MG-Cars.info

Welcome to our Site for MG, Triumph and Austin-Healey Car Information.

Parts

MG parts spares and accessories are available for MG T Series (TA, MG TB, MG TC, MG TD, MG TF), Magnette, MGA, Twin cam, MGB, MGBGT, MGC, MGC GT, MG Midget, Sprite and other MG models from British car spares company LBCarCo.

MG MGB Technical - Ethenol Enhanced Fuel

I have heard a rumor floating around about the ethenol that has been added to our fuel around here (up to 10%)is eating up the cork glands and gaskets in our carborators. Any one else heard this and can it be confirmed? Thanks to all...
Steve O

i haven't eaten up any cork yet but I need to turn the carb jets down one flat to get the car to idle correctly. It is also hard on aluminum. I don't know where your located but here it is used in the special reformulated gas to reduce polution. I have been able to drive 15 miles to the next county where it is not required. It will also reduce your milage as the heat content per gallon is less then pure gas.
John H

I haven't personally seen problems with cork being attacked, but I have seen the affects of accelerated wear on rubber components, caused by ethanol-laced fuels. You don't usually see anything wrong until the part fails catastrophically.
Steve Simmons

the bottle of wine i just had was 14% ethanol and the cork was intact. hic. :-}
mick

Mans got a point! LOL

I'd like to replace all my rubber hoses with Viton hoses at some stage just as preventative maintenance. Also, Im curious to see just how hard it would be to get an MG to run on pure ethanol. Petrol prices are getting out of hand now. I think I'll have to sacrifice some of the power of the car at some stage in favour of running costs if things keep going like this.
Ross Kelly

Ross, we have E85 over here also which is 85% ethanol 15% gas. The car makers have been turning out cars and light trucks that will burn conventional gas or E85. The E85 costs almost as much as gas and will reduce milage about 30% per gallon or more. It's just a feel good thing as the amount of energy required to produce ethanol is higher then the energy produced by it, so right now production is being subsidized.
John H

Right, well that tears the ar*e out of that idea then! Any other suggestions?

Ross "Can't be bothered to log on properly" Kelly
Ross Kelly

Ross,

The MG, or any car with SUs, are easier than most to run on ethanol because the carburetor is easily adjustable. You usually need to run a richer mixture for ethanol than for gasoline. I don't know if you can get enough change by adjustment alone, or if you would need a richer needle.

I used to run a Saab 99 (with a Triumph TR7 engine) on 75% gasoline and 25% ethanol. I started doing it because it was supposed to run premium fuel of an octane that was not available at the time I had the car.

The standard static ignition timing on the Saab was 9 degrees BTDC, but it spark knocked at that setting with the premium fuel of the day. Because of the very high octane rating of ethanol, I was able to run it on non-premium gasoline with the ignition timing at 18 degrees BTDC with no hint of spark knock.

Besides curing the spark knock, there was also an improvement from 25 to 29.5 mpg (US gallons). You would expect the mileage to be worse as the ethanol content went up because of the lower BTU value. All things being equal this would be so, but tuning for the increase in octane means that all things are not equal. I assume my mileage improvement was a result of the ignition timing advance since I made no other changes.

Just for fun, I ran it on straight ethanol for about 10 miles to see if it would work. I just ran it with a tiny bit of "choke" pulled on the ZS carb. I didn't do it long enough to check the fuel mileage, but the temperature gauge never came off the bottom peg. I assume this was because ethanol burns quite cool compared to gasoline. So, to run straight ethanol, you would probably need to do some minor modifications to the cooling system.

I also ran a large walk-behind lawnmower on E85, and the only change I made was about a half a turn richer on the fuel metering needles. It ran smoother than on straight gasoline, and the exhaust was much less objectionable.

If you want to try it to your car, I would start with an auxiliary fuel tank, and then play with the carb and timing adjustment. For long-term use you would probably gain benefit if you boosted the compression ratio. My guess is that you could go quite high, which should increase efficiency, but that may make it impractical to return to gasoline.

Then, for long-term use, there would be some parts that you would want to change so that the ethanol does not deteriorate them. Alternatively, the deterioration could be significantly slowed if you ran a small gasoline tank to use as a purge at shut down.

Charley

C R Huff

Take a look at this site and make your own judgement about this product. I use it in my MGB and MGC, both have SU carbs, and there is a difference in performance. It's not cheap, but a bottle goes a long way. Chuck

http://mystarbrite.com/startron/
Chuck Hassler

Be very careful when playing with pure ethanol, if you have a fire, the flame is almost invisable.
J Heisenfeldt

Well I just replaced my fuel tank (with a new one) and I'll be replacing all my fuel lines over the next while. Ill look into getting viton hoses. In the meantime Ive to find somewhere that actually sells bio-ethanol. Theres no local suppliers, annoyingly.
Ross Kelly

John H

Know that Regular and midrange have 10% at most stations here in WI. But premium does not have that claim on it. For the extra two dollars to fill with premium, it it not all that bad.

Also, if you look around, you can find stations that will sell you racing fuel (can't fill your car, but they will fill any gas can)
Bruce-C

This thread was discussed between 10/06/2008 and 13/06/2008

MG MGB Technical index

This thread is from the archives. Join the live MG MGB Technical BBS now