$3.39/gal right now in Charlottesville, VA. It was $1.99 for awhile last fall. I miss those days.

 

Just curious---

Is that accelerated wear bearing wear and cylinder scuffing noted only on those who kicked up the boost vs OEM boost level?

I have 5 fleet FFV's (1 Ford/4 Chev's) all with 200,000+ miles on E85 and none seem to have lost any performance, show any plug deposits, or use any oil. It seems like we lose the trannys and bodies before anything shows up on the engines (have not spent a dime on engines other than plug changes at 70-100,000 miles and oil changes). ---Granted- these are not exactly big hp/cube cars on boost

 

we test using 100% OEM engine cals. no extra revs, power, ect.

the life cycle test is a simulation that starts in traffic in NY, up to the cold in international falls, across the flat's of the mid west, thru the elevation change of the rockie's, the heat of death Vally, and ends in stop-n-go of LA at rush hour.

this repeats for 80-100k

 

Alcohols are known to affect the liver. Your car doesn't have a liver, so Boost On!

 

interesting test. what percentage of this life cycle test does an evo motor spend in closed loop? also, it would seem that the motor can't be 100% oem cal when running e85. bigger injectors needed, fuel map needs tuning, and ideally, timing should be tweaked.

off topic thought - i'm wondering what company you work for. can't imagine any company that would be intersted in this kind of data on an evo motor

 

One more question - did you have the pcv system hooked up for these tests?

 

I would also ask what specification E85 you use during the test;

1) Is the E85 varied from E70 (or even E60) used in the far north (International Falls) to summer grade 83% pure ethanol (17% hydrocarbon) such as called for in the DOE handbook (E60 is not in there but adopted by N. Dakota I believe as practice) in these simulations?
2) Do you use an off-spec wet E85, without corrosion inibitor, and with added contaminates (called aggressive ethanol) to speed the test such as done in some durability testing?

 

yes.

 

I can pull the spec sheet next week, but normally we use a custom blend EPA cert fuel.

i know its a sumer blend fuel as we don't do cold start on this cycle. we freeze the chamber to sim weather but the engine is never shut off once started.

Id bet its a perfect E85 blend.

 

That is interesting !. There are 2 ways to make E85 also (besides % blend). I use the path less traveled-- mine is not blended with regular gasoline, instead it is blended with natural gasoline (a very low sulfur, water clear, mostly C5 pentane around here) that contains 0 additive except for a trace of additive the pipeline companies inject prior to putting the natural gasoline in the line (this is to reduce friction in the line making pumping easier). Thus the only significant adddive in my E85 is the spec corrosion inhibitor (which also balances phe). Some believe that no additive is better than run of the mill gas terminal additives which may not be compatible with high ethanol blends. I wish I knew why GM in particular makes a statement on their FFV fuel doors warning to not use additives- are they worried about MMT or some other OTC additive?

The FFV's in my fleet have all sorts of drive cycles as some guys do a lot of city driving, cold weather idle, short runs (sometimes less than 5 miles), etc but yet each of them will at some point in the day drive a couple or more 30 mile segments which helps dry the oil of moisture. Our Ford Taurus runs significantly more water vapor than the Chev's --it will obliterate the road behind you on a cold start at 0 degrees for about 2 miles wereas the Impalas are hardly noticeable (and no different than with gas). This could show up in oil if the drive cycle is too short between cold starts but you did not do this in your test.

All of these cars still have the same injectors with no cleaning needed and no oil use even though they are at or over the 200,000 mile range. They all seem like they will go another 200,000.