Microlighters

Has anyone ever converted their Rotax 503 to run on methanol? At the rate of normal gasoline, methanol makes financial sense at R4.50/l.

Hi KlapperKnop,

KlapperKnop wrote:Has anyone ever converted their Rotax 503 to run on methanol? At the rate of normal gasoline, methanol makes financial sense at R4.50/l.

This is an excellent article about fuels, additives and alcohol/methanol in the 503: http://www.800-airwolf.com/pdffiles/ARTICLES/part19.pdf. My conclusion is that if fuel mixed with alcohol is not good, then pure alcohol is probably not good either.

Cheers,

V.

KlapperKnop,

Just remember that methanol motors use ALOT more fuel than normal motors. IIRC 3 - 5 times more.

L:

I would not.

Methanol is hygoscopic - it attracts water. So your fuel must be fresh and does not store well. It is necessary to drain the and flush the fuel system.

Methanol is vegatable based and therfore not campatable with mineral oils. So your premix oils choice ic limited.

The air fuel mixture requies about three times more fuel. So jet are massive. (buy drill from a hardware shop to drill the jets out) Fuel consuption is about 2 times more.

Methanol corrodes aluminium/magnesium castings. Your engine castings will corrode if you do nor flush the entire engine out before storing.

Petrol is best!

I'm not so sure that it is so detramental. The model boys have run their two stroke engines on the stuff for years. They use either castrol m or mssr. I am not ware of it having any dadverse effects on aluminium castings.

Magnesium castings.

They were designed to run on mogas, so maybe don't play.