well, for one, you have to adjust the air to fuel mixture...so in a carburated car, you have to change the jets in the carb (holley carb), and in a fuel injected car, you would have to change the injectors, to run the added amount of fuel. that is the easy part.

my understanding is that in order to run alcohol, every component, and basically everything that the alcohol will touch, has to be stainless steel because the alcohol causes corrosion of lesser metals.

with my fuel system in the mirada, i dont know how much isnt stainless already, but it wouldnt be worth my trouble to check...however, on my buddys sebring, he is redoing everything anyway, so while hes at it, hes using all high grade stuff so that the ability is there to run alcohol.

and if im not mistaken, thats it...

 

so, it seems as though this "junk motor" is an up and down issue...

so four of the pistons have been worked gently out of the block, and they look good enough to use...slight pitting, but they are aluminum, so no rust damage. since things are "looking up" with the pistons, my dad called me with the numbers on the pistons and the brand, so i called federal mogul and ran the numbers by them...they are 13.28 to 1 compression pistons. So, if he can get them all out without damage, or at least enough of them that buying one or two would make a full set, they will go into the mirada, which would give the mirada a hell of a kick. so even though the engine is damaged, the block might be useable, and the pistons are looking decent. well, he got the crank and a few of the rods out, and he couldnt find the part number anywhere in his list of 340 part numbers...he was glancing over another list, and he came across the part numbers in a 360 list, then read into it...the junk motor isnt a 340, its actually a 364 stroker motor. which now means that if the other pistons come out and we use them, the mirada stands to get ALOT of power out of this junk motor...and the demon will get the hand-me-downs from the mirada...which were good enough to run the mirada into the mid 12s with big gears and stall...

 

Yes. e85 can't be used on cars not used on it because of the alcohol will erode the fuel lines. The E85 cars have stainless steel, and I believe that the injectors have to be change out to bigget port.

Now if they ever come out with Butonal, which has 4 carbons to the 2 carbons of ethonal, you can use it in any car. It doesn't damage the fuel system.


Hope things work out on the block. And the pistons. I guess that is the fun part of getting an old car and restoring, the nice surprises that await you.

 

well, if the block, pistons, and stroker kit (crank and rods) are reusable, even with a little welding and machining work to the block, i will have already made back the money that we paid for the demon...

tech, if im not mistaken, you cant use methanol in standard fuel lines either, right?

 

Donlt know much about methanol since it never concerned me. I just looked into ethenol and butanol since it could be the next common folk fuel. I do believe CA used to use a blend og methanol in the fuel during the summer because it burned cleaner, but then they found it was toxic.. Then they started blending with something else(not sure what) and recently found that was toxic as well.

 

No. Methanol is just like Ethanol that it requires special upgrades. Here is a wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible-fuel_vehicle
The first FFV vehicles were made to work with Methanol.

Butanol is the first real alternative fuel solution. It offers better fuel economy and has higher octane. If we could abandon Ethanol and go with Butanol instead, then we would have a real solution.