putting the Wagon on methanol

Been running my Dart and my Volare wagon on E85 the last two years.

Won the track championship last year using both cars, so I cant say anything negative about E85. Its been good to me, and I plan to still run it on the Dart.

I had an 830cfm E85 carb on the wagon. When I bought the car it was running 7.40's. Through tuning and going to E85, its best pass to date is 6.95, and normally goes low 7.0's.

Now I have a 750cfm Methanol carb that I just had built. Will be this coming friday before I'm able to go to the track with it. I'm guessing once the tune is finally reached it should go mid 6.70's to mid 6.80's range.

What do you guys familiar with methanol use for a top lube, and how much per 5 gallons?
Any tips on maintaining the system from corrosion?

I have the following parts or have done the following:

Methanol fuel pump and a meth bypass regulator with a return line to the fuel cell.
Have taken the foam out of the fuel cell.
Have a 10an line feeding the pump and 8an the rest of the way.
have a lean out valve installed for helping get the engine up to temp.
will get the engine up to 185degrees and spray wd40 in the carb before shutting off the engine for the day.

Thinking of installing an oil temp gauge and an oil pan heater to help with cold starts on cool days.

Anything else?

Crewed for a sprint car team for years....Ran methanol...Never ran any additives.....

I have ran alcohol for years with lube and without the only corrosion issues I ever have is the check ball under the squirter nozzles stick just pull the nozzle screw spray a little w-d 40 in the hole start the screw in a few turns push the accel pump lever and usually it pops free tighten screw back up thats the most important step to prevent a screw eating catastrophic failure LOL!

So your wagon is "falling off the wagon"? :-k

superprotyrn said:

I have ran alcohol for years with lube and without the only corrosion issues I ever have is the check ball under the squirter nozzles stick just pull the nozzle screw spray a little w-d 40 in the hole start the screw in a few turns push the accel pump lever and usually it pops free tighten screw back up thats the most important step to prevent a screw eating catastrophic failure LOL!

Click to expand...

good advice!

I may just put a squirt of wd40 in both holes every other week when I adjust valves.

Thanks for the advice

I fired the wagon up on the methanol for the first time last night. Carb was pretty close to my surprise. Had to tweak on it just a little, and it was running very well.

It doesnt even sound like the same engine. There is a very noticeable difference in the throttle response vs when it was on gas or E85. Got a little different sound at idle. Cant wait to try it out on friday night.

Ok, got it to the track on friday night for some testing. Carb runs really really good.
Started out with 150 jets and made a pass. first two things I noticed was the throttle response was out of this world, and the wheels coming straight up out of the beams.

Best 60ft on E85 has been 1.50, and the first pass was a 1.46.

Went a 6.903 on the first pass. EGT said 1444 degrees. Looking for 1250 degrees.
Jetted up to 160's and went 6.903 and EGT said 1259 degrees.

At this point we think we have her jetted close, but cant figure why it isnt running a little faster. So we make another pass and go 6.902 and EGT is 1550 degrees.

At this point we realize that the EGT is not working correctly, and we proceed with the 160's. Wanted to race it the next day, and left it alone for one more pass. It went a 6.897 on the last pass.

4 passes that only varied .006 is crazy, and that was over a 3 hour period.
Raced it yesterday and went out due to a redlight in the second round. was dialed a 6.89 and ran a 6.893 on the pass.

Talked to two guys I know who have ran methanol for years. Both told me that I should have jetted down. They both said the EGT was acting crazy due to the carb being too fat. They said the some of the fuel was burning inside the header causing flames and an unstable read on the EGT. They both said they had experienced the same thing, and Bo Laws from BLP told them what was happening.

So, going to lean it out some for friday night, and try to fix the redlighting issue. The car is leaving so much harder, that I cant just leave at the first flash of the third amber. Having to wait through the bulb for a bit, and thats going to be very inconsistent. Even left as low as 1700 rpm the other night. Going to let the torsion bars down a little to get more front end travel. That will let it stay in the beams a little longer. If that doesnt fix it completely, I'll try leaving from idle at 1200 rpm.