OK here is $1.50 boost juice.
Take your 5 gal. jug to the station and fill with 2 gallons of E85, add 10 drops of blue food coloring, add 2 gallons of water. Let mix stand for one min.
The 1.5" of clear fluid on the top is gasoline siphon it off and the balance is 50/50 blend of water/ethanol

 

Interesting, but where did you get your figures, they do not compute.
You'd end up with 3.7 gallons of a 45.95% ETHANOL / 54.05% Water blend after you siphoned off the Gas. You're pumping Ethanol at an E85 pump, not Methanol.

If you wanted to have the end result be 50/50 you'd need to pump 2.36 Gallons of E85.

By the way, where you getting E85 in Nor Cal??? Sacramento or big metro area?

 

I didn't think the 45.95%/54.04% was that big a deal. I am eyeballing the water from my garden hose. I get the E85 at the Chevron in Davis,Ca.
You are right E85 is Ethanol, M85 is methanol, depends on where you live.

 

Do not use water from your hose. DO NOT use tap water. You need distilled water.

Plus there's a much easier way to run alky/water mix. Go to Home Depot (or the like) and buy a can of denatured alcohol (you can also use rubbing alcohol) and distilled water. Dump in the can of etoh, fill the can with distilled water and dump it in. Viola. 50/50.

Ethanol does not provide as much cooling power as methanol (which may be mitigated by the h2o in the mix anyway), but does provide more oomph. Methanol is *safer* than ethanol (it takes more heat to ignite) and is cheaper. You don't want and methanol gas mixture anymore than you want ethanol/gas. You want the straight alcohol in either case, independent of if you are mixing in water (if you want to use it as an intercooler in addition to the fuel properties).

You want the race fuel methanol or denatured (or isopropyl) alcohol and distilled water if you want to dilute the fuel. Stay away from the gas pump. Stay away from the garden hose.

The 50/50 mix does not have to be exact, but you have to tune for the mixture. Less of the fuel and more of the water means more of a chance of detonation and it is a big deal if you tell your tuner 50/50 and its 46/54. You don't want to "wing it" right into a broken piston.

 

I understand Methanol is a few octane higher then Ethanol.
I think you are missing the point of my recipe. I am getting ethanol for $2.50 a gallon
you are paying $10. a gallon at Home Depot. I think the reason for distilled water is to keep the hard water from pluging up the system. Some guys use washer fluid about 33% methanol.

 

Snowperformance told me this:

For every one gallon of distilled water, mix in a small bottle of HEET (the yellow bottle).
This is from their tech.

I tried it, definitely rich as hell when spraying, and obviously it cooled the iat's.

Get fancy and add coloring if you want.

 

Do you go through it that fast that you need to get the price down?

 

Well, you can also run straight water for cheaper still... Is your point really to make it cheap or to run what is going to be good for your FI setup and engine life?

The point of using distilled water is that you are spraying it THROUGH YOUR ENGINE. Who cares about the $0.39 nozzle in your water kit... Tap water contains chemicals... like chlorine, flouride, nitrates, barium, arsenic, copper... Recent EPA studies of water in 42 states found over 140 "extra" chemicals in tap water.

But hell, it's your engine man.

I personally pay about $4 a gallon for my chemical intercooler. 100% straight 99.49% pure methanol.

 

how about 0degree washer fluid and a bottle of heet yellow ?

 

I tried 0 degree washer fluid way back in the day. Yes, it contains methanol. It also contains detergents and colors and scents and yech. It worked, but when I pulled the engine to stroke it, the cylinders were coated in a gunky mess that smelled like washer fluid