As an observer, it seems you are in agreement on more things that not. I would guess 308MBR is spending his Sundays at the local drag strip running alcohol in a big block V-8 gas motor. Everything he describes is consistent with my experience doing that. Water in the oil, rusted engine parts, top end lubrication problems - generally water everywhere it shouldn't be. Looks like Wonder is relating engineering knowledge/experience on new technologies which make burning alcohol more practical. Because, as 308MBR says, we darn sure don't want granny heading to Wal-Mart with more than our god given 14 pounds of intake pressure.
The conclusion seems to be, that what it takes to get a motor to run alcohol with what we have to work with at the track today makes it impractical as a daily driver fuel. The remaining question is, is there technology on the drawing boards that would make it practical? I am not sold on these flex fuel cars. What will the engine life be? Passenger cars run at 210 or so degrees water temp. Passenger cars go on 1/2 mile trips to Wal-Mart. Where is that unvaporized water going to go?
Yeah, I came to a similar conclusion after posting my comments. What I should have more correctly said was that it certainly didn't sound like any NORMAL car engine conditions.
A dragster engine has HUGE temperature gradients everywhere, causing water (and methanol) to condense in lots of places and cause corrosion. A NORMAL car engine comes up to temperature slowly, and the temp gradients aren't anywhere near as bad.
As long as the methanol stays in the vapor phase, it isn't going to corrode anything (boiling point of methanol = 65 deg C). Some small amount may condense on engine shutdown, but I doubt it would be enough to cause any significant damage.