Pretty much. I'm not the kind-of guy who is okay running around in a time-bomb. I did a ton of research before going methanol and before going 100%. I had no qualms whatsoever. But, ultimately, it boils down to what you're comfortable with. Many, many people are comfortable with 100%, and for good reason. Can something happen? Yes. Is it likely, even moderately? No.Learning a lot about the use of methanol in this thread. The methanol fuel safety guide was a good read as well. Thanks for the good info everyone. I'll try to summarize my findings regarding methanol so far:
So to answer my own question of whether there is an increased chance of a car catching fire if it has a WMI kit installed during a collision, the answer seems to be, there is a minimal increase. The chances of a WMI kit leaking, or of hoses popping off, seems to be higher than the car catching fire due to a WMI kit being installed on the car.
- Methanol is more difficult to ignite than gasoline. (Something has to happen during a collision to ignite the methanol in the engine bay, but this "something" or "series of somethings" will be very hard to pinpoint considering no two accidents are the same.)
- Methanol burns slower than gasoline. It also releases less energy than gasoline when burning.
- In general, methanol may be considered less of a fire hazard compared to gasoline.
- When methanol burns, it emits almost no light and creates no smoke. (This is the scary part. If indeed the methanol in your car ignited for whatever reason, you/people might not notice the methanol flames on your car.)
- Since methanol is soluble in water, as others have suggested, diluting your solution with water will lessen the chance of it catching fire. As Redline have stated, you can also easily put out methanol fires using just water. In fact, using water is one of the preferred ways of extinguishing methanol fires.
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