Alcohol - EFI

[Steve]

Guys,
In CART and the IRL they both use methanol with EFI.  THey go through an
elaborate ritual of starting the engine on racing gasoline with a different
program in the ecm.  Then after the engine is warmed up, they switch
programs and fuel to methanol.  At the end of the day they pickle the engine
by running gasoline through the system to prevent all of the nasty corrosion
problems.  They leave the methanol in the main tank and have quick
disconnects for the fuel lines to the pump and the return from the fuel
rail.  I watched them go through the whole ritual at Fontana at the last
CART race.

Also, all of the aluminum fuel system parts are hard anodized to prevent
corrosion, like the barrel throttles and injector rails.  The heads are
plain aluminum though, no coatings.

>From what I understand sprint cars and every other form of racing on
methanol uses similar rituals to preserve the equipment.  Hell even gasoline
can have problems, when exxon started making race gas for the IMSA series a
while ago the first stuff was eating all of the rubber in the fuel system
and melting the plastic parts of the injectors.  Teams were replacing fuel
lines like crazy, until they started pickeling the cars at the end of each
weekend.

Just my .02

Steve



>I see all kinds of alloy engine parts mentioned as candidates for being
eaten
>away due to the use of alcohol
>except the most important parts:
>
>ALLOY HEADS ????
>
>Are they not affected??
>
>Thanks for the feedback
>
>Sietze
>
lots of stuff snipped>