Ethanol releated bearing failure.

[Dud]

Any other teams that run ethanol having problems with destroying main and rod bearings? We have our '04 and '05 car running together, the '04 car runs gasoline and has no problems at all. The '05 runs ethanol and consumes bearings. The '05 uses a dry sump oiling system, and we are certain we are supplying oil during high g cornering.

The problem, we believe, is that the ethanol breaks down the oil. We have been changing the oil after every day of the car running, but are still finding bearing material in the oil pan.

Does anyone use tighter piston rings, or perhaps run an extra ring to prevent this? Has anyone encountered the same problem and successfully defeated it?

[Travis Garrison]

That doesn't sound right, we ran E85 when I was up at WWU with no such problems...

Out of curiousity why are you jumping to the fuel as opposed to the dry sump system as being the culprit here? Are you logging oil pressure? If so have you checked to make sure your electronic oil pressure gauge is calibrated correctly?

Also it seems like you wouldn't be able to find a whole lot of bearing material before you started finding all sorts of other interesting things in your pan...are you positive its the crank bearing material?

-Travis Garrison

[Garlic]

When did you first replace the bearings, and how did you go about replacing them? What did the crank look like? What were the clearances?

I would say your failures are more related to either your dry sump, tuning, or simply the engine itself had something wrong with it from the beginning, than fuel to oil contamination.

[John Bucknell]

My experience with methonal is that if you start getting alchohol in your oil it looks like a milkshake - yucky. Pretty easy to smell as well. Don't ask how I know.

I would bet on a dry sump or pre-existing failure issue.

[osubeaver]

I agree. We have run dry sumps with E85 for a couple of years (we have switched to gas this year because ethanol has other issues like it is very corrosive on aluminum), but we have never had a motor eat up main bearings. I have seen our oil get Ethanol in it after running it for a while and it does indeed look like like a crappy milkshake and yes you can smell it, but if you are changing that stuff after each driving outing, I doubt the fuel is the problem.