Nascar question for you gurus of circles

[Buckrub]

Big discussion on another site.........about the pros vs. the cons of Ethanol additive.

One guy said "if it's so bad on every engine, why does Nascar use it?"

Do they? If so, why?

[Thumper]

Their engines only last 500 miles. ;)

Frankly, I have no problem with ethanol. I've heard all the nightmares, but have never had any problems personally. Heck I ran it in my 4-wheeler like eveyone says NOT to ... then when I parked it, I never drained the tank or ran the carb out of gas. Just ran it into the shed, shut 'er off and closed the door. Five years later (after a 2-year stint driving a truck then 3-years recovering from illness), I decided to sell it. I pushed it out of the shed, hooked up a set of jumper cables, it cranked right up and purred like a kitten. My Toyota mechanic buddy is the one who bought it and still rides it. He said he hasn't had to do a thing to it since he bought it.

I know the boat crowd cowers in fear if you hold a glass of ethanol in front of them. The only experience I've had there is a 15 horse kicker. I'd fill the tank with pump gas, add my oil and go. Bigger rigs, I have no experience with and am clueless.

As for the additive? Heck, I don't know. If it was ruining everyone's motors, I'm sure some attorney would be signing people up for a class action lawsuit by now. I don't fret over silly stuff like that and just roll with it. There are much more important things to worry about.

[DeputyDog]

I don't know if NASCAR uses ethanol mixtures or not, but I can speak for Indycar.

Indycar had used gasoline and the mechanics would add percentages of alcohol to the fuel to get more power out of the engines. The down side of this was a decrease in fuel mileage. So it was always a question for them whether or not to use the mixtures or how strong of a mixture to use. After the 1964 Indy 500 where there was a huge crash on the 2nd lap which killed Eddie Sachs and Dave McDonald, Indycar, took the question of pure gasoline out of the equation by limiting fuel tank size on the cars and thus making it necessary for everyone regardless of fuel mixture to make several pit stops during the race. Back then, the pit stops took a long time, compared to now, and teams would try to make as few stops as possible during the race.

Eventually, Indycar was running pure methanol for fuel, no gasoline at all. This went on for several years, until just recently actually, when they had their engines running on pure ethanol. Now they are running E85.

Thump, you know that the fuel has nothing to do with the engines only lasting 500 miles, if that. You know that it's they way that they are tuned up to get the max out of them. If they had too, they could detune them some and get a lot more miles out of them at the cost of horsepower.

To keep the costs down, Indycar has a requirement that each engine has to get at least 2500 miles out of them. If they don't there is some type of penalty to the engine manufacturer. They do it a little different than NASCAR, where the teams don't make their own engines, Honda and Chevy make them and the are distributed to the teams through them and each engine is tracked for the mileage.

[DeputyDog]

By the way, the weekend of the 1964 Indy 500 where the fuel fire was blamed for the two deaths, even though Sachs was killed outright in the crash, was the same weekend that Fireball Roberts was burned and eventually died after a crash down in Charlotte.

[BarryBobPosthole]

The whole ethanol deal isa bunch of bitching and complaining by people who sit on the sidelines and do nothing but gripe and complain about anything that anyone does to try to improve stuff. And when it doesn't work out as planned, they can say I told you so. Its the same old tiresome argument.

I've used 10 and 15 percent in my boat motor but not extensively. I don't seem to get as good a mileage out of ethanol fuels but haven't noticed any downside. But I really haven't used it enoughto make a big difference probably. Conversely, on last year's trip up north I used ethanol fuel in my truck and actually got BETTER mileage on it which I thought was strange. Not sure if being set up for Flex Fuel is the difference or not.

I wonder what would happen to the price of corn now if they stopped producing it? And I wonder what kind of subsidies they get for refining it? Anyone know?

Think of how fast those cars would go with some SeaFoam in the tank?

[DeputyDog]

I know in my flex-fuel Suburban, I'd lose about 15%-20% in gas mileage when using E85. It's not as available around here as it used to be, and the only time that I would use it was because the price was lower than the "regular" gas, (E15 or with another percentage of ethanol added), to make up for the decrease in MPG.

I don't know about the subsidies now, but there were some big ones to get them to grow that much extra corn, and to build the refineries (distilleries) to produce it. I don't think they are as big now, because I don't see E85 at as many gas stations as I used to.

[Buckrub]

I use ethanol in wife's gas truck. No problems.

But in my ATV, caused major issues. Same with chainsaw, pruner, blower, any two cycle engine. NO WAY I'd put it in my boat motor! Every time I've used ethanol in those devices it's caused major issues and repair bills. When I stop using it and use non-ethanol, I have no problems.

If that's a tin foil hat thing, fine, but it's my 100% personal experience and not a shot in Heckareeno that I'll use ethanol in anything other than cars/trucks ever, if I can help it. Tired of the repair costs and headaches!

[Thumper]

Whatever the fuel is that comes out of the pumps at Wally World is what I use in everything I own. It has a pic of a corn cob on the front of the pumps ... other than that, I don't even look at it. It's all I've used in anything I've owned that uses gasoline ... cars, trucks, 4-wheeler, boat motor, chainsaw, riding lawn mower, edger, weedeater and leaf blower. It's all I used in my pressure washers (Honda engines) when I was working. I'm sure I've forgotten something ... but I've had ZERO problems with ANYTHING gas powered ... at least not fuel related problems.

Yeah Deppity, I know about the Nasty Car engines ... I was just being a smart-ass. As for Indy cars, the scariest thing about running the alcohol was fire. Heck, your whole pit crew and/or driver could be on fire and you didn't know it until they started running around looking like they were swatting bees. That's scary as hell when you're on fire and nobody can see the flames.

Speaking of Glenn (Fireball) Roberts ... he was sitting in our living room shortly before the Charlotte race where he was killed. He was born here and he and my dad both went to the Univ. of Florida, but Glenn was 2-3 years older I believe. My dad was building Pontiacs for Nascar at the time and racing Fords at the local circle tracks as well as the drags. Glenn used to drive Smokey Yunics Pontiacs until he switched to Holman-Moody's Fords. BTW, he went by Glenn as nobody close to him called him Fireball ... he hated that nickname and actually got it from when he played baseball ... (he pitched a pretty mean fastball). In the house was my dad, Red Vogt (my God Father) and Glenn. After Roberts left, Red looked at my dad and said, "That boy's gettin' ready to get hurt." My dad asked why he thinks so and Red said he's been noticing Glenn starting to lean forward toward the wheel while racing ... he said that's a sign the cars are starting to scare him. The ironic part, "Fireball" was going to retire after the Charlotte race and go to work for a beer company. Can't remember which one ... Schlitz maybe (?). That's the race that killed him (although he actually lived for a couple weeks after being burned).

[Buckrub]

I realize you have had no problems. Many folks have not. But I have, and almost every person I know has also. That's not anecdotal anymore, that's evidence.

But I WISH it worked! Fuel from plants? It'd be great! I'm not against it, it just doesn't work in the stuff I have now. I hope they redesign some of this stuff or something, so it will.

[BarryBobPosthole]

It all comes from the sun one way or the other don't it?

I think we need to figure out how to make a flux capacitor,

BKB

[DeputyDog]

I think the biggest problem is that people complain about using food for fuel, and the added land that it takes to produce it. Brazil is almost entirely fueled by ethanol, not form corn, but sugar cane. The environmentalists complain that the natural habitat and rain forests are being cut down for the planting of cane for the production of fuel.

[Thumper]

It's a vicious circle. We used to get our sugar from Cuba ... until we became afraid of them taking over the world. We grow shitloads of cane here, but the environmentalists raised hell because the big ol' swamp we call Okeechobee was getting polluted by run-off, so now we're spending billions to turn it back into a swamp where nothing marketable can grow. So, now we have to turn more land into farmland to grow corn to make that nasty HFCS crap that's killing us in other ways ... and add even more land to grow corn for ethanol ... heck, corn on the cob in a restaurant will run you a buck-elebenty-ninty-eight nowadays.