As long as the search for "alternative energy sources" relies on govt. or corporate funding, it will always be aimed toward developing some scarce and limited resource that you can be gouged for, whether that be ethanol, coal, uranium, or what have you (i.e., a "fuel" rather than true energy independence).

The only currently known "free" sources of energy are solar, wind, wave, and geothermal. Interestingly, humans have been using these sources of energy since antiquity. We could learn something from history.

I remember in community college my environmental biology teacher said, "all you have to do is harden your valves and your car will run on ethinol." The whole class bought it too.

Well I’m glad to see I sparked some interest in this little endeavor.. First question I need to answer is my Bonnie is an 01 SSEi with a 02 engine in it. Currently 100k on this block and has never had plug pulled that I know of.

I see a bunch of good comments so far. I’m very interested in the 2 primary things we need to work out first. Max boost / compression ratio capability and max flow of the injectors and fuel system.

From what my son tells me the mustang guys are cutting the snouts down on the Eaton’* so you can a fit a very small pulley on them. Not looking to try it but I found it interesting.

My first goal is defiantly going to be getting back to stoich with E85 on a stock fuel system and boost just as a baseline. Then swap a pulley out and start moving up. I was thinking since we can calculate the overall enrichment needed across the board, I can probably go with a bump in fuel pressure first to compensate up to 15% or so. Anyone know what the stock pumps flow right off? And how about pressure options? Can you adjust the stock regulators or is that an aftermarket only option? I’ll be checking out the tuner options for sure. I guess I need to start looking up the injector specs to.

On the comments about making less power and more heat and such. Its kinda like octane ratings, complicated but the results don’t lie. Do some research and you will fine it, check Google or an old copy of Hot Rod. But for now, ask this yourself this question. Why do monster tucks, pulling tractors, stock cars, RC cars and planes, and lets not forget top fuel dragsters all run alcohol base fuels and not gas?? It’* not because they want less power or can't afford gas. Speaking of top fuel, I wonder what a shot of nitro would do in E85 "+15"

Thanks for all the input so far everyone.

You can buy little 8 oz. bottles of nitro methane that get used in a water injection kit. I am unsure of the gains to be had. I think the Snow Injection kits offer it.

You're right, it'* easy. Follow the link below and fine [sic] how racing fuels and engines differ from gasoline engines and fuels:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question642.htm

If you read carefully you will find that the racing fuels you reference have less "energy density" than gasoline. The reason they are used is that they contain chemical oxygen that can be burned during the power stroke to help overcome the physical limitations to how much air can be pushed into an engine for the purpose of burning the fuel. This is what permits them to use extremely large amounts of fuel to make very high amounts of power in a four-stroke type engine. Of course, those engines don't go very far in miles or hours of operation either.

The ethanol blends currently being foisted on the public contain the ethanol for the express purpose of "oxygenating" the fuel for lower emmissions. The gas companies preferred Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) because it is cheaper but that'* another thread. Both additions, in my opinion, boiled down to a cynical attempt to comply with "greens" demands for lower emissions by gaming the test.

For the test conditions given (instantaneous emissions analysis without regard to power or efficiency) you can add anything that doesn't contain as much energy density as gasoline (ethanol, methanol, MTBE, horse ****, etc) and the measured pollutants will be lower for that instant. Of course, the test disregards the fact that it takes more E85 fuel to perform the same amount of work that can be done with straight gasoline in any engine designed for gas operation. This includes engines specifically designed to maximize E85 fuels.

Hey, jet engines are powerful, how about pouring JP-8 into your tank? There'* at least one snake-oil salesman out there advertising that their product contains "Jet Fuel" (aka highly refined and additivised kerosene).

Water injection works the same way, but surely no one here will suggest that you pull the garden hose up to the filler spout of your car and start adding water to the tank to "Increase power". All these little quirks have just enough of a shred of fact that somebody will buy them. It'* a fact that U.*. Air Force piston engines in the 50'* & 60'* used water injection on take off to increase power and reduce temperature, particularly in very large displacement engines (e.g. Pratt & Whitney R4360). Is that enough motivation to buy a 12 oz brightly colored plastic bottle of perfumed water ($1.98 ea) to pour in your gas tank?

As explained in the article linked above, you have to burn 8 times as much alcohol based fuel to get roughly 2.5 times the power you would get from a similarly modified gasoline engine (roughly a gallon a second) ; ignoring the economics for the moment, how would you carry enough fuel to drive across town?

It may be handy for a number of reasons to have a multi fuel engine (they've been around for decades) but if your goal is either increased performance (or greater efficiency) alcohol blended fuels aren't the answer. If they were, FFV Taurus' running E85 would be dominating at the strip and home-town red-light drag racing.

It ain't happening because it doesn't work.

Kidturbo, it sounds to me like your plan is flawed. If I understand correctly, you're going to try to go to an extremely small supercharger based on fuel octane alone?

There'* alot more to the KR/Boost picture than pulley size. Alot of other work has to be done to allow you to pulley down, and fuel octane is a bandaid for KR, not a fix.

Alot of Mustang owners that shave their nosedrives (it happens with ours also, if you go look at INTENSE'* website). The difference is that most of those guys don't understand the relationship between TIMING ADVANCE and Boost. More boost isn't always the proper answer, and you get to a point where the extra boost isn't helping, and may actually be hurting.

In response to WalterMitty... I'm not educated enough on the subject to take on the other side of this debate, but your responses in this thread have a 'cup half empty' feel to them. Why are we even driving gasoline driven vehicles if we must burn XX tons of coal to refine the gas, etc.

Every process is inherently flawed by those pesky laws of thermodynamics. The wasted energy of ethanol production processes is highly debated and there are no clear cut answers as to exactly how much energy is actually wasted with technology in use and that which is being put into use.

But to further this discussion, can we put aside the inherent energy losses and discuss the uses...?

I'm sorry you are having negative feelings about my observations, that is the unfortunate downside of taking the alternate hypothesis on any subject.

I really can't join the happy talk side of an issue I think people have been mislead on (or misunderstand) because the topic as discussed includes concepts like "free horsepower" or increasing power when I think I know it isn't possible within the scenario given.

Now to be clear, I haven't said that we burn coal to make gas, but it is a fact that oil refineries (producing all oil based outputs) are energy self-contained and produce all the power they need from the raw materials they process. Energy is lost in that process from the original crude oil state, but enough excess is thrown off to fuel our economy as it stands today; any replacement will have to do at least as well to gain my support. Show me any ethanol, hydrogen, solar, wind, or geothermal operation that can make the same claim and I'll jump on that bandwagon.

I also think the rational person should require that any new technology that purports to replace conventional forms (gas, coal, oil, etc) should not be based on using those forms for production or using economic resources created by those forms to exist. Said another way, if you have to burn 10.4 gallons of oil to make 10 gallons of alcohol to do 90% of the work you can do with gas, you might as well start walking now so you can get used to it early.

By all means use alcohol (or toluene or acetone or butane or pentane or propane or asphalt or a list of about 1000 products coming out of refineries) if you wish, but I strongly encourage you to be skeptical about any claim that combining one or more of these outputs can ever produce more power (energy) than the individuals can produce after being separated from the original hydrocarbon matrix.

I would also encourage you to be doubly skeptical of any claim that by consuming one or more of these outputs (or any other primary commodity like coal or natural gas) you can create more energy than originally existed in the first form. There may be some benefit, like cleaning fuel injectors, removing carbon, or making your exhaust smell minty fresh, but increased power or efficiency cannot result in the absence of some other defect.

If that makes my glass half empty, well, so be it; but I won't be diving off a 12' diving board into it thinking clever thoughts regarding water displacement and deceleration.

Has oil refinement always been self sufficient? To compare the production of fossil fuel based gasoline to any new or emerging alternative, to me, doesn't seem valid because of how refined that process has become through time. Ethanol production has gone through an accelerated evolution from when it first was applied in this context. The process has gotten remarkably better and will continue to do so.

In the early days of gasoline refinement, was coal used to power the refineries? My reference to coal was just to point out that any process is dependent on other sources of energy (some renewable, some not) somewhere in the history of that process.

This is just my opinion, but the feeling I get from your thoughts on the subject is that it will never measure up to how we produce gasoline & other products of crude oil, so why bother?

*EDIT* - Let me add that I am also in agreement that this thread should not be titled as it is. Nothing is free, especially HP.

I guess the only way this discussion will be put to rest is if someone does it. I don't know if anyone else will, but I still maintain performance is to be had by running ethanol. I intend to put it into effect some day.