Community Forum For "Alcohol Can Be A Gas" Readers

July 2008 Blog Posts (4)

Will Ethanol run a Lister?

I'm still waiting for the book and DVD to arrive, in the meantime I've been thinking. We are going to be relocating within the year to an off-grid location. I'm thinking if we are producing our own ethanol and running it in a lister or listeroid engine, we would have the best of both worlds.

It would give you a completely renewable fuel source and arguably one of the best engine designs ever produced. Would this work? Any comments or ideas?

The technology to use a lister… Continue

Added by AfterGrid on July 29, 2008 at 5:13am — 3 Comments

Will it Run...

Well, I'm doing a minor rebuild of the carburetor on a Kawasaki 21 HP V-Twin that sits on the back of my mower. So I'm thinking this machine will be the first to run ethanol at the old homestead here. I'm going to soak a couple of critical plastic carburetor parts in ethanol (E85 for now) to see how they stand up. Or not. If everything looks good then after the carburetor is assembled and installed and running on gasoline. I'll switch over to ethanol and see how the engine behaves. The jets in… Continue

Added by William Smith on July 28, 2008 at 2:44pm — 1 Comment

Aquired E85 for testing in car and in 21hp kawasaki on the back of my mower.

Well, I drove waaaayyy out of the way to get about 12 gallons of E85 in my gas cans. I will put 1 gallon in the 2008 Accent that my wife drives daily. I really don't see this being any problem as the car will run E10 according to the car manual. Right now I'm rebuilding the carb on the mower and will test the "rubber parts" in E85 before I do the final assembly. Then I plan on running the mower on full E85 and just adjust the fuel/air mixture with the choke till it runs smoothly. I could have… Continue

Added by William Smith on July 26, 2008 at 10:30am — No Comments

Goals for moving me toward homegrown E85+

These are the things I see that I need to accomplish to move myself towards self reliance in the fuel / energy game.

1. Test Cars / Equipment for ethanol compatibility.

2. Buy / Build working still.

3. Test runs of still to familiarize myself with operation, optimize output, determine capacity.

4. Test ethanol from still in equipment.

5. Find source of sugar cheap / free.

6. Setup up larger scale fermentation.

7.… Continue

Added by William Smith on July 26, 2008 at 3:16am — 1 Comment