Quote from TehPaws3D :

I havn't really been following this thread, but are you people saying I can buy a diesel, (Brand new) Clean out the engine entirely, Then power said car with 100% monster energy drink or tea? I'll do it, too. Even if I only get 2 feet.

/retardedmoment

Monster energy has lots of sugar in it > sugarcane can be used as a fuel > it's sort of the same thing so will probably work > stick it in and see if you can feel the difference (don't listen to all the ney saying combustion specialists)

Got to love S14daft logic...

I had my 330d remapped and the gains were significant. I could match a remapped 330i (not much gain from that as it is normally aspirated); and we were racing - down to the UK Kart Meet

Had a good chat with the guy that did it, both before and during. He said there were a couple of reasons why the map is not ultimately powerful out of the box:

a) Differentiation. The 325d, 330d and 335d have the same basic engine but with some different parts. Despite this, manufacturers know what they want the engine to produce for each flavour and the map helps them to do that

b) Lowest common denominator. All 330ds are the same spec across Europe, so they have to work safely across different countries with varying qualities of fuel. Also, not everyone looks after their cars properly (servicing, warm up, cool down etc) so some margin is built in for that. For example, not everyone will let their turbo diesels idle for a short while before switching off, thus allowing the turbo to cool a little.

As for the original post; it could work, provided that on the way back to the engine the exhaust gases ran through a refrigerated greenhouse, but power to weight might be compromised.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I think that's very rare, although I'd welcome examples.

As far as I know BMW uses the same engine components in its lower range engines and the respective "Efficient Dynamics" versions. If you had a wizard's hat, a laptop and an electronically reprogrammable ECU you could switch between the two versions of the engine any time you wanted.

The lower consumption version doesn't generate less power because it has a sub-optimum mapping but because the engineers took desperate manners in order to avoid inefficient states of operation for those customers that want even the last bit of efficiency possible. Those customers that don't want to sacrifice 10% engine peak power to gain 5% of average fuel efficiency can choose the other mapping and be happy with their car, too.

Vain

By the way, for everyone who enjoyed the original post, this is required reading:

www.halfbakery.com

Quote from ajp71 :

Monster energy has lots of sugar in it > sugarcane can be used as a fuel > it's sort of the same thing so will probably work > stick it in and see if you can feel the difference (don't listen to all the ney saying combustion specialists)

Got to love S14daft logic...

My my it's like you're taking the ideas out of my head and writing them down for me. Cheers Alex!

Hey I should get props for the monster energy idea, Not that I'd have enough energy drinks to do it, But if i did...I'd have a car that used fuel as energy, Thus, removing the need for the battery, to add a turbocharger onto a turbocharger to power a turbo.

Quote from TehPaws3D :

Hey I should get props for the monster energy idea, Not that I'd have enough energy drinks to do it, But if i did...I'd have a car that used fuel as energy, Thus, removing the need for the battery, to add a turbocharger onto a turbocharger to power a turbo.

You'll need to tape some cans of Red Bull upside down on you roof to keep that thing on the road...

Quote from ajp71 :

You'll need to tape some cans of Red Bull upside down on you roof to keep that thing on the road...

Plus bend a couple of laws of thermodynamics to keep the water/sugar solution vaporized to have at least a marginal chance for it to ignite... but hey, why bother with physics when an idea of Red Bull powered car sound so awesome.

(I gotta admit you just nerd sniped me, damn you, I have to get up in like 5 hours!!! ***listing though a textbook looking for a formula to calculate how hot would water have to be to stay vaporized in a combustion chamber***)

Is the vaporization even the main problem? Would sugar-water vapor even combust? Been a while since I had chemistry, I don't think the sugar will be in the vapor

The trick would be to inject the solution as liquid and vaporize it in the combustion chamber, so in theory if you had a water solution of sugar (glucose, fructose, saccharose) of maximum possible concentration, I think it would be possible to ignite it - with a helluva blast of course... how did we even start thinking about that?

Would it burn quickly enough though to rev at 10,000rpm?

Cylinders would end up caramelised quite quickly too.

Sugars can (theoretically) burn to carbon dioxide and water just like any other alcanes. The biggest engineering obstacle would be to keep the sugar/water mixture homogenized and heated enough for the sugar to ignite but prevent the sugar from decomposing to carbon and water because of the heat... Given the fact that there are no sugar-burning engines in production, it might not even be possible... perhaps I should waste my time thinking about less insane things

Sugars aren't alkanes..

They're not (it wasn't my intention to make it sound like they are), but they combust in the same way.