have a flameout.

Same goes for glow plugs. I have a couple that I cannot remember the last time I replaced them.....pretty cool if you ask me. I think the reliability is actually pretty outstanding.

jessiej

[/quote]


Heh, good, good. I wouldn't hesitate to modernize one if it meant it was more enjoyable to run though. I've got no qualms about ripping a column shifter out of a 50's pickup truck, tossing the three speed that went with it into a dumpster and installing a modern Tremec six speed in it's place, and I'd have no problem converting an old gasser to glow if it meant it'd run better. I'd also find a way to fit a carb, as I don't have any intention on flying models where a venturi would be applicable.
[/quote]

I am a firm believer that if you own something you can do to it whatever you wish. OTOH, if I had a pre war O&R ignition engine and wanted something that ran on glow with a throttle I'd sell the O&R to some one who flew SAM events and buy something that suited my needs.

I suppose that whatever artifact is involved
rarity and historical significance should be involved as well as highest and best economic use.

jess

aspeed

Wow, this thread took on a life of it's own.  I say chop it up unless it is historically significant?  I am a Streetrodder from way back. 5 litre in an Austin two seater.  Cox stuff isn't significant to me except the Conquest.  I think a snowmobile motor would work well in a car running on methanol if it would start.  Maybe a shot of propane to get it running,  That may be reliable as twostrokes go.  There are fourstrokes too.  An 800 cc would give enough power for a small car if set up right.  They are used in some race car classes, and go pretty fast.  That would almost be a model airplane motor.

earlwb

This has to be the wildest ride so far that I have seen. it would be pretty cool as a scale RC version.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGzDEkG8ASw[/youtube]



Well one could always stick in a 10,200 cc radial engine into a compact car, just for the heck of it.
I could see someone making a smaller scale version with a model radial engine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2V7B7-gdRA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk8d-bMhViM


then there is one of several radial engine powered motorcycles out there too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXRic0X8aA0

Sport_Pilot

Hey, she looks like 378!

378

My Feedback: (4)

lolwut?