Folks,
E85 is a 100-106 octane fuel for less than $3/gallon. This makes things very interesting when we start talking about higher compression or turbo motors.
Understanding that E85 will use significantly more fuel to achieve the same results (20-20% more than race gas), you are still looking at radical cost savings to race gas.
I have done a little online research, but I was looking for real world instances for the real scoop. Anyone running this stuff with a Weber/Delorto setup? I understand that alcohol
Will eat up o-rings and rubber parts, but since Webers have nearly no rubber parts, I thought it might work.
I called Weber, and they said that if you shut off the fuel supply and ran the carb dry when you were done playing, you could probly get a season or two out of the accelerator diaphragm before you’d have to change it.
So, I know you would need an E85 friendly fuel pump, and would need to significantly re-jet to run this stuff, and you’d go through a bit more…so:
1) Is it worth it?
2) Does E85 have enough upper cylinder lubricants, or would lead/Marvel Oil be needed?
3) Have you done it?
Full Version: E85 Race Fuel? (105 Octane For $3?)
I have no first hand experience but my last car was capable of running premium OR E85 on back to back fill ups. This was in my '05 Evo; a 2 liter turbo running 17-21psi. This would lead me to believe the lubrication properties are fine. Ethanol is a lot easier on parts than methanol as well. And finally, I never ran it 
There seems to be very little power increase when compared to an equal octane race gas. You will save money no doubt, and I would imagine the motor should run a bit cooler.
I wish it was available around me, I would try it in my turbo ecotec. Would just need to bring a 55gallon drum of it out with me.
I wish it was available around me, I would try it in my turbo ecotec. Would just need to bring a 55gallon drum of it out with me.
great fuel, problems are, you lose up to 15% of your range OR MORE, it takes ALOT tune work to make a motor run on that, and many engines have to have costly upgrades to use it and regular fuel as the computer has to monitor between the two.
Racing Green
Some in motorsports are coming to terms with the idea that, in certain quarters, environmental correctness sells
By J.P. VETTRAINO
The typical race car generates exhaust emissions as well as it generates speed. This Formula One season, for example, Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari F2007 will spew some 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That’s at least five times more than the average road car or light truck will generate in a year. Yet in a world full of traffic gridlock, coal-fired power plants and emerging industrial economies, auto racing’s environmental footprint remains tiny. Any extrapolation we can manage says that all the race cars in the world will release less greenhouse gases this season than the state of California does in a day.
This relatively minor impact does not imply that racing can’t lead by example. Nor should it imply that the racing community lacks genuine concern for the future of the planet. And it absolutely does not mean that an earth-friendly approach to business won’t attract some sponsors or sell some tickets. In small steps, racing is working on its environmental correctness.
Some forms of professional auto racing—maybe those that need the biggest boost—are catching on more quickly.
“We are screwing up this planet faster than we are fixing it, in my opinion,” says Dale Jensen, primary owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team and co-promoter of the Champ Car World Series season-ending street race in Phoenix, which organizers bill as the first and only major “green” motorsports event. “Good things get done with good leadership. We have the opportunity to provide some leadership.”
Then, with the sensibilities and optimism of a successful entrepreneur, Jensen adds: “Green is going to become increasingly important in consumer decisions, sooner than we think. There’s a paradigm shift. This is a win-win-win situation for the race, the series and the fans.”
Jensen says he’s not “a tree hugger,” and he doesn’t wear Birkenstocks. But he drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, when he could presumably afford a Bentley Continental GT, and his green auto race is part of a larger plan.
He and partner Bradley Yonover are organizing the race to promote a larger, multiuse redevelopment project near downtown Phoenix. The Jackson Street Entertainment District is seeking a five-star rating from an environmental consortium and will include an “energy station” that offers commuters alternative fuels such as ethanol and natural gas.
The first element of this green auto race, according to the promoters, is EarthShift ’07—an environmental expo billed equally with the on-track action. The expo (www.earthshiftexpo.com) will include displays, seminars and consumer products intended to “educate urban residents on environmentally advanced technologies” and “demonstrate the benefits of eco-conscious lifestyle choices in everyday living.”
The second element is more immediately pragmatic. The Phoenix promoters have agreed to purchase carbon offsets to balance CO2 emissions generated by the race cars, event vehicles and production of the electricity used at the event (though not by the migration of attendees to and from). Here, though, there are start-up difficulties. Hoping to buy carbon offsets for Champ Car’s season opener in Las Vegas, which he and Yonover also promoted, Jensen found a disconnection between desire and action.
“Frankly, we’ve had some difficulty finding legitimate, honest bids,” he says. “There’s no standards agency out there to measure carbon offsets, or even a consensus on exactly what they should be. The groups offering to go out and plant X number of trees seem to vary in reputation and reliability.”
If there is indeed a paradigm shift toward green, the Indy Racing League has positioned itself with one of racing’s highest-profile green initiatives: a switch to ethanol fuel for 2007. The change is the result of a sponsorship and marketing plan launched by the late Paul Dana, who was killed in an accident at Homestead in 2006, just as his plan was about to reach fruition (“Dark Day,” AW, April 3, 2006). The IRL’s new fuel-grade ethanol is nondrinkable grain alcohol, produced by fermenting plant sugars and denatured with a hint of gasoline, not for any operational or performance purpose but to avoid alcohol taxes and interstate transport issues with the ATF.
“It’s basically moonshine our engines are running on,” says Les Mactaggart, the IRL’s senior technical director.
The switch from methanol fuel required no hardware changes in the IRL’s Honda engines, says Mactaggart. Ethanol has about 30 percent more energy than methanol, so the engines run hotter, but cooling improvements already had been undertaken for the IRL’s adaptation to road racing. Operational changes lie exclusively in the engine control maps, with adjustment to fuel injectors and ignition timing.
The new fuel dovetails nicely with a Bush administration proposal to increase the production and use of ethanol substantially. It promotes the environmental benefits of ethanol, and it certainly has political appeal. Ethanol can reliably power 220-mph race cars, and it can be produced from homegrown crops. It’s biodegradable and won’t contaminate groundwater. It generally reduces toxic exhaust emissions and also can reduce CO2 emissions, which are cited as the predominant contributor to the greenhouse effect and global warming.
Theoretically, at least, ethanol could be carbon-neutral. Plants grown for ethanol would suck CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, negating the CO2 released during combustion. In fact, ethanol still will contribute greenhouse gases. Given production and application technology expected for the foreseeable future, ethanol might reduce vehicle-related greenhouse gases by a maximum of 70 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In that theme, the American Le Mans Series is using gasoline with 10 percent ethanol this season and plans to allow near-pure ethanol next year. The series is also home to what likely will prove to be the landmark race car of its era: the diesel-powered, Le Mans-winning Audi R10. Clean diesels in road cars leave smaller quantities of some harmful emissions than gasoline engines leave, and EPA projections say that any gallon-for-gallon swap from gasoline to diesel will decrease CO2 emissions. Diesel engines are also readily suited to CO2-neutral biofuels.
From the IRL’s perspective, however, there is at least one slightly inconvenient truth in the switch to ethanol. The emissions improvement applies in comparison to gasoline—not the methanol used for decades in American open-wheel racing and still used in Champ Cars. Methanol is the simplest alcohol chemically, containing one carbon atom per molecule, and EPA data suggest that it reduces emissions even more than ethanol, particularly when it comes to oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Yet in the green-fuel sweepstakes, the IRL has moved ahead of its crosstown rival. The methanol used in Champ Cars is refined from natural gas, rather than fermented from wood chips or other plant matter (as it can be). In effect, Champ Car fuel is still pulling up greenhouses gases locked in the earth and pumping them into the atmosphere.
In the NHRA and the IHRA, alcohol cars run on methanol, with essentially the same chemistry (and often the same supplier) as Champ Car. Perhaps surprisingly, the nitro-methane burned in the NHRA’s top pro classes has the lowest specific energy content of any familiar racing fuel. Nitro is nonetheless highly oxygenated, which makes it great for dumping in mass quantity into combustion chambers for conversion to horsepower. It’s too expensive (and probably too dangerous) for application in road cars, though the methane part (90 percent or more, depending on the specific regulation) has potential. Methane is one of the simplest of all hydrocarbons, and it produces less CO2 for each unit of heat released.
Then there are the 600-pound gorillas of auto racing in the United States and around the world. NASCAR and F1 still run on good ol’ high-octane gasoline, and from the green perspective (certainly not from the racing perspective), gasoline has a basic chemistry issue: The stoichiometric air-to-fuel ratio at which gasoline combusts most completely (14.7:1), leaving the least possible toxic residue, is not the same as the ratio at which it releases the most horsepower-producing energy (about 12.5:1).
Yet, as the Phoenix Grand Prix suggests, there may be other ways to be green. In F1, Honda’s RA107 has run this season without sponsor logos, liveried instead with an image of Planet Earth intended to promote environmental awareness. The company has backed its rolling eco-board with www.myearthdream.com, a website that communicates with race fans regarding earth-friendly causes and lifestyle changes and tries to position racing as a vehicle for environmental improvement.
NASCAR has long established the requisite recycling programs for tires, fluids and other garage waste. Teams use a catch can, which collects spills from the fuel overflow to prevent groundwater pollution. It has finally switched to unleaded gasoline, and lead is as potentially dangerous as anything ever emitted in automotive exhaust.
We don’t know if NASCAR plans new green initiatives or whether it considers environmental issues important to its continued growth and success in the marketplace. It certainly has the wherewithal to implement an earth-friendly component in its marketing scheme, as demonstrated by its minority-focused media outreach program.
We don’t know, because 10 days after the first of several requests to NASCAR communications regarding an interview on environmental topics, we were still waiting for a response.
Some in motorsports are coming to terms with the idea that, in certain quarters, environmental correctness sells
By J.P. VETTRAINO
The typical race car generates exhaust emissions as well as it generates speed. This Formula One season, for example, Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari F2007 will spew some 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That’s at least five times more than the average road car or light truck will generate in a year. Yet in a world full of traffic gridlock, coal-fired power plants and emerging industrial economies, auto racing’s environmental footprint remains tiny. Any extrapolation we can manage says that all the race cars in the world will release less greenhouse gases this season than the state of California does in a day.
This relatively minor impact does not imply that racing can’t lead by example. Nor should it imply that the racing community lacks genuine concern for the future of the planet. And it absolutely does not mean that an earth-friendly approach to business won’t attract some sponsors or sell some tickets. In small steps, racing is working on its environmental correctness.
Some forms of professional auto racing—maybe those that need the biggest boost—are catching on more quickly.
“We are screwing up this planet faster than we are fixing it, in my opinion,” says Dale Jensen, primary owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team and co-promoter of the Champ Car World Series season-ending street race in Phoenix, which organizers bill as the first and only major “green” motorsports event. “Good things get done with good leadership. We have the opportunity to provide some leadership.”
Then, with the sensibilities and optimism of a successful entrepreneur, Jensen adds: “Green is going to become increasingly important in consumer decisions, sooner than we think. There’s a paradigm shift. This is a win-win-win situation for the race, the series and the fans.”
Jensen says he’s not “a tree hugger,” and he doesn’t wear Birkenstocks. But he drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, when he could presumably afford a Bentley Continental GT, and his green auto race is part of a larger plan.
He and partner Bradley Yonover are organizing the race to promote a larger, multiuse redevelopment project near downtown Phoenix. The Jackson Street Entertainment District is seeking a five-star rating from an environmental consortium and will include an “energy station” that offers commuters alternative fuels such as ethanol and natural gas.
The first element of this green auto race, according to the promoters, is EarthShift ’07—an environmental expo billed equally with the on-track action. The expo (www.earthshiftexpo.com) will include displays, seminars and consumer products intended to “educate urban residents on environmentally advanced technologies” and “demonstrate the benefits of eco-conscious lifestyle choices in everyday living.”
The second element is more immediately pragmatic. The Phoenix promoters have agreed to purchase carbon offsets to balance CO2 emissions generated by the race cars, event vehicles and production of the electricity used at the event (though not by the migration of attendees to and from). Here, though, there are start-up difficulties. Hoping to buy carbon offsets for Champ Car’s season opener in Las Vegas, which he and Yonover also promoted, Jensen found a disconnection between desire and action.
“Frankly, we’ve had some difficulty finding legitimate, honest bids,” he says. “There’s no standards agency out there to measure carbon offsets, or even a consensus on exactly what they should be. The groups offering to go out and plant X number of trees seem to vary in reputation and reliability.”
If there is indeed a paradigm shift toward green, the Indy Racing League has positioned itself with one of racing’s highest-profile green initiatives: a switch to ethanol fuel for 2007. The change is the result of a sponsorship and marketing plan launched by the late Paul Dana, who was killed in an accident at Homestead in 2006, just as his plan was about to reach fruition (“Dark Day,” AW, April 3, 2006). The IRL’s new fuel-grade ethanol is nondrinkable grain alcohol, produced by fermenting plant sugars and denatured with a hint of gasoline, not for any operational or performance purpose but to avoid alcohol taxes and interstate transport issues with the ATF.
“It’s basically moonshine our engines are running on,” says Les Mactaggart, the IRL’s senior technical director.
The switch from methanol fuel required no hardware changes in the IRL’s Honda engines, says Mactaggart. Ethanol has about 30 percent more energy than methanol, so the engines run hotter, but cooling improvements already had been undertaken for the IRL’s adaptation to road racing. Operational changes lie exclusively in the engine control maps, with adjustment to fuel injectors and ignition timing.
The new fuel dovetails nicely with a Bush administration proposal to increase the production and use of ethanol substantially. It promotes the environmental benefits of ethanol, and it certainly has political appeal. Ethanol can reliably power 220-mph race cars, and it can be produced from homegrown crops. It’s biodegradable and won’t contaminate groundwater. It generally reduces toxic exhaust emissions and also can reduce CO2 emissions, which are cited as the predominant contributor to the greenhouse effect and global warming.
Theoretically, at least, ethanol could be carbon-neutral. Plants grown for ethanol would suck CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, negating the CO2 released during combustion. In fact, ethanol still will contribute greenhouse gases. Given production and application technology expected for the foreseeable future, ethanol might reduce vehicle-related greenhouse gases by a maximum of 70 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In that theme, the American Le Mans Series is using gasoline with 10 percent ethanol this season and plans to allow near-pure ethanol next year. The series is also home to what likely will prove to be the landmark race car of its era: the diesel-powered, Le Mans-winning Audi R10. Clean diesels in road cars leave smaller quantities of some harmful emissions than gasoline engines leave, and EPA projections say that any gallon-for-gallon swap from gasoline to diesel will decrease CO2 emissions. Diesel engines are also readily suited to CO2-neutral biofuels.
From the IRL’s perspective, however, there is at least one slightly inconvenient truth in the switch to ethanol. The emissions improvement applies in comparison to gasoline—not the methanol used for decades in American open-wheel racing and still used in Champ Cars. Methanol is the simplest alcohol chemically, containing one carbon atom per molecule, and EPA data suggest that it reduces emissions even more than ethanol, particularly when it comes to oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Yet in the green-fuel sweepstakes, the IRL has moved ahead of its crosstown rival. The methanol used in Champ Cars is refined from natural gas, rather than fermented from wood chips or other plant matter (as it can be). In effect, Champ Car fuel is still pulling up greenhouses gases locked in the earth and pumping them into the atmosphere.
In the NHRA and the IHRA, alcohol cars run on methanol, with essentially the same chemistry (and often the same supplier) as Champ Car. Perhaps surprisingly, the nitro-methane burned in the NHRA’s top pro classes has the lowest specific energy content of any familiar racing fuel. Nitro is nonetheless highly oxygenated, which makes it great for dumping in mass quantity into combustion chambers for conversion to horsepower. It’s too expensive (and probably too dangerous) for application in road cars, though the methane part (90 percent or more, depending on the specific regulation) has potential. Methane is one of the simplest of all hydrocarbons, and it produces less CO2 for each unit of heat released.
Then there are the 600-pound gorillas of auto racing in the United States and around the world. NASCAR and F1 still run on good ol’ high-octane gasoline, and from the green perspective (certainly not from the racing perspective), gasoline has a basic chemistry issue: The stoichiometric air-to-fuel ratio at which gasoline combusts most completely (14.7:1), leaving the least possible toxic residue, is not the same as the ratio at which it releases the most horsepower-producing energy (about 12.5:1).
Yet, as the Phoenix Grand Prix suggests, there may be other ways to be green. In F1, Honda’s RA107 has run this season without sponsor logos, liveried instead with an image of Planet Earth intended to promote environmental awareness. The company has backed its rolling eco-board with www.myearthdream.com, a website that communicates with race fans regarding earth-friendly causes and lifestyle changes and tries to position racing as a vehicle for environmental improvement.
NASCAR has long established the requisite recycling programs for tires, fluids and other garage waste. Teams use a catch can, which collects spills from the fuel overflow to prevent groundwater pollution. It has finally switched to unleaded gasoline, and lead is as potentially dangerous as anything ever emitted in automotive exhaust.
We don’t know if NASCAR plans new green initiatives or whether it considers environmental issues important to its continued growth and success in the marketplace. It certainly has the wherewithal to implement an earth-friendly component in its marketing scheme, as demonstrated by its minority-focused media outreach program.
We don’t know, because 10 days after the first of several requests to NASCAR communications regarding an interview on environmental topics, we were still waiting for a response.
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