Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

It's a good idea, just not on the scale that's needed to rid us of our oil dependency:cool:

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

Maybe motorracing would be a good place to start developing alternate fuels and new technology. 2-stroke direct injection engines for example

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

Maybe so but the aims are differnet, you're looking for maximum power at the expense of almost any kind of reliability and economy. To my mind the motor manufacturers are far too slack. Notice how the fuel price shot up, and all of a sudden a whole new range of engines appeared that are much more efficient? I'm not one for consipracy theories but it wouldn't be the first time the motor industry has held back development till later to further their own ends. They need to embrace modern ideas more, how long have we had turbos? How many small-engined turbo cars are there? Not many. For example.

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

this is true, they'll only provide things when there is demand. Else, I suppose they worry people wont buy their economical engines, since people can afford to run higher performance engines.

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

Alcohol is a great fuel, you just need massive injectors or carb jets big enough to stick a knitting needle through. But it's got a massive charge-cooling effect and a very high octane rating. But you burn twice as much. A mate of mine had a jawa 500 a while back and we dropped the CR and jetted it for normal petrol, I think we went from a 240 main jet to about a 110.

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

A couple of years ago, one of the comics ( Ride ? ) ran a Daytona on alcohol they had made from apples with the help of a local school. It needed some petrol to fire it up & then ran well with very few alterations.
Think the biggest problem was stopping the kids pouring the stuff down their necks during the brewing & distilling processes.
Kids will be kids ( wont we )

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

Can you explain what charge cooling is?

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

Latent heat of evaporation basically.

Even with isentropic compression the compression stroke heats the charge, evaporating the fuel. Alcohol is good at absorbing this heat, reducing the temperature. Which aids resistance to detonation.

During the wowwer they used water-methanol injection into the interstage cooler and aftercooler on the merlin engines to avoid detonation and allow them to increase the boost and give harry hun a bloody nose and all that. tallyho.

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

Gotcha.

Re: Reducing the world's fuel use - my idea
 

No that was the Falklands War,not the one with jonny hun.;)