Alternative Fuels?

[VENGER]

I've been hearing a lot about e85 and other alcohol based fuels and was wondering if Anyone knew if the 6th gen can run on other fuel sources? Would the fuel system handle e85 or would there have to be a few or a lot of things changes? I'm curious because i've haven't heard of anyone bringing this up on motorcycles but it seems to be coming up more with car discussions. I wouldn't mind using e85 and it would be kinda cool to see what kind of power gains it would get and how fuel economy would be affected.

[Dutchy]

Silly me filled up my 4th gen (carbs) with e85 once.... The engine ran like shit, stumble, poor pickup. Maybe a fi engine will fare better.

http://www.vfrdiscussion.com/forum/index.php/topic/75532-apology-to-my-bike/?p=906601

There will be no power gain and your fuel economy will be less

[Lint]

Our engines cannot tolerate anything more than E10, even says so in the owner's manual. It would require a lot of changes to run E85, like a lot higher compression, for one and most likely different injectors, pump and fuel lines and possibly even different rings.

[VENGER]

I was having discussion with a fews buddies of mine and some where saying yes and some were saying no. One said that you would have to change all the hoses, seals, rubbers, run different oil and change the air fuel mixture. Also said with a proper tune you could get more power out of it than regular gas. Another simply said no it would ruin the engine.

[TNRabbit]

Adding alcohol to fuel was the worst idea the government ever came up with.

....OK, maybe not the WORST, but you get my drift...

[V4 Rosso]

to what Lint wrote.

[Switchblade]

Silly me filled up my 4th gen (carbs) with e85 once.... The engine ran like shit, stumble, poor pickup. Maybe a fi engine will fare better.

There will be no power gain and your fuel economy will be less

Moonshine ?

[Dutchy]

Silly me filled up my 4th gen (carbs) with e85 once.... The engine ran like shit, stumble, poor pickup. Maybe a fi engine will fare better.

There will be no power gain and your fuel economy will be less

Moonshine ?

Today I cycled out to a place where there was suposedly a "korn brennerei"......... I found a derelict building and learned they stopped making shine a few years ago... bummer..... so back to the Knob Creek, Caol Ila and Port Charlotte tonight....

[YoshiHNS]

I was having discussion with a fews buddies of mine and some where saying yes and some were saying no. One said that you would have to change all the hoses, seals, rubbers, run different oil and change the air fuel mixture. Also said with a proper tune you could get more power out of it than regular gas. Another simply said no it would ruin the engine.

As most others have said, NO!. E85 will only work properly with an engine that has been specifically designed for it. You will not get any sort of gain, only headaches. It has also been shown to not be nearly as efficient as pure gas or even E10.

Do not put it in anything you own not strictly rated for E85 only unless you want to destroy said vehicle.

[dalesvfr]

I'd try in an old KLR if no other fuel could be had. That's about it though.

[spud786]

I was having discussion with a fews buddies of mine and some where saying yes and some were saying no. One said that you would have to change all the hoses, seals, rubbers, run different oil and change the air fuel mixture. Also said with a proper tune you could get more power out of it than regular gas. Another simply said no it would ruin the engine.

E85 unless the motor is designed for it, will seriously screw up the fuel system, I saw the results back when e85 first came out on a new Chevrolet, that wasn't designed for it.. Personally I run a combo of unleaded and leaded race fuel, don't know why anyone would run different. 110,000 miles and the bike has been rock reliable other than a stator at 56,000 thousand miles and no valve check.

[Rush2112]

I was having discussion with a fews buddies of mine and some where saying yes and some were saying no. One said that you would have to change all the hoses, seals, rubbers, run different oil and change the air fuel mixture. Also said with a proper tune you could get more power out of it than regular gas. Another simply said no it would ruin the engine.

... Personally I run a combo of unleaded and leaded race fuel, don't know why anyone would run different. ...

No one else runs it because lead causes brain damage and other neurological disorders... you may not care but most parents do

[spud786]

Had kids and they are grown and out the door, Its very nice BTW!

Lead cant be any worse than Rap music and drugs, far more detrimental to your kids.

[Rush2112]

Had kids and they are grown and out the door, Its very nice BTW!

Lead cant be any worse than Rap music and drugs, far more detrimental to your kids.

Believe it or not... no music causes brain damage; and most drugs deplete from your system once you stop taking them. Granted, certain recreational drugs can alter brain development during the formative years...

Lead exposure is cumulative and lead doesn't usually deplete quickly from your system over time without chelation treatment... just keeps building up. There is a direct correlation between increased lead concentrations in the body and decreased IQ... even when normalized for socioeconomic contributing factors.

I'm glad your kids are grown and out the door. I don't know how your neighbors would feel if they found out you were emitting lead into the air their kids breath. Especially, since there is no known safe threshold for lead exposure that has been discovered—that is, there is no known sufficiently small amount of lead that will not cause harm to the body.

Lead was removed from gas for a reason...

[BusyLittleShop]

Personally I run a combo of unleaded and leaded race fuel, don't know why anyone would run different.

The primary use of tetraethyl lead was knock or detonation control...

if your engine is a modern combustion chamber such as Honda's 4 valve

pentroof then lead is not necessary to prevent knock... not mention

lead is a unwanted maintenance item because it builds up yellow

deposits on the spark plugs... I don't why a owner would go to all

that trouble when the lowest octane fuel at the pump works without

the dreaded denotation problem...

The story how lead got into our fuels started with high compression

aircraft engines back in 1921... a young engineer fresh out of college

named Charles Kettering started Dayton Engineering Labs Company or

Delco... he invented the first battery ignition systems for aircraft

engines... when protagonists in the field of aviation widely blamed

his battery ignition systems on knock or detonation Kettering

commanded his young assistant Thomas A. Midgley on a investigation of

detonation. motivated as much by a desire to protect Delco's

reputation as by scientific altruism. Midgley worked for months over

his single cylinder engine and famous "bouncing pin" which was devised

to measure differences in detonation pressures. and he soon determined

that detonation depended on both fuel grade and engine compression

ratio. Thinking at first that fuel color influenced knock. Midgley

added iodine to his fuel theorizing a dark-colored fuel would absorb

more heat energy and vaporize more quickly. When the knock diminished

he smelled success, but it did not come in the form . he suspected.

Further experiments forced him to discard the fuel color idea but led

in turn to a long. frustrating line of trial anti-knock additives. GM.

parent company of Delco. encouraged Midgley and his assistant T. A.

Boyd. who in a vigorous program, individually tested more than 30,000

compounds and their discouragement mounted with the list. On December

9, 1921. a chilly Friday. Midgley and Boyd were anticipating the

weekend's respite from their series of relentless, routine tests when

suddenly the engine was not behaving the same at all. Jolted into

disbelief, Midgley had quite literally stumbled onto the remarkable

antiknock properties of an obscure substance called tetraethyl lead.

This proved to be without doubt the greatest single discovery in the

development of aviation fuels; not only did this additive make higher

power possible. it enabled the aeroplane to fly farther on a given

amount of fuel- it gave the aeroplane range- and in turn enabled the

successful engines that dominated aviation until the advent of gas

turbines. In 1967 the remarkable Mr. Midgley was still active as

president of the American Chemical Society.

[BusyLittleShop]

The story on how lead was legislated out of our fuels started when
Clair Cameron Patterson could not isolate his rock samples from lead
contamination in the lab in an effort to determine the age of the
earth... he was shocked to learn lead was everywhere and developed the
first sealed clean lab to prevent lead from messing up the data...

Quote Wiki
The University of Chicago developed a new method for counting lead
isotopes in igneous rocks, and assigned it to Clair Cameron Patterson
as a dissertation project in 1948. During this period he operated
under the assumption that meteorites are left-over materials from the
creation of the Solar System, and thus by measuring the age of one of
these rocks the age of the Earth would be revealed. Gathering the
materials required time, and in 1953, Clair Cameron Patterson had his
final specimens from the Canyon Diablo meteorite. He took them to the
Argonne National Laboratory, where he was granted time on a late model
mass spectrometer.

In a meeting in Wisconsin soon afterward, Patterson revealed the
results of his study. The definitive age of the Earth is 4.550 billion
years (give or take 70 million years). This number still stands,
although the margin of error is now down to about 20 million years.

His ability to isolate microgram quantities of lead from ordinary
rocks and determine their isotope composition led him to examining the
lead in ocean sediment samples from the Atlantic and Pacific. Deriving
from the different ages at which the landmasses had drained into the
ocean, he was able to show that the amount of anthropogenic lead
presently dispersed into the environment was about eighty times the
amount being deposited in the ocean sediments: the geochemical cycle
for lead appeared to be badly out of balance.

The limitations of the analytic procedures led to him using other
approaches. He found that deep ocean water contained 3-10 times less
lead than surface water, in contrast to similar metals such as barium.
This led him to doubt the commonly held view that lead concentrations
had only grown by a factor of two over naturally occurring levels.

Patterson returned to the problem of his initial experiment and the
contamination he had found in the blanks used for sampling. He
determined through ice-core samples from Greenland that atmospheric
lead levels had begun to increase steadily and dangerously soon after
tetraethyl lead began to see widespread use in fuel, when it was
discovered to reduce engine knock in internal combustion engines.
Patterson subsequently identified this, along with the various other
uses of lead in manufacturing, as the cause of the contamination of
his samples, and because of the significant public-health implications
of his findings, he devoted the rest of his life to removing as much
introduced lead from the environment as possible.

Beginning in 1965, with the publication of Contaminated and Natural
Lead Environments of Man, Patterson tried to draw public attention to
the problem of increased lead levels in the environment and the food
chain due to lead from industrial sources. Perhaps partly because he
was criticizing the experimental methods of other scientists, he
encountered strong opposition from recognized experts such as Robert
A. Kehoe.

In his effort to ensure that lead was removed from gasoline
(petroleum), Patterson fought against the lobbying power of the Ethyl
Corporation (which employed Kehoe), against the legacy of Thomas
Midgley — which included tetraethyllead and chlorofluorocarbons — and
against the lead additive industry as a whole. Following Patterson's
criticism of the lead industry, he was refused contracts with many
research organizations, including the supposedly neutral United States
Public Health Service. In 1971 he was excluded from a National
Research Council (NRC) panel on atmospheric lead contamination, even
though he was the foremost expert on the subject at that time.[4]

Patterson's efforts ultimately led to the Environmental Protection
Agency announcing in 1973 a reduction of 60-65% in phased steps, and
ultimately the removal of lead from all standard, consumer, automotive
gasoline in the United States by 1986. Lead levels within the blood of
Americans are reported to have dropped by up to 80% by the late
1990s.[5]

He then turned his attention to lead in food where similar
experimental deficiencies had masked the increase. In one study he
showed an increase in lead levels from 0.3 to 1400 nanograms per gram
in certain canned fish compared with fresh, whilst the official
laboratory had reported an increase of 400 to 700.[6] He compared the
lead, barium and calcium levels in 1600 year-old Peruvian skeletons
and showed a 700- to 1200-fold increase in lead levels in modern human
bones with no comparable changes in the barium and calcium levels.[7]

In 1978 he was appointed to a NRC panel which accepted many of the
increases and the need for reductions but argued the need for more
research.[8] His opinions were expressed in a 78-page minority report
which argued that control measures should start immediately, including
gasoline, food containers, paint, glazes and water distribution
systems. Thirty years later, most of these have been accepted and
implemented in the United States and many other parts of the world.

[GadiantonRob]

TL;DR

E85 is great for boosted applications. Guys on the mustang cobra forums would get e85 swapped and run it, because e85 has an octane rating of like 115.

Terrible for n/a, but if turbo bikes come back...

[spud786]

BLS,

The ratio I run has nothing to do with Knock, lead oxide flakes are an excellent decarboniser with the right ratio, not to mention valve cushioning and reducing recession, But true, too much can lead to deposits just like in a rifle bore.

Nascar many years ago banned Leaded fuel, and they started blowing motors shortly after, then they quietly allowed it back in.

[Rush2112]

...

Nascar many years ago banned Leaded fuel, and they started blowing motors shortly after, then they quietly allowed it back in.

Sunoco and Penske have been working together since the 60's. Sunoco supplies Nascar's race fuel and Sunoco has been the official fuel of Nascar since 2004. It is 98 octane and is called Green E15 because it is actually green in color. Based on Sunoco's description on it's website it is UNLEADED...

"Sunoco® Green E15™ is a highly oxygenated unleaded race fuel that contains 15 volume percent ethanol."

Nascar does not use leaded fuel.

[BusyLittleShop]

BLS,

The ratio I run has nothing to do with Knock, lead oxide flakes are an excellent decarboniser with the right ratio, not to mention valve cushioning and reducing recession, But true, too much can lead to deposits just like in a rifle bore.

You're addressing problems the VFR doesn't suffer but if you wish to decarbon just inject a tinny stream of water into the intake and the compression will turn

it to steam which cleans the aluminum to a shinny luster... ever since nolead fuels all modern engines employ harden valve seats which do not need lead for cushion...

[spud786]

BLS,

The ratio I run has nothing to do with Knock, lead oxide flakes are an excellent decarboniser with the right ratio, not to mention valve cushioning and reducing recession, But true, too much can lead to deposits just like in a rifle bore.

You're discussing problems the VFR doesn't suffer but if you wish to decarbon just inject a tinny stream of water into the intake and the compression will turn

it to steam which cleans the aluminum to a shinny luster... ever since nolead fuels all modern engines employ harden valve seats which do not need lead for cushion...

If there was no recession , valves would never need checking or adjustment, and even you ought to know that's unheard of in the motorcycle world.

The valves themselves tulip and recess over time, its a side effect with tiny valves in motorcycles, cars with bigger valves have much less recession isssues. You have a motorcycle shop right, and you don't know this?

[BusyLittleShop]

If there was no recession , valves would never need checking or adjustment, and even you ought to know that's unheard of in the motorcycle world.

The valves themselves tulip and recess over time, its a side effect with tiny valves in motorcycles, cars with bigger valves have much less recession isssues. You have a motorcycle shop right, and you don't know this?

Checking for tulip vales is just one of my inspection steps... but the

last time I had to replace a tulip was on the intake side of my air

cooled GPZ550 but the cure wasn't adding more lead... it was adding the

twice as hard exhaust valve in the intake side... None of my RC30 /

RC45 / VFR customers has had a problem with soft valves...

[spud786]

I agree the vfr is very good on valves, but hardened seats overall really falls short on valve recession issue amongst many different models in the motorcycle world.

[YoshiHNS]

Direct from Sunoco:

Leaded fuels should not be used where oxygen sensors and/or catalytic converters are used.

http://www.racegas.com/article/38

[BusyLittleShop]

I agree the vfr is very good on valves, but hardened seats overall really falls short on valve recession issue amongst many different models in the motorcycle world.

Overall no one is complaining about valve recession...