ESE's works engine tuner

[FastFred]

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Oil... Team ESE use 5% (20:1) in petrol and back in the day TZ's often ran as much as 8% (12:1)

Team ESE use 20:1 for a very practical reason. It is much easier and way more reliable to send someone down the road with a 1 liter pack of oil and a 20 liter drum and tell them to tip the oil in and fill the drum up. No mental arithmetic required, anyone can get it right. Mixing at the time of use is fraught with calculation errors and who can remember if that old tin of race gas has had oil put in or not. Ours are mixed at the time of filling and there is no raw fuel without oil on site, never had a problem yet.

[SwePatrick]

Man,, i´m the lazy bastard. *lol*
I haven´t flushed my methanolengine once, not a single time this summer.
No problems whatsoever.

Only thing i do is to empty bowl and let the bottom plug be off when it is at rest.
To get it well ventilated(free from moisture)

can it also be that my methanol supplier sells me fresh fuel and is one of the most pure methanols one can get hand of?
Dragracers must use this purity, if not they might not be ok in a fuel test.

[Carel H]

.

Oil... Team ESE use 5% (20:1) in petrol and back in the day TZ's often ran as much as 8% (12:1)

Team ESE use 20:1 for a very practical reason. 1 liter pack of oil and a 20 liter drum and tell them to tip the oil in and fill the drum up.

Isn't this 19:1 or am I missing something?

[Flettner]

Yes, I don't know, but I've never flushed my F9 running on E85 since 2008 when it first ran on the stuff. To be fair, one VMX season it ran a carburetor and petrol. Rider didn't want to be called out on EFI, I guess a good thing as he did win the season on it that year. And boy was it gutless, bloody skilled riders! (a young hotshot)
I have changed filters a few times though, both low pressure and high pressure filters.

[FastFred]

Oil... Team ESE use 5% (20:1) in petrol and back in the day TZ's often ran as much as 8% (12:1)

Team ESE use 20:1 for a very practical reason. It is much easier and way more reliable to send someone down the road with a 1 liter pack of oil and a 20 liter drum and tell them to tip the oil in and fill the drum up.

Isn't this 19:1 or am I missing something?

Yes you are missing the bit that I did not say, "fill the drum up with 20 liters of petrol" sorry should have said.

Carel have you got any pictures of your recent projects to post and talk about? Love to see them.

[wobbly]

If you make the assumption that 20:1 on petrol is the baseline then when using Methanol to get the same amount of oil entering the engine
per stroke you will only need 1/2 that ratio approx,as twice as much + fuel is being consumed with the same amount of air.

Regarding the ratio - with 20 L of fuel and 1 L of oil, that is strictly a ratio of 20:1, but you now have 21 L of mixture in total.

In the past I have always flushed the Methanol out of race engines by running them on a petrol/oil mix from a small container with a hose onto the carb.
As firstly if you dont the bowl ends up a white corroded mess, and secondly the remnant Methanol sits on the internal bearing surfaces happily absorbing water.
This moisture eventually will rust pit bearing races etc,and destruction soon follows.

[peewee]

As firstly if you dont the bowl ends up a white corroded mess, and secondly the remnant Methanol sits on the internal bearing surfaces happily absorbing water.
This moisture eventually will rust pit bearing races etc,and destruction soon follows.

this was my reasoning also but thinking past that, i have atleast a pound of epoxy on the transfer port walls trying to hold on for dear life. the less time the methanol is in the engine the less time it has to attack and break loose a epoxy chunk and send it to the piston top

[teriks]

i flush the engine and carb with petrol premix at the days end. no problems so far. i bet the reason some rc fuel uses 18% - 23% oil content is to maybe reduce the nitric acid accumulation inside the engine. thats the only thing i could think of

Well, the oil migration at 30+kRPM is quite fast, add to that plain big end bearings even on the best racing engines I bet there's a real need for huge amounts of oil.
As I said though, I haven't done any kind of experimenting with oil content, changing is simply not an option due to rules. -A good thing I think, there's enough to mess up any way, don't need to add exotic fuels to the mix.

can it also be that my methanol supplier sells me fresh fuel and is one of the most pure methanols one can get hand of?
Dragracers must use this purity, if not they might not be ok in a fuel test.

Unfortunately not, as Wob already mentioned, methanol absorbs moisture from the surroundings, so no matter how pure the methanol is to start with it will start absorbing water from the air as soon as the can is opened.

[Lightbulb]

If you cut back the oil on your F3D engine to around 17%, it will fail a big end on the rod if it runs lean at all.
Saw where a person did not mix the 80% methanol to the 20% oil correctly. Then failed an engine. Maybe if they
had mini needle rollers it may not be quite so bad. I still can't figure how they thought 170mls of oil was 20% of 1L.
Maybe they were going to mix up 1 pint of fuel and used a L flask and just stopped at the top. Don't know.

Neil

[SwePatrick]

Unfortunately not, as Wob already mentioned, methanol absorbs moisture from the surroundings, so no matter how pure the methanol is to start with it will start absorbing water from the air as soon as the can is opened.

I know,, thats why i keep my lids shut
Still have no problems, come see for yourself,, i do not lie.

And one have to take in consideration, that peoples eager to be correct on the web always plays a role in this kind of discussions.

Somebody have 'heard/read' that someone had problems with something, and through many mouthes it adds expressions to make their statement.
And by that increases the problem that was a minor problem at first.

I also have worst case scenario i guess.
fueltank in almost 'pure' aluminium, and just ventilating the floatbowl between runs.
And still no problem.
The fuelpump i used thou had slightly bigger problems.
A mikuni copy. 70l/h
I had to clean that one out due to valves stopped working inside.
But other than that - no problems.
Not even slightly, can´t find any white oxid anywhere.

could it be that my fuel is very little exposed to air?
I run pressure from the pipe into the tank instead of fuelpump, works much better.
And tank isn´t 100% sealed so it blows out the air and replaces it with exhaustfumes.
My fueljugs are also closed at all times.
I use a siphonpump or what they are called to fill upp fueltank, always to the top.
It keeps fuel in jug away from unnecessery moisture.
And my fuel is pre-mixed in the jugs.

[lohring]

i flush the engine and carb with petrol premix at the days end. no problems so far. i bet the reason some rc fuel uses 18% - 23% oil content is to maybe reduce the nitric acid accumulation inside the engine. thats the only thing i could think of

The reasons RC racing engines use up to 20% oil with high castor content is protecting and sealing the ringless piston as well as oiling the plain big end bearing. Even engines with roller bearing big ends use a high oil content. Lower performance engines can use lower oil content and synthetic oils to reduce the mess.

RC airlpane engines running on mostly methanol can get away without running after run oil. RC boat engines' bearings fail immediately without a WD 40 flush and after run oil. I use ATF. Of course they run 60% nitro in a water environment.

RC boat gasoline engines do fine without after run oil. They still develop more power with more oil. I've dynoed engines with up to 10 oz of oil per gallon before power stops improving. Eight oz per gallon is standard.

Lohring Miller

[SwePatrick]

The reasons RC racing engines use up to 20% oil with high castor content is protecting and sealing the ringless piston as well as oiling the plain big end bearing.

Lohring Miller

I would say this is the reason to about 95%
If i would run 20% in my 211cc engine i would need to clean whole garage and ventilationsystem after a dynoday.

3% in my engine is good enough, it revs to about 14000rpm give or take.
And no remarkable wear.
Only that were worn was the wristpin, but i figure that was because i had no window in piston.
Need to cool it down with fresh oil mixture was my guess.
Std there´s a window in piston, so i milled one just recently.
Bought a new wristpin and bearing, so now i can fin an answer to that also.

Piston was almost like new, just the graphitecoating had worn off in certain places.
And in those places, really really soft rubbing from cylinderwall.
Still can see the marks from turning the piston really really clear.
Cylinderbore was also perfect.
Still round, and still schratches left from honing.(the deep ones were still there and the small ones that should bed in with pistonring was perfectly polished all the way around)

I ran engine for a couple of hours with heatcycling at first with 4% before start punishing it.

And it has got beaten really hard.
Almost 200 dynopulls as we speak.
And a whole raceweekend.

I never run it above 60c watertemp thou.

Rgds,

[Carel H]

Carel have you got any pictures of your recent projects to post and talk about? Love to see them.

For motorcycle related you can google "pictures", "harmsen motor" or even "harmsen rotax". Not recent, more historic. I was a great fan of Jamathi: "Beat the factories from a shed!".

After motorcycles I went back to industrial automation and what people hate most: electronics and software.

Most recent project is a motorized catflap for cats who believe in conspiracy theories (They are waiting for me on the other side!). I sold one to myself, having a conspiracy theory cat. Made possible with AMS contactless hall sensor chips. So this project includes a rotary sensor, a servo drive and a positioning system. Think TPS and power valve.

Applications don't matter, it's all about building blocks.

[Grumph]

I know,, thats why i keep my lids shut
Still have no problems, come see for yourself,, i do not lie.

And one have to take in consideration, that peoples eager to be correct on the web always plays a role in this kind of discussions.

Somebody have 'heard/read' that someone had problems with something, and through many mouthes it adds expressions to make their statement.
And by that increases the problem that was a minor problem at first.

I also have worst case scenario i guess.
fueltank in almost 'pure' aluminium, and just ventilating the floatbowl between runs.
And still no problem.
The fuelpump i used thou had slightly bigger problems.
A mikuni copy. 70l/h
I had to clean that one out due to valves stopped working inside.
But other than that - no problems.
Not even slightly, can´t find any white oxid anywhere.

could it be that my fuel is very little exposed to air?
I run pressure from the pipe into the tank instead of fuelpump, works much better.
And tank isn´t 100% sealed so it blows out the air and replaces it with exhaustfumes.
My fueljugs are also closed at all times.
I use a siphonpump or what they are called to fill upp fueltank, always to the top.
It keeps fuel in jug away from unnecessery moisture.
And my fuel is pre-mixed in the jugs.

I think you've hit on a combination of factors that i've never experienced personally.
Aluminium fuel tanks I stopped using for methanol wherever possible as without regular cleaning they also turned into blocks of white corrosion...
But those were vented to atmosphere - and most of the speedway running here is done on cool evenings so condensation is a problem.
Undoubtedly using exhaust gas to pressurise the tank has had a beneficial effect chemically.

When methanol was legal here for bike roadracing I used to get asked to read plugs and assist with carb setup quite frequently. By the time they got to my local round of the Nationals, they'd usually done at least one or two other meetings and had opened tins of methanol with them. My first demonstration was always to use a water test kit on their fuel. That opened a lot of eyes as to just why they were having problems...

[Nath88]

Mini progress update on the ion sensing.
Got the engine running with the ion sensing circuit in place, maintaining 90V across the plug gap. The first bit of the signal is the coil ringing at ~20 kHz after spark. I think the ion current is imposed over the top of that. 2.5 volts amplitude over a 80k ohm measuring resistor gives a current of 31 microamps. H-D (feels bad to compare, but they also use ion sensing...) report about 30 microamps with 80V across the plug gap, so my numbers are in the ballpark.

Next up is to make some signal processing circuitry to turn it into a usable output. Probably a buffer amplifier, followed by some filtering, integrating the signal to find 'how much current has flowed in this cycle', then find the threshold value that indicates a misfire vs. fire.