Category: Motorsport
Posted: 2008-07-02 04:27
Team Vodafone has been doing a lot of research about running a V8 Supercar on E85 ethanol fuel and finally come out with the results.
“We went on the net and we've done a lot of myth busting,”, TeamVodafone engineer Campbell Little said.
“We contacted an awful lot of people asking what problems they had and everybody would say 'be careful of this' or 'be careful of that', but no one said you could not run it,” he said.
With some calculations, the team knew it would consume up to 30 per cent more ethanol than it would in regular Shell 98 and figured it would produce more nitric oxide in the process due to increased combustion temps from the higher compression ratio.
“If we want to substantially increase the compression of the engine you would get more (nitric oxide),” Campbell said.
“But because we have chosen to run it on a very conservative compression ratio, by limiting the compression ratio we limit the fuel's ability to burn.”
After changing the injectors, the engine was left at the standard compression ratio of 10:1 which yielded some very interesting results.
Craig couldn't tell the difference between that and a petrol engine. It could be as simple as that for most of the race teams (to use ethanol fuel). It was (also) four degrees at Willowbank and it started easier than a petrol engine.”