22 replies to this topic

[cosworth bdg]

Isn't it about time Historic motor racing went GREEN AND CLEAN in the fuel department. Who can give a good reason why not, the materials and technology are there using Historics equipment...........

[xbgs351]

I was down at the airport yesterday getting some avgas, and I got a chance to look through their logbook for non aeronautical sales. Typically these sales were in the order of 40 to 60 litres per month. Compare this to the amount of fuel that they sell for aeronautical use, and the amount of avgas used for non-aeronautical use is very small and the amount used for historic use is for all intense purposes insignificant.

Something else to consider is that lead free high-octane fuels are not necessarily all that clean and green. The process refineries use to generate an increase in octane in lieu of Tetra-ethyl lead requires a significant amount of energy and it produces a lot of the carcinogen Benzene. Subsequent treatment stages can destroy much of this Benzene, but these stages also need an input of energy.

[RTH]

Interesting and in principle yes why not.

This week Auto Express did a comparison of two of their new Focus models on sale both 1.8
1. the petrol only model
2.the bioethanol model which will also run on petrol as well

Bioethanol is currently only on sale in the whole of the UK at 14 service stations it is called E85 because it consists of 85 % Bioethanol, made from wheat rye and sugar beet and 15 % gasoline , from crude oil

Bioethanol attracts just marginally lower tax on fuel but is more expensive to produce as a result is only about 2p per litre cheaper to buy at the pumps (nothing really, certainly no incentive to buy )

However Bioethanol requires a richer mixture to run and as a result consumes 25 % more fuel by volume . In the test the ethanol Focus produced 5 % more horsepower nothing really and not noticeable on the road.

Both cars cost the same price but because the Bioethanol car did so many less miles to the gallon than the petrol despite the slightly lower price the Bio car is about 20 % more expensive to run than petrol

Clearly this is the fault of the government and chancellor Brown in not even levelling the field for renewable fuel let alone encourage it.

In competition the downside would be carrying 25 % more fuel in weight and fire risk, but it could be done.

[cosworth bdg]

At least now dialogue and discussion has been opened on this subject..........

[Jonas]

Interesting, I've also thought about this.
Just a thought: Methanol has been used in many historic race cars for a long time already. This, surely, must be considered as "green" as the Bioethanol, which has 15 % of normal petrol (to improve cold start ability) in it.

[Catalina Park]

I think that historic racing should stay true to its history and run the fuels that the cars were designed to run on.
Would you rather see a steam train burning coal or would you rather see it running on canola oil?

[RS2000]

Have a look elsewhere at the UK rally fuel debate (MSA trying to enforce 100 RON when a lot in the UK are using 102 RON and virtually every other country and the FIA permits 102) . More than annecdotal evidence of increased engine re-build costs.
The true wider debate needs to be about just how much additional CO2 has been generated by use of unleaded fuel and cats when "lean burn" technology and infinitessimally more amounts of lead than "unleaded" (which still contains lead) might have been cleaner/better overall for the environment? EU conned by oil companies wanting to spread existing US practice and German prestige car manufacturers wanting EU to be the same as US to be able sell there with no mods?

[soubriquet]

What is the carbon foorprint of athletics?

Lets start with the mums and dads driving their 8yo children to training sessions. For much of the year, the training needs ovals to be floodlight. At the pinnacle, thousands travel to watch athletics.

How many people travel to watch football weekly? I have no idea, but if the world was rid of athletics and football, there would certainly be less greenhouse gasses emitted.

Athletics and football are killing the Earth with their greenhouse gas emissions.

[RA Historian]

This subject, of course, can elicit comments from all over and endless debate. So I will just throw my own thoughts into the mix.

The end of fossil fuels is coming. Sooner, later, who knows exactly when. What will replace it? Ethanol, E-85, hydrogen, natural gas, something else, who knows. It will take a lot of time and technology to have the scientists work out what is the best solution, what will ultimately be the product that will replace gasoline.

Now here is my statement: THE MARKET SHOULD DECIDE! I think that man will be ill-served if a substitute is forced upon us by government decree. Who is better able to determine what will work best, get the better mileage, not damage engines, be clean, and not use up an inordinate amount of energy in production and transportation.? Above all, what will be most cost effective? Scientists, chemists, and engineers, or knee-jerk politicians with little knowledge, pandering for votes. The ultimate fuel should be developed and tested over time with the solution evolving, not be decreed by politicians. One shudders at the prospect of a mandated fuel being employed before it is ready and without regard for unintended consequences. When it does happen it is important that it be done right. And we all know that when the politicians get involved, things do not get done right!

As far as historic racing is concerned, whatever the fuel used in the car will not make a whit of practical difference in the world. The only value that I can see would be the public relations value of counter-acting the inevitable complaints of the tree huggers.
Tom

[David M. Kane]

I would love to have Paul Dana still around to talk about this. He was a great salesman on this issue. A few years ago he took Tony George and IRL car to Capitol Hill to do a presentation to the U.S. Congress. It was a huge success. Now, for example, Govenor Mitch Daniels is giving incentives to Indiana farmers and the Ethanol awareness in the States has really taken off. I believe the whole Corn farming business is booming. So yes, let's encourage the private sector, not mandate
how and why through ythe government. Profits will dictate the outcome, profits will create jobs as well as a better planet.

Right now I'd be a bit skeptical of putting anything but AVGAS in my DFV or BDA or Lotus T/C.

[JSF]

The best technical solution does not always win the consumer debate. Just look at VHS and BETAMAX. VHS, which is a far inferior product became the choice of the consumer, BETAMAX was retained by the production industry due to it's much higher quality.

Sadly marketing usually wins when it comes to what the consumer uses.

[ed holly]

Peter,

You initial question was

""Isn't it about time Historic motor racing went GREEN AND CLEAN in the fuel department. Who can give a good reason why not, the materials and technology are there using Historics equipment...........""

a lot of comment since about non-racing use, maybe by people who have not worked on race engines that currently use avgas.

I would like to explain my observations as an Historic Competitor.

My Lotus 20 (now in UK) still has its original 1961 Cosworth cylinder head. I went to great lengths not to shave it for more compression and to preserve it as it had been for 43 years when I rebuilt it. That head was modified in such a way that there was no way inserts could be put into it, and without inserts it could not run for long on unleaded fuel.

My Elfin 1500 was in the same boat (now with David Reid).

The MAE engine that was in the F3 BT15 Brabham also was in that same boat.

The twincam engines I now have in other Brabhams could be modified, but I would certainly prefer to use the fuel they were designed to use.

To force Historics onto a "Green and Clean" fuel as you call it would see a lot of racing cars parked, many are just not capable of being modified the way a road engine can be. And is it really Green and Clean, surely a bit of lead out of the exhaust pipe (and I believe it is inert this way anyway) is better than all the benzines and other additives they use to try to replace it and race cars don't have a catalytic converter to detox the stuff. I used to wash all the parts for my Dad's taxi in petrol all my years as a kid and it never harmed me, but I would touch the stuff out of a bowser these days.

The amount of fuel used in Historics compared to the amount put into the air by aircraft is infintessimal. The only time I would say Historics should go unleaded is when the Aircraft Industry does, and I don't think that will be in my lifetime.

regards ... Ed

[Bob Riebe]

Originally posted by cosworth bdg
Isn't it about time Historic motor racing went GREEN AND CLEAN in the fuel department. Who can give a good reason why not, the materials and technology are there using Historics equipment...........

Ah the old arrogant bigotry, of we are green, you are evil.

NO as there is not SUCH THING AS GREEN, if one really wants to be something besides being a hypocrite, then shut down vintage racing, or at least do not pay attention to it.

[Terry Walker]

Let's not confuse ethanol and methanol.

Methanol is a product of the petrochemical industry, just like gasoline. It's main feedstock is natural gas. Methanol is what the oldtimers used as racing fuel.

Ethanol, suitably diluted and with an ice cube, is booze. A product of agricultural feedstock.

For some time now, the major oil companies in Australia have been "spiking" pump fuel with up to 10 percent ethanol without telling anyone, producing a lot of complaints from owners of cars which don't like ethanol in any percentage.

Seems to me if you have an historic racer which didn't originally use pump fuel, you have two options: run it with the fuel mix it was originally built for; or modify it to run on modern pump fuel.

As to having "green" motor race meetings, forget it. They're no less green than horse racing, or football: virtually all the pollution is from the spectators going to and from the venues. And how green is a casino? You'd think that gambling is pollution free, but think of the pollution cost of the Vegas strip in power consumption. (And yes, I know a lot of it comes from the hydro-electric power plant not far away, but look what the dam did to a perfectly good river...)

[RTH]

As world population continues to balloon up from 2.8 BN to 6.8Bn in tthe last half century increasingly people will have to get used to staying at home and cutting all travel to the very bare minimum

You can watch the net population click upwards here

http://www.ibiblio.o...narbin/worldpop

[Paul Parker]

Forgive my being blunt but just how much contribution does historic motor racing make to 'global warning'? Answer buggar all.

Why do otherwise sensible people think there is moral virtue in this hair shirt attitude when the problem(s) are so obviously elsewhere. Do they want motor sport to be limited or banned? Why give the socialist prats an excuse to interfere and generally ruin what is de facto harmless fun.

Given the industrial output of the far east, especially China, such activities do not even register. I recall from my childhood coal powered power stations and industry, blanket fogs, smut in the air, collar/shirt cuffs black at the end of the day and 10,000 + deaths from bronchitis and lung diseases (not incuding smoking related conditions) amongst the elderly every winter. Not any more.

Modern vehicles and modern fuels, are leagues cleaner than they were in period. I suggest that anybody here or elsewhere address their concerns to the aviation industry and the former Soviet Union/Chinese who are the major global polluters.

After all if we all stopped driving any vehicles at all the industrial and aviation activity would still continue.

Talk about colluding in your own downfall.

[RA Historian]

Paul,

Well said!

Tom

[T54]

Greenhouse gases are 95% water vapor, 5% other gases of which almost 4% is CO2. Of this 4%, humans are contributing roughly 4%, the balance provided by animals, oceans, plants, earth and volcanic activity. In other words, if all humans cease all industrial activity, the difference in CO2 in the atmosphere will be much less than 1% of the total of greenhouse gases.

Putting it all together: total human greenhouse gas contributions
add up to about 0.28% of the greenhouse effect.
"There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "

Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

Of this melodrama, vintage auto racing is but a fart in the whole picture.

I clearly remember the French governement banning auto racing in 1974 during the first artificial "oil crisis" engineered by the newly-formed OPEC. After a deputy minister aptly pointed that a single flight of the Concorde from gay Paree to NYC burned as much fuel as the entire field of all the racing cars in sweet France for a year, that idea was quickly dropped.

We all want to be using renewable and less polluting fuels in our everyday automobiles, but for Lord's sake, please get real with the actual damage caused by vintage auto racing, it is a farce.

[cosworth bdg]

The amount of fuel used in Historics compared to the amount put into the air by aircraft is infintessimal. The only time I would say Historics should go unleaded is when the Aircraft Industry does, and I don't think that will be in my lifetime.

regards ... Ed [/B][/QUOTE] Ed, i agree with what you have said ,and your last paragraph above doe's sum up the whole question when it comes to this country.. regards.....Peter Nightingale...........

[Sharman]

Paul
I am in complete agreement with your comments. The only problem is that the self righteous sector of the population who have appointed themselves "guardians of the environment" (in common with the rest of the politically correct) have never let common sense or facts modify their obsessive desire to interfere with other peoples lives. Or even accept that other people are ALLOWED to hold different views.

[Allan Lupton]

Originally posted by cosworth bdg
The amount of fuel used in Historics compared to the amount put into the air by aircraft is infintessimal. The only time I would say Historics should go unleaded is when the Aircraft Industry does, and I don't think that will be in my lifetime.

regards ... Ed

A former aviation person comments:

The aircraft industry, in its predominantly gas turbine powered aeroplanes, has no lead in its fuel save for the minority of historic piston-engined cases.

It might also be worth pointing out that of course burning kerosene results in carbon dioxide and water but the emissions of oxides of nitrogen, particulates, unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide from these gas turbines have long been subject to very tight limits.

Oh, and the rate of use of fuel in an A340 may look high but it does carry a lot of people so the fuel/RPM is down at city bus levels, despite having to support itself in the air.

[RA Historian]

Sharman, Philippe, Paul, you have nailed it!

[RTH]

Historically motor racing has liked to put forward part of its reason for existence to be at the leading edge of technological automotive advance.

The amount of fuel consumed annually is relatively small , but setting a world example and developing advance, relevant to passenger vehicles is a worthy aim in contemporary motor racing.

The logic of this really cannot apply to historic cars, but if there is a renewable fuel developed that old racing cars could run on with little or no modification then it would be valuable public relations against those who would seek to stop all motor sport.