There’s a very strong push among automakers to build flex fuel and E85 vehicles, able to pull up at pumps and fill up with gasoline or various ethanol blends. We’ve mentioned this before and basically, besides replacing a few parts in the fuel system itself, the necessary components for a flex fuel engine are a fuel injection system able to adjust mixture for the ethanol blends and a sensor that knows you’re running ethanol. Up to this point, I’ve seen absolutely nothing from any motorcycle manufacturer saying they were offering or planning to offer this capability. Ford, GM and now even Toyota are touting E85 and pumps are starting to appear, slowly for sure, but they are appearing.
Is there any movement among motorcycle companies to offer this?
Link: E85 Information
The Kneeslider: Flexible Fuel Motorcycles
The Kneeslider: MegaSquirt Fuel Injection
Daniel says
Perhaps motorcycle companies realize that the ethanol movement is a somewhat short-sighted solution to our fuel problems…
MadScience says
Your entire fuel system needs to be built to handle an alcohol or alcohol-blended fuel for the simple reason that alcohol is corrosive. I know that all the fuel lines need to be replaced with coated fuel lines and can presume that the fuel pump may need similar attention. But other than that, yeah, all of the technology and hardware is the same, just different fuel/spark/emmisions mapping.
Viveik says
Is there a substantial cost saving involved in doing this ? Several years ago, Honda had introduced a 125cc Eathenol vehicle in Brasil, it was not a sucess because.
a. There were some issue in starting in colder weather.
b. The cost savings were not worth the bother. Now they are about 20%, but insignificant for a small displacement bike.
c. The bike cost was a lot higher that the regular version.
d. People (male riders) just didnt want to make the transition. Maybe it wasnt butch enough..
Then the price of petrol reduced below Flex pricing and that lead to all flex products having both a petrol and a flex tank. Also the design aspect of how to safely put a flex cyclinder remains.
Prester John says
It’s not about energy.
Ethanol can be made from corn. They grow lots of corn in Iowa. Iowa has the first presidential caucus.
Look for ethanol fuel at a service station near you.
Tom
Jay says
Alcohol / methanol fueled engines CAN be made to put out great horsepower, witness the alcohol fueled dragsters. But the catch is, and any Speedway racer can testify, that it takes a LOT of alcohol. Normally the main jet is double the size of a petrol jet.
Even with E85, the cars & trucks using it get almost half the miles per gallon. True. Do a search in for E85 articles appearing on line recently. Most have a link to a U.S. Government link citing which E85 vehicles are available in the U.S., and their milage both on straight gas and E85.
Would you be happy stopping twice as often to gas up while riding across country? My old 71 BMW with 6 gallon tank would be going on reserve about 125 miles. No thanks.
matt says
yeah, this is pretty curious….tell me if my logic is off here but a supercross race is only say 10 miles tops right? supercross racing is extremely popular. so this would be a great place to debut an engine that burned methanol, or ethanol or some mixture that is predominantly alcohol based…there is no controversy that alcohol doesn’t provide enough horsepower since F1 engine run methanol only and they go 200 mph…and the mpg issue of alcohol fueled would be glossed over since the actual distance in miles of a supercross race is very short
seth says
Yeah,
But the point of Ethanol isn’t to save money or to get better mileage, its to not use petroleum. So if I have to buy a more expensive motorcycle and pay more for homegrown (or brazilian) ethanol, and fill up more often (this is sort of moot on a 40mpg+ machine) better the money not go to ‘big oil’…that is until the sheiks start irrigating the desert to make farmland 🙂