Back in 2006 the following post was in a thread about an Arizona C4 driver running on home made ethanol. He stated that he made his own ethanol on a 3' x 3' space using an old water heater. I'm VERY interested in details. I've bought David Blume's book Alcohol Can be a Gas and am very excited about making my own ethanol for my 86 coupe, truck and 2 cars. I'm particularly interested in the feed stock he uses to make ethanol.

The negative publicity about Ethanol is ALL SUBSIDIZED by big oil, I've found. True patriots need to get on board with ethanol as it is the most reasonable and cheapest way to move away from funding our enemies as well as putting millions of Americans back to work. American farmers are our friends not enemies.


A few Vette specs asked by Don in Vermont:
Fuel pump- I took a $120 gamble and bought a simple high-flowing fuel pump many C4'ers already have in the their STOCK pump location. 1,900 miles and 11 months and not a single hiccup

Fuel bladder- Ah, the dreaded bladder. Recently brought to my attention by the forum, mine has so far showed no sign of deterioration. I am sampling the fuel tank (for contamination) more to be cautious and at this point the verdict is "being tested"

Fuel lines- stock sizes from synthetic material ran along mostly stock route. A commercial hydraulic/fuel hose supply can fix you up for about $100. 383+ will likely need larger id's

Fuel filter- Stock Wix brand filter. I change every month for fear of contamination. Each time they're perfectly clean, and I mean perfect! First couple times it was filthy due to the ethanol cleaning the tank out, but now it NEVER gets dirty

Gaskets and Orings- Gaskets regular aftermarket, O rings are synthetic replacement. I got a piece of cardboard and stapled EVERY oring in the fuel system to it, then sent it to "Orings and things" in California. 1 week and $62 later, I now have every oring ethanol safe

Engine the motor is the stock L98 block, but I filled it with Summit racing brand forged bottom-end (crank, rods, pistons). Together with the aluminum Edelbrock heads, it displaces 355 cubic inches and around 14:1 compression. It runs very strong, especially on Nitrous!

 

Any internal combustion engine will run on alcohol; I'm not sure I follow the big deal here. E85 seems like a much better choice to use, since there are fewer changes required to swap from gasoline.

 

E85 is definitely an "easier" change as a transitional way to go. However, there are huge benefits from making changes to 100% Ethanol. The biggest change has to be a cold starting method which isn't difficult or expensive but does need to be in place for ethanol to work by itself. In fact that is why E85 exists because Detroit didn't want to spend the extra $50 per car to have a cold starting system in their flex fuel cars.

I want to make my own ethanol. I will start using gas/ethanol blends but eventually would like to go 100% ethanol.

 

making Ethanol from corn is supposed to be a poor method. Brazil. I think, powers all their cars on it, but they use sugar as a feedstock. I also heard something called Switchgrass is excellent. It is the native grass that grew on the Great Plains when settlers headed West. Just a few thoughts on producing it.

 

True, corn isn't the best feed stock for ethanol. There has been a lot of publicity about how using corn has driven up the price of food which made it sound like we were using food to power our cars. In fact, the byproduct from corn based ethanol (dried distillers grain) is actually better for feeding livestock than raw corn. I say this because almost all corn grown in the US is used to feed animals, not for human consumption.

The Switchgrass you talk about is part of a movement to "cellulosic" based ethanol which is more efficient and less politically incorrect than corn. In fact, ethanol can be made from a huge variety of feed stocks. Sugar cane produces about 4 times as much ethanol per acre than corn. There are promising crops such as sorghum, mesquite and even cattails which can produce up to 10,000 gallons per acre when grown downstream from sewage treatment plans. Corn only produces about 280 gallons per acre.

Check out this website for a 90 minute video made by David Blume that gets to the bottom of the ethanol issue:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...45092406&hl=en