I saw this on Autoblog this morning. It's geared more towards efficiency, but my first thought was to my Evo....

Autoblog article

It seems as though meth and alky could be paving the way for a more mainstream acceptance of this kind of performance technology

 

Methanol is more frequently used in Alky kits, Denatured alcohol, or any other alcohol or washer fluid, or even a mix of water and alky are also frequently used.

In response to the other question.. given your using a stock map, on a stock car, your 550cc injectors would be about 20% lean or so to run E85, but if you upgraded to 660 or 680's, then you "Should" be able to run E85 without even retuning.

The great thing about turbo cars, and tunable ECU's are as long as the components aren't sensitive to the corrosive nature of alcohol, then the car will run fine..

I *REALLY* would want to get my car filled with E85 one day and build a map for it..

With a normally aspirated car you can run alky by just upgrading your injectors to a size large enough to correctly get your ECU back into its happy place.

Don't get me wrong, as this becomes more popular, we'll find the hurdles, such as issues with the Evap system and whatnot that were mentioned earlier.. but if you can get your car converted, and certified as a "Clean air" vehicle there are benefits, tax break, even use the HOV lane without carpool riders in some states..

 

I dont want to sound like a bonehead, but what effect this will have on performance. Using the E85 as opposed to good ol gasoline?

 

What is the current price of E85/gal? And what will it do to our current fuel lines? Will we have to convert anything?

Nevermind just reading through the article.

 

Hopefully NY gets their act together and start some distribution soon.

 

Florida's the same way. The only 3 stations are on government controlled properties.

 

It shouldn't affect much, you might be a little down on power until you do a good retune specific to the ethanol, but you gain alot more with good tuning. Your MPG will go down because you use more alcohol than gasoline.. If cruise AFR is 14.7 for gasoline, its about 9 (to 1) for Ethanol (about 9.5 for E85) What this means is when your cruising around there's 14.7 parts air for one part gasoline, and 9.5 parts air for 1 part E85..

 

Any idea how hard it would be to get your car certified as a clean air vehicle? Shouldn't be too hard to tune for E85, though I suppose government regs would probably frown on a piggyback.

l8r)

 

Ethanol is a solvent. E85 is highly corrosive to metal that is not stainless steel, and it can also disolve rubber gaskets and fittings. As a result, cars not originally designed to run on E85 would require extensive modifictations to every part of the car that touches the fuel in order to prevent the fuel from gradually disolving it. E85 also has very different power density than gasoline. It makes less power than gasoline and requires more gallons of fuel to go the same miles that you could get with gasoline. Use of E85 also requires extensive modifications to fuel and timing maps.

 

That is only the case if you do not tune for the ethanol content. Ethanol has an Octane rating of 110, meaning that it is more knock resistant than normal pump gas. This in turn allows you to run more aggressive timing and/or boost, which will allow you to make more power.

l8r)

 

Yeah, you have to dump in more fuel, which means that you then get MUCH lower fuel mileage. So then what really was the point in doing all that work and modification to convert to running E85? Your fuel costs are no cheaper, and you just spent several thousand dollars converting to run E85.

 

True enough, but since 1988 the US government has required all manufacturers to make cars able to run E15 - aka winter gas. It's only 15% ethanol, but as TFA says you don't make a part E15 capable without making it E85 capable.

 

Well not to get on my environmental soapbox, but the reasons you do so are:
1) reduce reliance on foreign oil (ethanol is made from corn - mid-west farmers will love you!!)
2) Burns MUCH cleaner

If you're not doing it for one of those, you probably are not doing it for the right reason.

 

Yeah I actually eluded to that a few posts up..

Your more aggressive timing is really to kick off a slower burning combustion mixture.. So tuning is pretty important to get back the power lost, and then some..

Ever hear stories about guys tuned for pump, making slightly less power with race gas, with no other changes.. This is typically why..

You will use more fuel to make the same power, thats definitely true...

 

Anytime you are running at WOT, you are definitely NOT worried about fuel costs. But ignoring that, if I can make more power and have cleaner emissions, all for a slight decrease in MPG, which is (generally) offset by the cheaper fuel, then I'll gladly take that tradeoff. You are talking about theory and not real world applications and, surprisingly, even at cruise the theory does not hold up to what has been measured.

To quote: "Although E85 contains only 72% of the energy on a gallon for gallon basis compared to gasoline, experimenters have seen much better fuel mileage than this difference in energy content implies. Many automotive writers and columnists suggest that because of the lower energy content, you should expect an equivalent 39% increase in fuel usage. This has not been observed in practice when running gasoline and ethanol blends. Some of the newest model FFV's get only about 7% less mileage per gallon of fuel of E85 compared to their gasoline fuel mileage."

l8r)