alcohol injection and race gas

[meatheadgn]

Hello,
I have a question regarding the use of methonal and 108 octane race gas. The previous best run on the car (TTA) is 11.83 at 115 in Pennsyvania. I live at about 4500 ft above sea level. I have Razors kit and the normal mods, ta-49 THDP, 009's etc. With the latent heat capacity of methonal would it be better to lessen the fuel pressure when running 108 race gas at the track and inject more alcohol to make up for the difference? It seems that there would be an ideal mix of the two at 25 pounds of boost to make the maximum power. I have Eric's multi-position chip in the car.

Would the same reasoning apply to using 91 Octane ( our best premium gas at our elevation) gas on the street, ie Lessen the FP and run more alcohol?

I bought the car a few months ago and I am very impressed with both Razors kit and the multi position chip from Eric. Excellent work on both of your parts.

 

[Eric Stage I]

Glad the chip is working well for you. I don't make multiposition thumbwheels anymore, in fact I think you have the only 009 thumbwheel I ever did. I made that about a year ago.

On my cars, they are always faster with the least amount of alcohol I can run and not get knock. In other words, if I am seeing too much knock, or the car is lean, I adjust fuel first. If that doesn't get it, then I do the alky. However, many people don't have the ability to adjust the fuel, so you have to adjust the alky instead.

As far as race gas and alky, I don't know! I've never run them together really. Kind of defeated the purpose of the alky for me.

Regards,
Eric

 

[Razor]

Actually two weeks ago Richie HI PSI decided to run on C16.. well his 2nd/3rd run was 11.04 at 124 and he got like 2-3 degrees knock on that run. Next run he switched the alky kit on, 10.97 at 125.xx and zero knock. So it does cushion the detonation quite well. I have heard of others.. especially for bringing down intake air temps. Hot air is hot air. The getting the detonation out of hot air can sometimes limit C16. Hence why a lot of cars can run higher boost with alky vs C16 due to temp reduction.

As far as the TTA, get it dialed in on the alcohol with your street chip.. take it from there. You only want to run enough alcohol to quench the knock. Whatever that amount is... is.. thats the tuning part of the equation. If you have to reduce FP and up the alky to kill the knock.. then thats it... or up the fuel pressure and reduce alcohol..then that it. Every car is different.. usually its add alcohol and add fuel

Sorry for not given you a direct answer, but the truth is.. the only way you can find out is trying. Learn the motor and how it responds.. be amazed what you can do on crap gas.. given the assist.

 

[meatheadgn]

Hello Gentlemen,
Thanks for the quick reply. I feel lucky to have the only thumbwheel chip that you made because it is very user friendly and is much easier than pulling the kickpanel out everytime you want to access the computer.

I will experiment with the car. I have a Directscan and a scanmaster so I can mess with it safely. TTAtony did a great job modifying the car and I can see that he put only the best stuff on it as evidenced by his chip and alcohol system selection.

Thanks to both of you for your products and great service. It is nice to know that if I have a question it is very easy to get answers for.

Have a great day,

 

[NOVI2KRT]

Hi Razor,

not wanting to dredge up old posts, but I wanted to add a little of my own experience with methanol and race fuel similar to your post.

I have a fat pig I race.. 4300#'s of Dakota R/T with about 14psi being huffed into it.

What I found using race fuel and a #10 injector nozzle was an average air temp of about 180 degrees on the top end according to my FAST system logs. With a #15 nozzle and the pump speed still maxed out I saw the temp drop to about 160 at the intake runner. All runs I am using Trick 114 as the main fuel, when I first swapped to the #15 I did see a slower E/T.. but what I also discovered was that I could pull fuel trim out of the VE maps to make the truck happy again and run a larger percentage of methanol in the total air/fuel combo. This is what let me raise my timing to stock N/A levels at full boost and the truck started to just scream. I also noticed the ability to lower my target AFR and then off it went again. Race fuel alone I was limited on the timing that I could add partly from intake temps coming up over 200 and the total mix not being "stable" enough to handle the heat of compression without detonation.

I am now wanting to add a second injector when I up the boost to about 25psi on the new engine I am slowly working on. See if at the top end I can to some degree turn my Dakota into a "top alcohol" Dakota! LOL

The methanol also seems to help my fat pig get off the line pretty hard from the nice torque producing "long burn" characteristics.

Ofcourse.. if the bottle empties, or the pump dies in mid run.. kiss my engine goodbye!!! but hey.. that's racing right!!! hehehehe

anyway..

long story short..

race gas with methanol.. HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!! hehe.. as long as some form of tuning is available to balance them.. be it fuel reduction, or alky reduction..


I think I might have the slowest FAST system using car in the country.. best to date 12.28 at 111.40.. show room stock bottom end, including cam, stock heads with mild clean up work.. other tweaks through out. Including QA1's on it now.. liked em so much I got setup as a distributor! hehe..

 

[Razor]

Thanks for the post, it all revolves around tuning. One shouldnt think that adding fuel to a motor and not changing anything will make more power, typically it wont. If the temps inside the motor can be brought down, then its less of a chance to ping it.

If you can run less injector, more methanol... it becomes clear the sky is the limit.

 

[NOVI2KRT]

yip.. I have been havin' a blast every since my truck became an alcoholic, never goes anywhere with out a full bottle! lol..

I got the idea from my methanol dragster friend, my meth source.. figuring that under boost my compression "ratio" was high enough to utilize it well enough, might as well "swap" to it on the upper part of each gear, slowly pulling the gasoline out as the o2's said was safe worked like a champ.

Makes it smell nice too with the cherry lube in it.