<VV> corvair and ethanol - no one?

[CorvairEd at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/22/05 10:58:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
werpknarly at centurytel.net writes:
can it be true than no one on a list of this size has modified a corvair to 
run on ethanol?

Joe, 

Yes, Joe, I did about 20 years ago.  I had a customer that wanted a Corvair 
engine built from the ground up designed to run on ethanol to put in a light 
weight kit car he had with a Corvair drive train.  I did a lot of research 
(asked the racers at the local track about any problems with ethanol) and went to 
work.  I knew that Blake (OTTO Parts) had run a sprint buggy on alcohol some 
years before, I went to him for additional advise.  The end result was that we 
needed to achieve between 14:1 to 18:1 compression and needed a special 
camshaft.  Also, the advance needed to be set up to 24 degrees BTDC because of the 
much higher octane rating of alcohol.  I started with a 110 engine, bored the 
cylinders to 60 over, flycut a 102 head to fit the bigger cylinders and ended up 
with 14:1 compression.  It turned out that the OTTO Parts TB-30 was close to 
perfect for this application.  With the help of a friend of mine who was a 
Chemical Engineer for TRW we determined what size jets would be necessary and 
drilled out a set.  Alcohol is very corrosive to bare aluminum and steel so I 
installed an electric fuel pump, PVC fuel lines, and the car already had a PVC 
tank so most of the problem went away.  That left only the aluminum carburetors 
so I installed a switch in line with the fuel pump and ignition switch so the 
pump could be shut off till the engine stopped before turning off the ignition 
leaving the carburetors empty eliminating corrosion there.  The end result 
was a car that could leave a patch of rubber on concrete or asphalt and could 
accelerate like gang busters.  Soon after that he moved to Arkansas (I'm in 
Calif.) and I lost touch with him.  Never found out what fuel mileage he got with 
it.

I also ran my 61 Rampside on methanol for a short time (55 gals) with a stock 
engine just to see what it would do.  I cranked up the timing to about 20 
degrees and put .052 jets in the carburetors.  It ran great and the oil stayed 
clean.  Got about 20 MPG just going to and from work.

Ed Corson (CORSA member)