Can James make a car drive on booze?

LindenChase

LindenChase

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Nov 28, 2007
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James has been trying to combine the best of all his worlds and has been mixing cars, booze and science in an experiment. He could thus use the same footage in all of his three upcoming new series this autumn. I bet the BBC will be happy with him. :D

Our friends at Radical sport cars had provided a Radical SR4: could a car with an unmodified engine run off exceptionally pure Bruichladdich new spirit? The answer is a 0-60-in-3.5-seconds-yes. But only if it is quadruple-distilled mind.
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http://blog.islayinfo.com/article.php/oz-clarke-james-may-islay-bruichladdich

islay.jpg


More info at:
http://www.laddieblog.com/laddieblog/Blog/Entries/2008/8/7_Oz_%26_James_Great_British_Adventure.html

and these three (not very good quality but who cares) films:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qgoVTv8cEXg&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3fw7ZMXGHaA&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TVrd9P8zWlw&feature=related
 
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The caravan is strapped to a "Corniche convertible"? Methinks somebody didn't check facts before writing that article. In before the hordes of May groupies squeeing over his rocker look.
 
OMG JAMMMMEESSS!!!!111Eleventy!

:rolleyes: *makes an unladylike snort and wanders off*

(And no, I don't hate James. I'm just too grumpy and evil to be a proper fangirl ;p)
 
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Labcoatguy said:
In before the hordes of May groupies squeeing over his rocker look.
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I can assure you lots of squeeing is already going on my friend, on all the appropiate sites. :D :drool:
 
Ethanol=Refined Moonshine. You can actually make E100 cheaper then gas, it just wont be of the same unbelievable qualities of mass E85 (which is why the prices are as high as they are) Its also worth mentioning that if you setup a engine to run strictly on ethanol you'll get the same efficiencies from it as gas, less energy per gallon (70% ish) but you can get the thermodynamic efficiencies up to a diesel beating 40%, so it balances itself out. Its also worth noting that the same car that can make 40% thermodynamic efficiency blah blah blah will also be able to make much more hp and tq from the same size engine, ethanol is really great stuff if you work with it, but as a "flex-fuel" option its unbelievably terrible at the moment.

Biodiesel is very much the same so far as local refining vs mass refining goes. You can make it for as little as 80 cents a gallon (refined) it just won't be as ungodly sparkling clean as commercial biodiesel. Still good enough to run atleast as long as diesel, just not a internal engine degreaser that happens to also be a fuel, which commercial biodiesel is.

Basically what i'm saying is the whole food from fuel thing can work cheap and efficiently, but to sell it to the public you have to A. Ship it all over the place and waste a lot of money and resources doing so, and B refine it to standards that surpass petroleum products. The standards are so high that one engineer told me that when they first calculated how much it would cost to produce biodiesel to the insane legal standard it was going to cost $7 a gallon, and this was back when diesel wasn't more then $3 a gallon USD.
 
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Labcoatguy said:
The caravan is strapped to a "Corniche convertible"? Methinks somebody didn't check facts before writing that article. In before the hordes of May groupies squeeing over his rocker look.
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Eh they probably just google searched for "Corniche" and found the most recent one which was a convertible. Either way it's awesome that May is towing a caravan with a fantastic old Rolls Royce.
 
Yeh. But on that note,

Labcoatguy said:
But what on earth is he going to use to tow it? Not his Boxster, for sure. Panda? Or for complete and utter hilarity, his Rolls?
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I called it! :mrgreen:
 
Runs on booze, you say? First thing that came to mind:

bender.jpg
 
Dosent Prince Charles run his DB7? on wine? Clarkson made a crack during the news about it when it broke down or something along those lines?
 
Old Lace said:
OMG JAMMMMEESSS!!!!111Eleventy!

:rolleyes: *makes an unladylike snort and wanders off*

(And no, I don't hate James. I'm just too grumpy and evil to be a proper fangirl ;p)
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This makes no sense.
 
May pushed the Radical SR4 racing car to a hair-raising 100mph, managing 0-60 in 3.5 seconds over four runs.
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So with the Stig behind the wheel it would've done 0-60 in 2.5 and 175mph?
 
2766306090_418d26af8b.jpg


Nothing to do with the Islay experiment, but I thought it to be too good not to post here. So he's not using his own Rolls, probably remembered the godawful mess Oz made in the Jag. :D
Found it on Flickr by the way. http://www.flickr.com/photos/29581605@N08/2766306090/
 
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