is ethonol really cheap?

[ZWHEELS]

if you noticed corn prices are going up why becuse farmer's arn't stupid. they told us that ethonol will be a cheap fuel... yah right what do you think farmers are going to do. they will plant less corn have smaller harvest's to drive up the price. finaly a way for farmers to make money the easy way. it will happen but wait if the price goes up the refinerys will do a walmart and buy cheap corn from over sea's. and not from american farmers then we sit back and watch the farmers go bankrupt and have to shut down. remember corn in one way or another in all it's forms is in almost everything we eat. food will cost more than we ever could have thought it would ever get. do you want to stand in line for hours just to buy a $20.00 loaf of bread? cows eat a mix of corn how about the price of beef!!! not to worry they will just import the beef. you wana eat mexican beef i don't iv'e been to mexico. i guess i'll become a vegitarion oops forgot most of the farmers invested heavy into the big money maker corn. and lost everything to the banks... guess we will have to buy over priced vegies from over sea's... we are f**ked

[CJ Guy]

Either way Z, the writing is on the wall, we are f**ked... I feel sorry for our children having to deal with the way the world has and will become. It makes me sad.

[ZWHEELS]

just saw on CNN that mexican farmers are tourching there felds of the plant that you make tequila out of. thats 30% of the plants so far. and guess what they are replacing them with.....CORN.... why corn? becuse the corn prices are so high.

[Petey]

Ethanol is a huge scam ! Costs more to produce than it's worth. Has less BTU per gallon than even our shitty gasoline. If all our country's corn crop was converted over to fuel it would maybe cover 12 percent of the total need. Watch what it does to older vehicles fuel systems too.
And you are right, what about the food and other products containing corn ? Some politicians and their cronys need thrown out on their ear for pushing this stupid idea. I'm not against alternate fuels, but this fantasy isn't gonna' be the answer to our fuel needs without a lot of serious development.
Hillbilly

[ForistellFord]

Add to Petey's point, the savings per gallon is all but lost in the greatly reduced MPG achieved. IMHO it is not a viable alternative, not nearly as good as shale exploration and ANWR reserves. We really need to tap that stuff. And maybe pull back some of the corproate welfare tax breaks that are given to big oil.

[BlueOvals]

Our future fuel may be on the moon, not in corn fields here; and we'd better get going again, not in 2020 but more like 2015, we can do it. It's helium 3, discovered by Jack Schmidt, in surface rocks and soils, on the last moon landing. And its primarily a good fuel source for nuclear fusion reactors; does not degrade their containment vessels so soon. Cheap fuel eventually for the planet's electrical needs, including charging cars, or mass transit. The annual costs of the war, which I'm not against, but using for illustration purposes, could get us there 5 years earlier. We don't want to wait to find out the Chinese have gotten there first, and put up their flag and claimed the whole damn planet for themselves; that's something we should have done back in 1969!!!! Seems like we are so asleep at so many switches these days! If we corral this and don't be so nice to "give it away" to the rest of the world, we'll be the future "Opec" in regards to this source of energy!! Biggest problem with this idea is that we'll be stuck with all those whimpy little electric eco-freako-cars, and godawful "people movers", from now on :(

[burninbush]

Pssst! Propane! 110 octane, cheap, especially if you can fill your tanks from non-road use sources.

I'm still considering using it on my Chero -- looks like a new conversion kit and a couple 10-gallon forklift tanks would run about $1k.

You'll lose about 10% mileage / gallon, but should be able to get a bit more hp just from being able to run much more ignition advance and higher CR. Dealing with refueling is a PITA -- no easy way around that today.

As far as I can discover, nobody is yet doing anything like EFI with propane, has several problem characteristics that make that difficult. But some of the problems of 'wet' manifold disappear with propane, which is a gas at any pressure found in an intake manifold.

http://www.gotpropane.com/p11.html

[BlueOvals]

BB, and it stinks to high heaven too!! It is my primary fuel up where I live in the mountains. Why not do the conversion and please get back to us with the results?

[ZWHEELS]

how about a backyard still? we could add a few old radiator's to add the lead. and off ya go

[75 Squire]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18941618/

This Biofuel BS is allready having a effect.

[burninbush]

BB, and it stinks to high heaven too!! It is my primary fuel up where I live in the mountains. >blue

++++++++++++++

Maybe you can tell me something about it -- is there some way to get liquid propane out of those big residential tanks, i.e., to fill a forklift tank? If we ever do make the move to Sonora I would have one of those in my yard.

Where is the liquid-to-gas converter on a home rig? At the tank, or closer to the house?

[BlueOvals]

BB, not sure about the technology, just know it works for us. Seems all fill, regulator stuff is right at the tank. I have a 500 gallon one, it lasts most of winter, as I'm gone during the daylight hours and turn it down. So is the propane you get at some gas stations to fill your BBQ grill's 5 gallon tank not the stuff you'd use in this converison for a car? Otherwise I guess you could get it filled at the station, but not a self serve situation which could be a paion sometimes as they don't often "hop to it" when you ask them ato come out and fill the tank. How big would the tank in the back of the truck, be? 20 gals? 50 gals? By the way, even a 5 gallon tank full of propane is really heavy, seems heavier than 5 gals of gas. A 50 gal tank in back of truck would be a good load. Explanations??

[burninbush]

I think the propane is all the same, but if you buy propane for a motor vehicle you have to pay road-use taxes on it. That's why I wanted to know about refilling tanks at home.

The tank(s) for propane is a big part of the hassle, any 'old' tank is now illegal to use or refill, some law that got passed in recent years.

What the off-road conversion folks recommend is 10-gallon forklift tanks, approx 12" dia and 37" long. You'd need two of them for any range. I assume you could fill them in-place. It would be a hassle, no doubt, and any trip would take advance planning. I can see a simple rack in the front of the bed area to hold two of them, maybe an aluminum tread-plate cover to keep the curious away from them.

From what I can find, there are no legal conversion kits, nothing that would pass a visual smog check. CA law [maybe federal?] sez the tanks have to be in ventilated space, not legal to put them in an enclosed trunk for example, but a pickup bed is OK.

The carb part of the off-road kits seems crude to me, but they work, and you can even find web pages of people who drag-race with propane.

As for EFI, the normal setup wouldn't work because you can't recirculate the fuel back into the tank like with gasoline. On a hot day, an exposed tank can get up to near 500psi, so no normal injectors would work over the large pressure range the propane tank provides.

Compressed natural gas might be a better way to go -- there are dual-fuel cars right now that work with cng -- and there may be more filling stations too. CNG has an even higher octane, maybe 130. Honda has [or will have soon] a home cng filling pump, hook it to your garage nat gas pipe and fill your Honda overnight at home.

[75 Squire]

Its a pitty that Ford, and Dodge dont offer at home refill kits for CNG seeing as they have a lock down on fleet CNG vehicle sales to the military at the moment. It wouldnt be that hard to do just some willingness on the manufactures part to sell these vehicles to the public.

[75 Squire]

I have seen some of those in use as cab's down in San Diego. Only problem being theres only 2 gas stations that have CNG pumps, in the greater San Diego area.

[BlueOvals]

Wow, nice post, 2 seater! Any one else here ever try the toluene Rocket Fuel?

[75 Squire]

As soon as I get my Squire back on the road I will try.


Oh and NO Ethanol is not cheap. They need government subsidies to get the price lower than gasoline. Your still paying for it in the end.

[ June 01, 2007, 03:39 PM: Message edited by: 75 Squire ]

[BlueOvals]

Today, a friend of mine, who has a 72 Chero, and I went looking for toluene to try it in his 302 powered car. We went to a hardware store that has "Everything", but could not locate it, folks seemed not to know what it was. Anyway, just thought I'd pass it on. Will keep checking around, maybe in Yellow pages.

[BlueOvals]

P.S. Jeff thought maybe it was a druggie ingredient, just a wild guess, and may be tough to get over here because of that.

[79er]

You can get toluene at Sherwin williams stores around here.

[BlueOvals]

OK, will check with paint stores next. Yeah, 2 seater, now I remebember that it is in model glue!!

[burninbush]

OK, will check with paint stores next. Yeah, 2 seater, now I remebember that it is in model glue!!>blue

+++++++++++++

Yeah, I remember that fondly, too. What was it in model airplane [glow plug] fuel that smelled so good?

[BlueOvals]

Yeah, good childhood memories; smells are powerful triggers to those. Ambroid glue, Testors model paints, balsa wood, lacquer dope, engine fuel, Estes rocket engines, Jetex engines and fuse, all great smelly stuff!!!