noginblue

Is there any advantages to adding ethanol to petrol, would it help power and transition, will be using on spark conversion super Tigre g90

w8ye

My Feedback: (16)

Most people are more concerned about how to get the ethanol out of their gasoline.

controlliner

Most Alcohols in Petrol are hard on diaphrams in Walbro, Tillotson and Zama carbs.

blikseme300

My Feedback: (118)

I ain't adding any Jack Daniels to my fuel.

AFAIK there is no advantages, only disadvantages, when there is ethanol mixed into gasoline (petrol). Hardening of the non-metallic bits of the Walbro and Tillotson carbs is common when there is ethanol in the fuel mix.

Bliksem

balsaeater

There can be some power gains to be had from adding Ethanol to gasoline (petrol). Also there will often a big rediction in vibrations. The Ethanol is more slow to ignite and the flame front tends to be slowwer so leading to less knock and less vibrations . Advancing the ignition is often required . Also as the Ethanol has oxegen in it molicule there is power gains up to maybe ~30% in not having to extract the oxegen from the atmosphere. This also means that the fuel consuption will rise so requiring the jet needle to be open maybe as much as ~30% to allow more fuel in and will mean leass run time per tank . Often it will require a hotter spark plug to make the ethanol ignite .The single biggest issue is the lubricating oil .
Lubricating oil from gasoline (petrol) is often ~3% (needle bearing for piston con rod )or ~6%(bush bearing for piston con rod ) as the gasoline (petrol) has a lubricating effect of its own .
Running on pure ethanol could often require up to~17% oil to lubricating oil in the same engine but ~10% synthetic is the norm for needle bearing in the piston con rod . The issue is that the glow fuel type lubricating oil wont mix with gasoline (petrol)so well. So for example a 50/50 mix of gasoline (petrol) and ethanol wouldnt be ~3% (needle bearing for piston con rod ) for the gasoline (petrol) and ~10% for the ethanol making some ~7% mix as one would think
It is probably going to be closer to a ~10% mix overall using only glow fuel lubriacting oil mix for all the 50/50/ mix using only 100% of glow lubricating fuel mix .
As glow fuel lubricating oil is often double the price for the gasoline (petrol) versions that can make running costs increase a lot .
Small amounts of Ethanol like 5% mixxed in gasoline (petrol) which is often the normal car fuel found in Europe probably wont show these issues and often most flyers just use this fuel as 100% pure gasoline (petrol) in europe probably not aware that there is 5% ethanol in the mix .
However probably once the mix has more than 10% ethanol in it there exists risks from lubrating oil falling out of suspension to issues from the fuel lines or carberator diagpfram issues starting up .

Car fuel supply forecourts also supply E85 fuel which is widly available in Europe .This is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline (petrol) would really probably have to be treated as more similar to 100% ethanol for lubrating solutions . OS engines do supply one engine to run on this type of E85 fuel

Balsaeater