lokokkee

It may have a different freezing point, but ethanol (freezing point - 114 deg. C.)should serve the same purpose and methylated spirit is pure ethanol denatured by addition of methanol (freezing point -94 deg. C). As to its effect to the engine, people in US and Brazil have been using gasohol (gasoline-ethanol blend) for ages, and it can't be worse than pure methanol. Also a good octane booster as a bonus and add a few calories to your fuel charge.

[Edited by lokokkee - 12/10/2002 5:15:31 PM]

JamesS

Company called Jennychem in gravesend / maidstone (I think)supplied a 50ltr drum for about 40quid.

Myself and a colleague `shared` it! 5ltr in the tank....lovely!

He uses it in his WI on the GT4....turned it off about a month ago as he reckoned it was running to rough with it. The intake temps are so low that you get no real atomization of the water. Water pools and `runs` into cyclinders (sort-of!)

[Edited by JamesS - 12/10/2002 9:58:38 PM]

AnthonyJ

Guys - any of you people out there running water injection know where I can get methanol from? I'm running an Aquamist 2s system and worried about it freezing up now that the temperature is dropping!

I know people talk about using screenwash that contains methanol (or isopropyl alcohol) but I'm slightly concerned about the detergent - won't that wreck my oil / valves etc (a la cheap supermarket petrol?).

Any advice would be much appreciated!! (NB Just to avoid confusion - I'm talking about water injection not intercooler water spray)...

Cheers,

Anthony.

David_Wallis

When you find out let me know... mine has antifreeze in it

AnthonyJ

Dave -- is it OK to put anti-freeze in? Is Ethylene Glycol safe for my aluminimum header tank (i.e. non corrosive) and OK for the pump, or do modern anti-freezes have other stuff in?! I know that ethanol can cause damage so I'm paranoid about sticking any old thing in!

I assume you've had no problems?!

cheeseboy

Here - where the outside temp is around -4.5 deg at the moment, we use "spiritus" (white spirit to those englishmen ) in the window washer and water injector. It costs around 2€ for a litre. Much cheaper than washer liquid with antifreeze and doesnt leave sticky mess on the window and roof. But, close your vents when you use it - or the cops will get you

Hope this helps - Neal

AnthonyJ

Neal, thanks for your input. Again, I'm quite nervous about this too. I know that in some countries, white spirit is used to describe methanol based products, but in the UK our white spirit (also known as Stoddard Solvent) is a weird mix of more complex hydrocarbons whose effects on my car would be totally unknown! Do you know if this is the stuff you're using?!

This whole thing has got me baffled - even Aquamist can't recommend anyone who can sell me boggo-standard methanol! There are quite a few people out there running water injection systems - what are they all using? Everyone talks about a water / methanol mix, but no-one actually seems to be using it!!

Can anyone help me see the light?!

SCOOBY JON

hi antony

go to your local radio controled model shop and you can buy methanol by the gallon,i think it is about £6 a gallon


jon

BugEyed

Try a directory such as Kellys which will give you an idea. For what you are after an industrial cleaner should be fine. On race engines, where having a dry methanol to mix with petrol as a fuel is important, IMHO the best supplier is 76racing, but it works out at about £1.50 a litre.

Duncan

AnthonyJ

Aquamist explicitly warn against any ethanol-based solvents as they say they damage the pumps (http://www.aquamist.co.uk/rescr/faq/text-a.html#first) - small extract below:

Use a 20% Methanol/water mixture .. Methanol is better than other forms of alcohol and is totally compatible with Aquamist products. Avoid using Ethanol based additives such as De-natured alcohol or Methylated spirit.

...I'm not sure why this should be the case but there we have it. Anyway, thanks to Jon, I now have 5l of super duper methanol sitting in the cupboard and can relax knowing that all the cold weather will do now is make the air denser - hurrah!

Thanks for all your input chaps!

Anthony.

5 Type R

I had the same conversation with Bob Rawle this week.
I have the added problem that I use the same reservior as my Intercooler Water Spray so dot really want to spray ethanol all over the engine bay .

Bob advised using the Halford "Concetrated" Screenwash which has a high ethanol base.In the correct low mix it should be fine for the internals etc . He also said it would be good for cleaning the intercooler at the same time!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have mixed it with about 10% as advised

Regards
Rob

lokokkee

Anthony, I am no expert on alcohols (don't even drink the stuff), but have done some general readings on them and the same type of warnings for ethanol generally also apply to methanol, e.g. (solvent) effect on rubber hoses and tubings, corrosion on metals, highly inflammable (methanol is especially bad, as the flame is near invisible, so you won't even know your car is on fire, lol), poisonous etc. So the manufacturer must have done the tests and come out with their recommendations. You have no downside following them. Cheers.

rex11

You won't run into problems with the pumps and such until you reach mixtures exceeding ~10% methanol. The main advantage of running methanol is not just the freeze protection, but it is the evaporative cooling it provides. It evaporates faster then water alone, and to evaporate it must pull heat (thermal energy) from the surroundings to accomplish the phase change. The higher the concentration of Methanol the better the evaporative cooling effects. A methanol based washere fluid is completely safe as the detergents are in small concentrations and are denatured (made inactive) by the high heat of the engine. Like any water injection situation you need to be careful with how much you use. If you have to run it all the time than you probably should retune.

Trout...

Using an Aquasmist WRC system I have 50% methanol mix. It is very good.

As far as supply is concerned - I stole it from a very good friend of mine

Trout

PS Methanol changes the fueling - but apparently has on odd effect on the lambda readings as methanol has a different stoich point so what you read is not exactly what you get!

BugEyed

Sorry to get picky, but Methanol doesn't take more heat (strictly speaking energy) out of the air than water. The data for this is the latent heat of vapourisation, which is as follows;

Methanol (CH3OH) 1008 joules/gram (240 calories)
Water (H2O) 2264 joules/gram (539 calories)

So water will take out over twice the amount of energy when it evaporates than methanol will. However, methanol has the benefit of evaporating at a lower temperature (64.5 C vs. 100 C), and freezing at a lower temperature (-98 C vs 0 C), hence its use as an anti-freeze.

So you do not want to run to high a % mix of methanol for the purpose of reducing inlet temperatures. However, methanol is also a fuel, and has the benefit that you can run it horribly rich (up to 40% over stoiciometric) without a significant loss of power.

Trout aludes to part of the reason why some people state that methanol takes out more heat than petrol, and this is due to the fact that you use over twice as much of it to reach a stoichiometric mixture (6.5:1 vs. 12.4:1) with air, hence getting greater cooling effects.

Hope that hurts the brains a bit on a Monday morning!

Duncan