sucks to hear. This is one of the reasons I opted for a lower static compression ratio engine build. E85 is great except for that it varies from tank to tank. It's no c16 when it comes to consistency.

Glad to hear you figured out what the culprit was. That's great news!

 

Yah, the cost of C16 is just too much money for how much I go through a month.

I have a 55gallon drum of e85 that is mixed with 15% oxygenated 98 octane from a new supplier. Even buying consistent blends by the drum is a lot of $$ compared to pump e85. Works out to be about $6 a gallon, which is getting into 100octane territory. I haven't quite figured out a long term solution.

 

Damn dude, sorry to hear...

 

So, knock control isnt very foolproof.

 

Something does not add up. If you had added 10 gallons of Regular gas , The car shouldve instantly knocked like a *****, been wildly rich, and stupid slow.
But you said it felt great, even faster?

I remember davids post about the knock timing maps being very safe and pulling tons of timing + Adding fuel, Did you alter these or did they not work, Did you not notice the AFR swing, or a knock light going off?

 

I couldn't agree more with this. It's a well known fact that running regular gas on an e85 tune will make a car run extremely rich and knock like crazy. Hell, my car won't even start w/ gas in the tank.

 

When I hurt my motor the first time I had the untuned pump gas map with a tank of E85 (I flipped the map switch and didn't realize).

E85 doesn't knock all the time. Sometimes it just goes boom. Damn I feel bad for you Leet. At least its no longer a mystery.

And +2 shouldn't the refinery or the gas station have some culpability in this.

I have the E85 setup from **P. So far so good. I'm a little shocked I haven't started seeing lower then E85 since its gotten colder. It sometimes dips to E84 but its been pretty consistent.

Good luck.

 

That is absolutely crazy... I would not have expected this behavior if you had pure 93 octane because of how insanely rich it would be running with your ginormous injectors. I guess some residual E85 in the tank and the standard 10%-15% ethanol they have in 93 octane... just weird.

 

Its just another chapter in the $100,000 ( or soon to be) project evo hahaaha....

 

I think I just threw up in my mouth. LOL.

 

If you were logging and have a visible af guage and didnt notice this then you werent paying attention. Obviously lots of other people stated the same thing I did. I notice if my af's vary by .2 or more. Going from e85 to pump gas would make it go at least a point and a half rich. The knock sensors should have been lowering boost and adding more fuel as a failsafe as well. I read the whole thing and witbhout even being there seem to notice more than you.

I have been tuning aems on higher power cars than yours since 2001 when first introduced for the Supra using meth injection with failsafes and you should have had some setup. Sorry for the bad luck but you need to test ethanol content every time and watch the af's closely after each fillup. Common sense especially when you are racing the car.

 

As a side note the gas stations arent liable at all since they are marketed to flex fuel vehicles and the worst thing that would happen on a flex fuel car is the cust gets more expensive gas for the price of E85.

 

Batty200, do realize he was out on the track racing at the limit. Staring at a wideband is not an option.

He took 90% of the needed precaution by simply using the same source for fuel that over the last 5 years has been proven to be consistent. He made a simple mistake of not verifying that it was correct at the worst possible time, it happens. He gets to pay for his mistake now which is bad enough.

Being a douche to him while trying to promote yourself is a low life move though.

Beyond that, I would bet he had 5-7 gallons left in the gas tank of the known good E85 because the design of the gas tank. Dump in the 91 octane (10%-15% ethanol) and he now has something in the range of E40. Yes, it will have a noticeable impact on the AFRs, but if the car was tuned in the high 11:1 range, it's only going to drop it to the mid 10:1 range with the fuel change, which it's going to run just fine there, as far as being doggy. If the engine was on the louder end of the spectrum and the knock level table had high voltages in it, it may not have been able to reliably detect knock at high engine speeds anyway so it adding fuel or pulling timing might not have happened at all.

All it takes is a couple good hits of detonation to cause severe damage. Pin it down one back straight while keeping your eyes on the road at 100+mph and it's all over...

 

I had a hard enough time looking at my wideband and watching for knock while doing third gear pulls. I cant imagine it being possible in a 600hp car with corners added into the mix. Sorry for your misfortune.

 

I don't know how possible/realistic this would be. But a bluetooth or earpiece that beeps loud when AFR drop below a certain range/target or car registers knock would be great. Keep eyes on the road for road racing/or anything for that matter. ECU gurus is this possible?