DIYbanter - View Single Post - What is this old car, with rounded shell, inch thick wood interior?

John McCoy

wrote in news:bjhgdcpjf6g5q717qsm4m8ri1blbm4lkkr@
4ax.com:

And to the best of my knowlege virtually all Sprint and Indy engines
have been running Methanol since the sixties, or even earlier.. LONG
before the Turbo Indy engines.

Methanol(*) was used on and off from the 30s. It has the great
advantage of being detonation-proof if you run rich, and
there's no power loss if it's rich. With mechanical fuel
injection you couldn't control the mixture all that well,
so methanol was the way to go.

That said, methanol is a pain to work with, so a lot of guys
found it simpler and cheaper to stick with a carb and gas.
With the tires available even into the 60s the Offy could
usually overpower them on gas, unless it was a big track
like a mile (or, of course, Indy).

John

(* vaguely on topic reference - methanol comes from wood)