Bushwacker |
02-22-2016 11:33 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by 76Red18
(Post 241845)
. . . I think alcohol burns a little cooler also.
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Not true. Although E-10 gas contains less energy than pure gasoline as Connor has observed, when you add ethyl alcohol (C2H2OH) to gasoline, you end up replacing some of the hydrocarbon atoms with an oxygen atom, so at the same fuel/air ratio, it will tend to burn hotter due to the extra oxygen! It also burns slower, as do higher octane fuels, so it's used as an octane booster, and as Sandy mentioned, that's why it was used with water injection on highly boosted supercharged/turbocharged engines to prevent detonation. I believe a 10% mixture is worth about +4 points in octane, but beware . . . if you get enough water in it to combine with all the ethanol and separate out, what you thought was 87 octane gas suddenly becomes 83 octane gas, enough to quickly destroy an engine via pre-ignition. (You can't hear pre-ignition on a 2-stroke motor, since there are no valves to rattle, so the first sign of it is when it blows a hole in a piston!)
On newer engines designed to run on E-10 gas, the engines are typically calibrated to run slightly richer mixtures which burn cooler, to compensate for the effects of the extra oxygen. One potential problem with running E-10 gas in an older engine that wasn't designed for it is that it won't have the larger jets for the richer mixture, so you have less margin against the very high temps cause by lean combustion. A slightly lean condition caused by a fuel line restriction or slightly plugged jet that an old motor might tolerate if running pure gas could prove fatal to the same motor running E-10 gas! So if you're running an older (early 90's or older motor) I'd try to run pure gasoline in it if at all possible!
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