meth corrosive to aluminum
 

im new to this methonal injection thing, I have read from a few places that its corrosive to alluminum coating which protects it from oxidation.
straight from wikipedia..
One of the drawbacks of methanol as a fuel is its corrosivity to some metals, including aluminium. Methanol, although a weak acid, attacks the oxide coating that normally protects the aluminium from corrosion:

6 CH3OH + Al2O3 → 2 Al(OCH3)3 + 3 H2O

anyone like to comment on it.

the reaction is a slow one

the wetting/drying seen by UICP/intank mani is not a concern at all.

but what if say after you drive your car and was in boost a lot and used the meth injection. You get home shut off your car but some of it is still left inside the piping and even in the chamber itself. So letting it sit for 8 or more hrs.
wouldn't that be enough time for the chemical reaction to take place.

tell you what, when i get to work monday morning, i'll soak a piece of aluminum foil in methanol and see at the end of they day, how much is "eaten" away.

just dont do it inside your house, dont want ya to be dead.
aluminum is a funny metal, reacts with all kinds of stuff
I remember adding ferric chloride to it ( just a drop) HOLY Cow!!!!!!!!!!!!

anyways, that kinds of test is not good enough really, you cant really just look at it and tell if it will create hot spots in your chamber. But let me know what you see with the experiment.

lemmonhead,

Pour some meth onto a surface and see how long it sits there. Get back to me on that with your results will you please?

:lol:

check back monday evening and see if i live to tell the results :beer:

I found this in the mitsubishi 100 section of the service manual.

fuel: A mixture of 10% ethanol (grain alcohol) and 90% unleaded gasoline may be used in your vehicle. If driveability problems are experienced as a result of using gasohol, it is recommended that the vehicle be operated on gasoline.

Methanol: Do not use gasoline containing methanol
(wood alcohol). Using this type of alcohol can result in vehicle performance deterioration and damage
critical parts in the fuel system components. Fuel system damage and performance problems resulting from the use of gasoline containing methanol may

ok so putting methanol in your fuel is bad, but most poeple spray it on the intake side, so would this have the same effect?

research doc.
 

I also found PHd research work done. Its finding are;
Our calculations indicate that methanol adsorbs chemically by donating electron charge from the methanol oxygen to the surface aluminum. We find that the surface atomic structure changes upon adsorption, most notably the spacing between the outermost Al and O layers changes from 0.11 Angstrom to 0.33 Angstrom.
Water and oxygen in sufficient concentrations inhibited attack, probably by virtue of the protective aluminum oxide that is maintained in their presence.

Also from another research finding,
methanol exhibits both hydrophobic and hydrophilic character. It has an —OH radical which can bond readily with the surrounding water molecules. It also has a methyl radical which cannot bond and is hydrophobic. Both headgroups are sufficiently simple in structure to be interpretable in a diffraction experiment at the atomic level.

so the final conclusion is, Adding 100% methonal will cause corrosive problems on aluminum, Adding water offsets this corrosive problem. methonal is hyrophilic.
As long as you use fresh methonal/water mix every time you start the car, dont lean it out to much because of the extra Oxygen from hyrophilic nature of meth. And there is no left over methonal left inside the chamber by running the engine without using meth for awhile you will probably will not experience problems.

this I guess can get expensive having to toss away tons of unused methonal.

here are a few of the links
http://www.isis.rl.ac.uk/isis2001/hi...ydrophobic.htm
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract...ef950164e.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol

:lol:

you are making methanol injection too difficult

btw i'm still alive and foil is soaking away :beer:

easy response, run race gas if meth is a concern to you.

9 am this morning, the piece if 2" x 2" x 0.001" foil was fully immersed in HPLC grade methanol and was taken out at 5pm

9am - 0.1752 grams
5pm - 0.1764 grams

it gained mass.....it oxidised?

did you give it time to dry???? :D

Even on a cold day, there will be enough under hood temperature to keep your manifold and intake pipes hot enough to vaporize any methanol that tries to puddle. Couple this with the air flow going through your pipes constantly, the time the aluminum is exposed to meth is very minimal compared to the run time of your motor.
Now if you have a faulty setup, or installation, and meth drains from your storage container into your pipes while it sits overnight, corrosion won't be as important as the suprise you get when you try to crank it over.

You can possibly accelerate the ali corrosion by pinning a brass or stainless component to it in the same solution.

yep, came out of the meth, blow dry w/ N2 and when into a 180C convection dryer for 5 mins