Denatured alcohol: Make your car pass emissions

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34994

Just a precursor, this is not a permanent fix. Do not do this every time you need to pass emissions, it honestly is not good for your engine otherwise your car would run on the stuff. This is meant for people in a crunch that need to pass inspection and either dont have the time or money to fix the problem.

With that said, if you want to know what denatured alcohol is, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatured_alcohol

Denatured alcohol is basically ethanol. That stuff, if you are in the US, that your car already runs somewhere near 18% of. From what I know, denatured alcohol burns sooner than gasoline but burns hotter. Which means turbo systems are in danger of predetonation if they are running too lean. The benifits is that denatured alcohol runs very clean. A friend of mine with a supercharged AE86 corolla passed under half all of the emissions requirements for the state of maryland.

I have NOT run tests to really see how bad this is for your car so I take no responsibility if you do something stupid and try to run your whole car on the stuff and get a skull fracture when your piston rockets through your head (engine and/or body).

Anyway, if I havent scared you off, heres how you do it!
1. Buy 1-2 quarts of denatured alcohol from your local hardware store (home depot give me a sponsorship!)
2. Run your tank down anywhere from 1/4 tank to the E line depending on how gutsy you feel or how badly your car passed emissions last time.
3. Throw the bottle of denatured alcohol into your tank.
4. Warm up the car and drive it immediately to your emissions place.
5. Either run down your tank or siphon out the rest of the fuel
6. Fill up a FULL tank to dillute any denatured alcohol thats left

Tada! you have now passes emissions with flying colors.

I've no need for this as my car just passed NCT but could this be useful for a car failing on high emissions?

Pretty sure Denatured alcohol is the same as Methylated Spirits..

Dartz

IIRC, alcohol in fuel will kill O2 sensors in short order.

If you're car runs an older open-loop management system without O2 sensors (or carb's), then it'll work. But cars this old are already exempt from the NCT anyway.

Alcohol can also eat the aluminium insides of some engines. And it will cause lean running above trace amounts. You need more alcohol per gramme of air, than you need petrol, and an engine set to run on petrol will lean out somewhat running on an alcohol mix, especially a large percentage.

Alcohol does burn more efficiently, with more heat, but you need more of it.

Esel

Would a bit of E85 not be handier/safer?

L1011

Dartz wrote: »

IIRC, alcohol in fuel will kill O2 sensors in short order.

...seeing as most unleaded in Ireland contains 5% alcohol now, this is a bit unlikely.

Barr

Ads by Google wrote: »

http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34994




I've no need for this as my car just passed NCT but could this be useful for a car failing on high emissions?

Pretty sure Denatured alcohol is the same as Methylated Spirits..

Has anyone on here tried this ... its says use 1-2 quarts of the stuff , what measurement is this ?

Esel

A US quart (2 pints) is 32 fluid ounces; Imperial 40. Afaik!

AsphaltRisin'

Dartz wrote: »

IIRC, alcohol in fuel will kill O2 sensors in short order.

If you're car runs an older open-loop management system without O2 sensors (or carb's), then it'll work. But cars this old are already exempt from the NCT anyway.

ah... what? LOADS of cars used carbs up to the 90s, and certainly arent exempt from the nct.

Matt Simis

esel wrote: »

Would a bit of E85 not be handier/safer?

Exactly, I still cant understand why people on some forums talk about Acetone, straight, non fuel grade alcohols and leaded Race or Airplane fuel.

I regularly read Planete85, folks there are running everything from '69 Camaros to new 5.7L Dodge pickups on full E85 (and some brewing their own straight ethanol, ie E100), some with tuning, injector/fueling changes or no changes.. All you ever hear over hear is scaremongering.

Here are some results from different people that only used a small amount of e85 mixed in to just pass Emissions testing (as opposed full time conversion):

Just installed a Supercharger, put car over max CO emissions:

The limits are as follows:
HC:1.2
CO:15.0
NOx:2.5

My first attempt (Tuesday) gave the following readings:
HC:0.8765
CO:16.2569
NOx:0.7183

My second attempt (today) yielded the following:
HC:0.3774
CO:8.0269
NOx:2.0734

The difference was that the first attempt was on 91 octane, the second was a mixture of 75% 91 octane, 25% E-85 with no adjustment in tune.
If he had more than 33% E85 the NOx would have dropped back down too, as seen here:

Emissions numbers on a WRX running 100% E85.
This is on the IM240 road dyno test.

Here are my readings vs the limits for my car
............ reading

---

limit ...
HC GPM -- 0.33

---

1.200
CO GPM -- 3.96

---

20.00
CO2 GPM -- 414.3 -- NA ---
NOx GPM -- 1.92

---

3.0

Running E85 means you can remove your Cat (as the emissions are low enough anyway) which in turn gives an MPG and performance increase, the fuel itself generates more torque in low RPM and usually a 5-10% perf. increase on average without tuning (even NA cars get 5% ish). With tuning, the much, much lower combustion temps means turbo boost can be increased (on low PSI boost setups intercoolers can be removed) and the air (being cooler) intake contains more oxygen. MPG loss (ignoring any gain from Cat removal) ranges from 0% to 20%. Octane rating is around 105.

Im currently running the Allroad, which is E5 tuned, with 50% E85. So far even stock fuel injectors could adapt perfectly fine (they requested 11% more fuel at peak) and MPG has no discernable difference. When I get the Cat out, I expect an increase on the MPG and performance and to still pass the NCT.

Matt Simis

Dartz wrote: »

IIRC, alcohol in fuel will kill O2 sensors in short order.

Alcohol can also eat the aluminium insides of some engines. And it will cause lean running above trace amounts. You need more alcohol per gramme of air, than you need petrol, and an engine set to run on petrol will lean out somewhat running on an alcohol mix, especially a large percentage.

Alcohol does burn more efficiently, with more heat, but you need more of it.

I think you have been reading too many half truths and myths.

-As pointed out, O2 sensors are designed to sniff fuel exhaust that had Ethanol in it anyway. Also, the O2 sensors are not actually touching the Ethanol, they measure Oxygen in the Exhaust.
-Alcohol is a vague term. Methanol is corrosive to various engine parts, it shouldnt be used. Ethanol however isnt. It can negatively affect certain (unplated, ie rare and very old) Aluminium pars mainly due to water content in the ethanol if both the metal and ethanol are left to the elements. Majority of cars use ethanol safe plastics and metals and are sealed. This is commonplace since the 1980s when ethanol was introduced in that fuel crisis.
-Engines do not always just "lean out" when used with percentages of Ethanol ("alcohol"). Its a real possibility, granted, however standard Injectors (via the ECU) generally allow a 20 to 25% adaptation of Injector Duty Cycle (IDC) which will compensate for this. However bigger injectors is a better way of handling this (and/or a custom ECU tune).
-The biggest error is "alcohol burns with more heat". The whole point and biggest advantage to alcohol fuels (E100 is used exclusively in Indycar afaik) is that it burns much cooler. 200 degrees cooler, so much cooler infact that occasionally the EGT isnt enough to even activate the Cat in the exhaust system, another reason to remove it.