alcohol burners smog exempt?
 

i was told that if your car burns alcohol it's smog exempt in california... 2 hours of searching did me no good.

anyone got any info on this? i'd fill that shit u and give it an alcohol tune and a trip to the ref if it were...

Not sure about cali but in missouri, if you run alcohol you are exempt. A few RX7 guys here tell the emmisions guy that their car runs off alcohol and they give them a waiver. They don't know the difference.

hell, with the cost of gas prices lately, alcohol isn't much more expensive.

i'll find a ref and go ask some questions. i'm sure it's harder to do in cali (if it is even possible)--our smog nazis are mean.

i finally got an email back from CARB

whoever said that was full of shit. they are NOT exempt, and they still have to pass all the normal emissions testing, PLUS, they need an EO number, which basically means it's illegal to convert a car to alcohol.

scratch that idea

Thanks for finding that out, I was curious to see what the outcome would be.

but on a side note, i've never tuned a car burning alcohol before. i'm really curious to learn what it would like.

anyone ever tuned alcohol before that doesn't mind sharing a few tips?

^from the grapevine, haltech would need to be set-up ign/1

why?
bigger injectors, sure...

this one just got my curiosity going.

I heard the rotary will need twice as much alcohol per stroke...again, I have no experience just relaying info I heard in a conversation.

alcohol has a idfferent stoic point than gasoline, so tht'll need to be compensated for.

Here's a good read http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/farmmgt/05010.html it's not just rotary's it is any engine running on alcohol. The intake setup I currently have on my car has 8 injectors, my friend was running alcohol and had 8 1680cc injectors, I'm running gas(race fuel) and only running 4 1680cc injectors. So basically when converting to alcohol from gas, any engine, you will burn twice the amount of fuel.

good reading.

thanks

We run 8 1680's on our one car. It requires roughly twice the amount of fuel , I like running no IC because it runs cooler. I don't like having to clean everything because it is corrosive. If it were to make a recommendation. I'd run the C16 less headache.

i may or may not ever use alcohol for anything, but i'm always up for learning new things.

one quick question i have--
becaue the alcohol pulls so much heat out, you don't need the intercooler, right? so do you run any of the injectors before the intake air temp sensor to get maybe a little more accurate reading from it? if your incoming air is 300* (maybe?), but cools to 150*--don't hit me for the numbers--i just picked some, what's to keep the correction maps from going cracky?

i'm sure you could compensate for it when you tune, but i'm just curious.
thanks for the info.

Twice the amount of fuel...holy shit. And we complain that rotaries are thirsty on gasoline! How much does alcohol cost per gallon? It must cost a fortune to feed that thirsty beast... :D

Cool info, although I'm sure I'll never own a car running on alcohol.

twice the fuel, but they make more power, so i don't think the fuel economy would be half as much. even so, i don't think a lot of commuter cars burn alcohol--besides ford's ffv's. the fuel pumps cost like $900!!