This may be a stupid question, but has anyone ever set up or tried to set up a moped to run an alcohol fuel like some of the Yamaha Kart motors? How do you do it? My Old Man raced 2 stroke Karts when dinosaurs were more than just what we put in our gas tanks. He said an alcohol motor is much faster than a gas motor of equivalent displacement, but also that they were hard to start and easy to burn up. Does anyone have any experience with alcohol burning 'ped motors?
I have not done it.... But engines that were not made specifically for alcohol have this problem >
alcohol acts as a corrosive to internal engine parts... so it is not very good for most engines that have to spend most of their time sitting still and not running
It does make a typical 30% more HP... and needs much richer carb jetting.
Lots of dragracers and hillclimbers use it.
Many of them have to drain their fuel after a race and run gasoline thru to help stop the corrosion.
Fuel mileage is also severely decreased (big jets).
I think that alcohol, gasoline, and diesel all require different compression ratios in the combustion chamber to run most efficiently. Also, there's a span of efficiency over how many rpms you're doing. Certain race cars like alcohol at specific rpms. Meaning they're not designed to pick up the groceries in the morning. If you want to put alcohol in the tank on a permanent basis, you'd probably have to do some serious re-tooling of your combustion chamber, spark plug etc., (and i don't know about mixing oil in there). Good luck
The oil is no problem... you have to use vegetable castor oil (from castor beans).
The idea of alcohol for mopeds that weren't designed for it is just not practical.
Actually, I retuned a Tomos Bullet (A3 Motor) once and ran it off of that high-grade stuff they run in model airplanes once...you can buy that in a pre-mix from some hobby stores.
It runs well, but is certainly not good for the engine at all, over time it will corrode many of the parts....and of course, you have to retune rather radically to get it to work.
It's not at all cost-effective either....yet.
-Ree
Want to post in this forum? We'd love to have you join the discussion, but first: