i was talking to some guy the other day, and he said that if you pumped etanol (methil alcohol, the kind people use in first aid kits) in the carburetor, it would increase the engine's performance.
What do you guys think?
laters

fred

It will not increase the engine performance when pumped into the carb, it'll increase it when poured to the fuel tank, when shitty petrol you've bought contains lots of water, which makes your engine weaker. The ethanol or methanol molecules bind the water, thus making your engine suffer no more.

Artur

so how many parts of alcohol would i have to pour into my fuel tank to get an increase in performance? (for example: 1 bottle of alcohol every 10 bottles of gas or so)

well - if you want to get rid of water in your tank, one bottle (0,5l)of pure alcohol (>= 92 percent - may be normal ethanol - methil alcohol is very toxic, and it'll be better to stay away from it) for 40 liters of petrol should be fairly enough. I don't really know if it'll bring you some perfomance gain, when your fuel is totally free of water - probably not.
BTW - Ethanol highers the fuel octane count. Pure ethanol has around 120 octanes or so.

CU

Artur

It's years since my last chemistry lesson so I'm totally relying on my intuition here. But is ethanol a more efficient solvent than ordinary petrol (gasoline)?

What I'm trying to say is, is there a risk of ruining the engine running on ethanol? I'm thinking of ethanol washing away the lubricating oil film. Or corrosion of some parts?


And finally a word of warning in addition to that of Artur's: I don't know about ethanol, but at least methanol really is dangerous. Exposure to it even in very small quantities causes blindness, any more causes death. So be extra careful. BTW, even some windscreen washer fluids contain methanol, I can't believe they're allowed to be sold!

Of course normal ethanol isn't dangerous per se, some people even drink it...!

What was I thinking!?

Yep - in some cases Ethanol or other alcohol is a better solvent than petrol. Let's imagine the followin sitution - it's easy to dissolve one bottle of pure alcohol in petrol. It's also easy to dissolve the same amount in water. You won't dissolve water in petrol - it'll always stay close to the bottom of your tank, withous mixing with fuel. The water accumulates with time, and it may cause engine troubles. the easiest way to get rid of it is to add some pure ethanol to your petrol tank before you fill up. The ethanol mixes with water, and in turn - dissolves in petrol - this makes your petrol "water-free", with only few percent alcohol additive that'll burn quite easy.
Don't get me wrong - I didn't recomment anybody driving on pure ethanol, however people in Brazil used to drive on ethanol all the time.

BTW. The ES95 we buy in Poland contains up to 10% of ethanol.

Art