Using kerosene or fuel oil would have worked very poorly if at all in a standard spark injection engine. There are spark injection engines that can use heavier oil but they require a special carburetor and generally require an injection of ether or some other accelerant to get the engine going. It almost certainly would not have worked in the fuel injection system in the DeLorean, notwithstanding the almost certain contamination in low purity oils used for heating and lighting in the 19th century.
Alcohol could potentially be used–straight methanol is used as a high performance race car fuel–and the material compatibility issues would not be a grave concern for the short duration that the vehicle would have to operate, but the timing and compression is completely different. Putting “high content alcohol” intended for human consumption, e.g. 120 to 150 proof alcohol would result in a lot of water and contaminants. Alcohol used as fuels is typically better than 95% purity with the remainder being corrosion inhibitors, ignition stabilizers, and denaturants that improve or at least don’t interfere with combustion, and essentially no water other than the small amount that fresh alcohol will naturally pull out of the air. (One problem with the use of alcohol fuels for general use is that they are more hygroscopic than gasoline and will draw in water faster if not stored in low humidity conditions.)
However, ‘Doc’ Brown is clearly not all that great with machinery–witness his blowing the fuel injection manifold off (and somehow from underneath) the car. He has only a few days to escape his fate of being killed by ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen over a matter of $80. He doesn’t have time to fiddle around with engine timing, compression ratios, or building complex distillation apparatus to manufacture high grade alcohol or petroleum distillates needed to power the car, and nowhere to operate it if he did. If he were really all that smart, he’d realize that he’s already mucked up the time line and might as well stay in 1885 where he seems to enjoy the simplicity of an existence uncomplicated by difficult to understand technology like integrated circuits and automotive engines. He could kill Tannen with his long range sniper rifle, marry the schoolmarm, and write a series of science fiction adventure novels that would appeal and spur on many scientists and astronauts, simultaneously putting subtle coded messages in the books for his future self in 1955 to read, and for his self in 1985 to send back anything he might need to make his life more comfortable. Duh.
Of course, Tony Stark could make a microfusion reactor and then a particle accelerator using components salvaged from the hoverboard, and from thence build a primitive flying suit of armor and a legion of flying cavalry to be used to prevent subsequent world wars and defeat HYDRA at its conception, thereby subverting the entire rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Of course, he also needs to accelerate women’s fashion so as to get rid of the heavy and ornate Victorian style of dress in favor of cheerleader outfits and sports bras, which may be his biggest challenge.
I had a point when I started this but it has since been swept away in time like teardrops in the rain.
First they used horses. The next scene they show the Doc pouring in some strong whiskey or moonshine and it blows out the fuel injection manifold, which the Doc claims it’d take him a month to repair.
The real question, if we’re talking brass tacks here, is how did Clara Clayton bury ‘Doc’ Brown after being shot by ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen on September 7th 1885, if she was fated to die by her spooked horses hurtling her off the Shonash Ravine on September 4th?
If the presence of Doc Brown saved her, thereby altering the timeline, why was is still named Clayton Ravine in Marty’s timeline and not Shonash?
Apparently, per mythbusters, the basic idea of using moonshine would have worked. Circa 2010s era cars at least can burn it without actually needing special modification, it’s not good for the seals if it isn’t an E85 vehicle but it turns out they will run.
Reduced power though, and if it’s true Delorean had trouble hitting 88mph on a flat strip of smooth road with premium gas and an engine in good working order, there’s no way it would have worked without clean gas and a good road.
Hush now. It is Eastwood Ravine. It was always Eastwood Ravine. It was titled after duded-up, egg-suckin’ gutter trash with a stupid name like ‘Clint Eastwood’. What kind of cowboy name is that?
It’s a perfectly fine name for a dude. But why didn’t his awesome moccasins, “NEE-kays”, make a huge splash at the time? What kinda skins is them?! …and, where can I get some?
But… back to the OP. We’ve got two camps, here. One saying the production of gasoline within less than a week would be trivial, and another saying quite non-trivial (especially considering the lack of a straight grade and paved roads).
Anyone have a 1983 DeLorean to experiment with? My friend only has an '81.
In fact, IIRC, the speedometer only goes up to 85 mph in a real DeLorean. Not that it couldn’t go faster, but I believe the production had to swap it out with one that went to 95 for the film.
You don’t need to invent all the details of gasoline production if you find yourself in 1885 suddenly. It existed well before that and was used mostly as a cleaning agent or a fire starter. Pharmacies sold it oddly enough. The people that invented gasoline powered internal combustion engines shortly after that didn’t distill their own gasoline after all. I can’t guarantee that an corner pharmacy in the Wild West would have a supply but they might have. They carried all kinds of weird things back then. Pick up some dynamite, heroin and cocaine along with your gasoline jug if you find a good one. If nobody close by had it, you could have it shipped in for a price because it was an actual product in several forms. The gasoline may take some minor refining to work well in a pseudo-sports-car but it wouldn’t take much knowledge to further refine the small batch needed to make the short run required.
Here is an excerpt about gasoline availability before the engines that ran on it.
While I agree completely that the early fuels were of low (around 55, I think) octane, remember that the 80s were a terrible time for engines, and most compression ratios were in the 8:1 range, which would be perfectly happy on 87 octane*. Further, since the OP specified a PhD in chemistry, procuring a suitable octane improver (which can be as simple as ethanol) should not be a problem.
None of the gums and varnish concerns would matter in the timeframe of simply getting home- that doesn’t happen in a day of driving.
Detonation would be a real concern, but since a total volume of say 1/2 gallon would be plenty, I would expect even a shitty chemist to be able to prepare something suitable.
As for running room, simply graft some train wheels on there and run it on the track.
Finally, does anyone remember WHY the vehicle had to run at 88mph? If it’s simply a matter of velocity, he could have put the vehicle on a flat rail car and avoided a lot of drama.
*A cursory googling says 9.8:1, a surprisingly high ratio for the time
88mph is the speed in which the flux capacitor kicked in. No, they never said why that was the speed because it was made up completely. You just have to take it on faith that there is a reason for it even if there cannot possibly be one like that in the real world of physics.
The Back to the Future series did a great job with the fictional concept of time travel and continuity between the movies but the writers still had to make some comic book level assumptions and stick with them because they were dealing with pure science fiction fundamentally.Their genius was to make it make it somewhat plausible to most viewers and also introduce deeper themes like making people understand chaos theory in a way that they can relate to. It is an outstanding series in general but you can’t analyze even the most basic physics described in the movies to be anything other than a fanciful way to tell good stories that tie together very well.
Naturally- of course I understand that. But I thought the point (and fun) of this thread was to pick apart these things. Space fighters don’t need to bank either, but the movie scenes would look odd to our eyes if they didn’t adopt atmospheric flight characteristics.
Nearly every scientist I know takes great pleasure from nitpicking. I’ll avoid the obvious jokes about how that relates to getting dates.
That is my way of thinking as well. Advanced chemistry certainly isn’t my area of expertise but I have gotten 80’s era cars to run for a good while on fuels they weren’t designed for because they will do it for a time. If it were me, I would just come up with some 1885 pharmacy grade gasoline and a batch of super-distilled ethanol bought from the best moonshiner in the county. Mix them into a 2/3 pharmacy gasoline and 1/3 150 proof ethanol liquor and that piece of crap should at by able to make the short run needed to be able to get up to 88mph. Who cares how much you damage it as long as it doesn’t get completely destroyed before you hit the necessary speed?
I was just about to say that but the movies have that covered as well so that would generally be a fatal move. Remember that you come out in the exact same place geographically as you were when you left. Going off a large cliff would only result in you crashing at the base of the same cliff and most likely dying about 100 years later. That rule is constant throughout the series. The first time travel sequence resulted in a crash through a barn in 1955 resulted in remarkably little damage. They never show what what happen if you traveled into the future and someone built a brick building on the spot where you left from but that was a real risk.
I’ve always fanwanked the that the 88 mph requirement for the flux capacitor to work had more to do with the acceleration of the DeLorean as calibrated to the drive train, rather the the speed, per se.
It could be 88 mph or faster, since the Doc traveled back to 1885 in a fraction of a second when accidentally hit by lightening at the end of BTTF II.
But whatever. As said above, it was made up for pure plot reasons. The important thing is the story never breaks its own rules.
As for simply pushing it off the cliff, it probably had enough time to get up to 88 mph, just before exploding at the bottom of Eastwood Ravine in 1985.
Position and momentum relative to the earth’s surface always seemed to be conserved. By the time Marty hit Peabody’s barn in 1955, the DeLorean had already slowed down to less than 50 mph, IIRC.
The one thing they hand wave away in this regard is how did the Doc and the DeLorean survive the crash landing when arriving, spiraling 50+ feet above the ground, in January 1885? Maybe the DeLorean’s hover tech had just enough power to land before it was fried as well?
Doc broke the fuel injector trying to use alcohol they got from the saloon to run the car
he said it would take a month to rebuild and he only had a week until Buford Tannen would murder him
it wouldn’t matter if he could refine gasoline
In that sense, I guess what I’m asking is does it make sense for even a moderate scientist to try moonshine first before attempting to distill gasoline? Even in reality, would the fuel injection manifold blow out of the car if using 190 proof ethanol or otherwise, rendering it useless?
He wouldn’t need to rebuild anything. He could have just replaced it with the part out of the DeLorean that was already in 1885–the DeLorean that Doc arrived in. It would certainly matter if he could refine gasoline. He would still have to use the railroad, probably, in order to find a flat, smooth stretch to reach 88mph. With their own fuel, they wouldn’t have needed to hijack the train though.
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