Triumphrat

ender · 07-10-2007, 08:22 PM

This is the best idea I have seen in a long time for an alternative fuel on bikes. The best part is the guy used a Triumph S4 for it!!

E85 S4

yakoo11 · 07-10-2007, 08:35 PM

"Now that all is running well, head down to your E85 station and fill up with half gas and half E85. Enjoy because you are now running about 98 octane. After that tank fill up with all E85. Now you have 105 octane. ZOOM! Subsequent fill ups can be any mixture of ethanol or gas. You now are FlexFueled! Sorry but your exhaust will not smell like popcorn but you can brag that your bike is green and powered by American fuel." quote from above website

why the increase in octane... I know little about E85 but I wouldn't think that it is 105 octane anyone know more

google answers all:::
E85 has an octane rating of 105, which is higher than typical commercial gasoline mixtures (octane ratings of 85 to 98); however, it does not burn as efficiently in traditionally-manufactured internal-combustion engines. Additionally, E85 contains less energy per volume as compared to gasoline. Although E85 contains only 72% of the energy on a gallon-for-gallon basis compared to gasoline, experimenters have seen slightly better fuel mileage than the 28% this difference in energy content implies

what ever all that means

[ This message was edited by: yakoo11 on 2007-07-10 18:42 ]

Will · 07-10-2007, 08:56 PM

It means ocatane does you no good unless your motor and timing are set up to benefit from it. Because ethanol releases less energy when it burns than gasoline, you will burn more ethanol and get less power.

Diego · 07-10-2007, 10:16 PM

Quite right, Will. The Web site makes claims like "The 105 octane of E85 will not only eliminate knocks and pings, it will give your car more power than gas," which is clearly not true simply as stated.

One must wonder, when the site contains several factual claims that are so misleading, whether all the talk of safety for one's engine can also be trusted. There is a big incentive for them to make it all sound very rosy, after all.

One of their supposed debunkings: "There have been some people who have published reports stating that E85 is worse than gas for the environment. They have yet to show any scientific proof or case studies that support their claims. Because E85 is cleaner than conventional gasoline, it emits less hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydrogen. E85 reduces carbon monoxide emissions by as much as 70 percent — and less carbon monoxide helps reduce ozone formation and greenhouse gas levels."

Some of those statements are true without even having to add a lot of legal fine print--and still totally misleading! The environment is a lot more than air quality and tailpipe emissions.

First, there are the waste products of fermentation. With advanced processes, there may be fewer of them to dispose and some of them may be rendered into useful or at least less harmful forms. But if or when E85 becomes ubiquitous, it will still likely remain one of the nagging drawbacks to using this fuel.

Second, there's pollution from the petroleum consumption required to manufacture fertilizer, grow and harvest the corn, haul it to the biofuel plants, and distill the ethanol from it. Although the process has been made more efficient in recent years, today it still takes about 80% as much oil as one gets back in energy from the corn-based ethanol. (In a way, that's almost like polluting the air twice from the same gallon of fuel...once to make the ethanol, and again when it's consumed in a vehicle.)

And finally, the biggie: Most people don't realize it, but the process is still VERY demanding of water resources! Here in Kansas, we've taken leave of our senses and authorized a proposed plant in the southwestern part of the state to draw half a billion gallons of groundwater per year out of wells. That's in addition to surface water it will draw from the Arkansas River, and is roughly three times the volume of ethanol that will be produced.

Let's hope the farmers who will benefit from the higher corn prices won't need some of that water for production some day... or to keep their families alive during a drought.

We've officially stopped evolving here in Kansas. And it's beginning to show.

WHAT · 07-11-2007, 01:41 AM

This is what my town does to those who promote going green...

LINK

the original article is offline but that should tell you all you need to know. :roll:

Jon916996748 · 07-11-2007, 02:49 AM

Diego is spot on. :chug:

A big problem with these new energy sources such as Hydrogen and E85 is that their production has not been optimized like the oil industries. Also oil is not disappearing, demand has just gone up. New wells are being discovered daily. While it is true that we can't just take a shovel and find them in our back yard, i.e. we have to dig deeper, we are still a long way off from seeing the last drop of oil.

A big problem with our view on energy is that we do not think about the bigger picture. I saw a presentation from a Wal-Mart engineer. According to him, only 7% of Wal-Mart's pollution comes from its vehicles. This includes the entire distribution network, the corporate fleet, and the various jets. This is so much smaller than the waste produced just to keep the lights on at Wal-Mart.

If you really want to save the earth etc. replace all of your lights with compact fluorescents and eventually L.E.D.'s. If every light in America was replaced with an LED based solution, you could cut over 100 proposed power plants from being made. Things like this are what you can do to become green.

Anyways my point is that simply changing your fuel really won't do much for any party other than the people selling the E85. You lose power and effiecny, E85 production puts a new strain on the industry, and you still end up polluting the environment.

Will · 07-11-2007, 11:55 AM

Another way to analyze it is to think about how directly the energy gets used. If you use coal to produce electricity, then transmit the electricity, then convert it from high to low voltage a couple of times, you have the initial generating losses, transmission losses, transformer losses, etc. When you use it, you have the losses associated with whatever device you are using it to power. Using compact fluorescents and LEDs cuts down on all those losses. Using gravity fed water out of a tap is a whole lot less energy inefficient than drinking bottled water. Burning natural gas in your furnace is more efficient than using electricity, even if it is a heat pump.

I am not saying we don't need alternative energy sources, and I certainly don't want to start a political discussion here! I just want to make sure we all think about it clearly. For example, I have seriously thought about buying a diesel replacement for my van and setting it up to run on french fry oil scrounged from local greasy spoons. Cost and time have been barriers so far, but I think it would be an interesting project. Ethanol, I am less sure of, although it is a start in the right kind of thinking. If the corn is produced in a green manner and the farm equipment uses biodiesel to farm it, then it is a whole lot better than it would otherwise be.

There is also the food supply to think about. If we burn our food instead of eating it, we have a problem. I have seen many acres of prime farmland paved over in my lifetime, and I have also read reports about the declining availability of water. The soil we farm can only produce so many crops, even with petroleum based fertilizers, so it will also wear out in time.

There is a whole lot to think about, but some small decisions are pretty easy. I never turn on my office lights until noon, because the sun makes it plenty bright to work. The rest of the company thinks I am nuts, but that's fine.

Anyway, the fact he used a Triumph is great, and it is progress to see people thinking.

ender · 07-11-2007, 12:23 PM

Everyone has a different take on E85, each side has 'facts' that tend to null one from the other side. New fuel types have always been met with resistance, even gasoline in the late 1800s (Remember steam and electric??).

My take is that I am less worried about the environment and more interested in the economics. I would rather the American farmer make more money to feed his family than someone else to be able to silver plate his Audi.

E85 should be the first step because our gasoline infrastructure can be adapted much more quickly than any other solution. Every fuel injected car can be converted. Even carburetors can be made to run on Ethanol based fuels with a jet change. Which means that farm equipment could be converted to run on the fuel it was producing. This also makes it the most economical solution.

As far as efficiency you lose about 5%-15% fuel economy(Miles/volume) but you are using 85% less gasoline and gaining on average 5% in hp output when you are not tuned specifically for E85. Lower air PSI in your tires can decrease fuel economy by 6%. Better tuning means less loss per volume. The big thing is that E85 has less energy content per volume but makes more hp because of the octane rating in a traditional motor. So instead of getting 40mpg you get 38-34mpg out of your S4 and you gain about 5hp.

In the end it will be the market that decides what direction we take, sooner or later gasoline will be to expensive.

If I were going to do it I would change all of the fuel lines to Ethanol resistant rubber. I would worry about how long the Aluminum would last up against E85. GM doesn't seem to be having a problem with it though. The ability to use both on our Triumphs is a great idea in my book.

Diego · 07-11-2007, 02:54 PM

> The big thing is that E85 has less energy content per volume but makes more hp because of the octane rating in a traditional motor.

Sorry, ender, that's just not so. Unless you rework the motor for higher compression, change timing, etc., octane means squat. It may allow you to make more power, if you're willing to consume the extra fuel to do so, but it doesn't automatically give you that power.

> My take is that I am less worried about the environment and more interested in the economics.

They're pretty much inseparable, in my view. The cost of cleaning up messes has to be figured into any technology--whether the mess is immediate pollution, or having to replace a lot of corroded parts on vehicles that can't handle the fuel, or running out of drinkable water because it's all been used to make "gasoline lite."

Encouraging farmers to consume additional oil to grow a new source of fuel, which only gives you about 25% more than was required to produce it anyway, is only adding a new middleman to the process. That's never good economics.

If we had a source of concentrated sugar practically growing wild --something like Brazil's sugar cane-- it would be a very different story. But in this country, we don't. (And if our goal is to reduce dependency on foreign sources, then importing ethanol is also defeating the purpose.) Hence, a headlong rush to ethanol at this point is really premature.

Alekker · 07-11-2007, 06:57 PM

The demand for ethanol has led to higher corn prices, which has in turn led to higher prices for other commodities which consume corn such as chicken, pork, beef, dairy, etc.

The US produces 280 of the world's 692 million metric tons of corn. China is the #2 producer with 131 mmt. Hence, we do not rely on the import of corn for our own consumption.

The marketing of E85 as a clean, safe, economically justifiable alternative fuel source by our own government is shortsighted and irresponsible.

Instead of making a 350 hp pickup truck that gets 18 mpg with E85, couldn't GM instead make a 250 hp truck that gets 20 mpg with regular gasoline?