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Precision Injector Users Using E85 Beware

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Old Jun 3, 2009, 01:31 PM
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Here's the quote.

Well, here is what I did just so everyone is clear. I filled a 40mL vial with E85 and blew it dry with nitrogen gas and mild heating (about 150*F). After there was no fuel left, I placed it under high vacuum to remove any remaining volatiles for about an hour. I was left with a clear sticky residue that smelled bad - like nasty frying oil. I dissolved this sample in the NMR solvent and analyzed it and it IS the same goo that was on the injector. There was smaller amounts of some other stuff in it as well, but the same peaks I saw in the black goo were in this residue. The black goo IS coming from the E85. It isn't naturally black, though. I suspect it just has soot mixed in with it that is giving it the color.

So the next challenge is figuring out why is this crap in our fuel, and if it is in everyone's fuel (particularly people who aren't having this problem).
Old Jun 3, 2009, 02:00 PM
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Well then, if it is clear, I don't know what is darkening the mixture I am evaporating, because it isn't clear.
Old Jun 3, 2009, 04:36 PM
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^^^try heating it up or agitation?
Old Jun 3, 2009, 04:40 PM
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Originally Posted by Ted B
Well then, if it is clear, I don't know what is darkening the mixture I am evaporating, because it isn't clear.
Perhaps the elimination of the dilution from the other components that evaporated is just making the concentration of the "gum" more apparent...
Old Jun 3, 2009, 05:06 PM
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I don't know, but I have a feeling what will be left will be amber, sticky residue. I could distill it off in a jiffy, but I'm not keen to introduce this funk into my food-grade equipment when I think I already know the answer.
Old Aug 19, 2009, 02:50 PM
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Well bump back up for this as I know have another inceodent dealing with deatschwerks and there injectors....

Scenario.... Having the injectors for ruffly about 3K miles running nothing but E85, stock lines, AMS fuel rail, full blown double pumper..... While driving down the Hwy doing a couple 3rd to 4th pulls having fun as we all do, car lost power at about 7K in 4th gear. I was like what the hell? I immediatly pulled over and killed the car, towed it back to the house. Checked the plugs cyl#1-good, cyl#2-bad "about 1/8 of grounding strap was gone", cyl#3-good, cyl#4-good, compresion check also revield cyl#2 was at 0 the rest where good. So back to AMS it goes.

After pulling the injectors there was no visable damage or Sludge build up noticeable. After sending them back to Deatschwerks they revield that the injector in cyl#2 had failed and the rest where on there way........so the big question here is what is causing my car to have a issue? Because if you recall the PTE 1200's I had where melting on the tips disrupting the flow patteren but not stoping flow.

No for me this makes having issues with PTE and deatschwerks injectors I then turnned to Yen @ FIC " Fuel Injector Clinc". Where we had a great talk about what it could be and what direction we could go after I hear back from deatschwerks. Given that he explained to me that the patteren of his new Blue max's "which are E85 safe", is good to go with in the case users are experencing sludge build up do to the flow patteren not being the pental type.

I will keep you guy's posted as what I hear back and a little R&D Im going to try and do with FIC.

P.S. I cant spell and I know this..lol.
Old Aug 28, 2009, 04:08 PM
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I would just like everyone to know that the damage to the motor was a damaged valve in the head from to much heat/running lean. The bottom end of the motor was fine. I was talking to David from Deatschwerks about the injectors and they were cleaned, tested, and are working fine. They were cleaned before they were flow tested so we really don't know if one injector was clogged. This vehicle was equipped with a Flow Blown Racing double pumper system. We wanted to inspect the rest of the fuel system to see if there were any other issues and we did find that there was faulting wiring at the pumps. The car had been sitting for some time and it looks like a rodent such as a mouse made a home on top of the fuel tank by the fuel pump assembly. The power wires for the pumps and the signal wire had the insulation chewed off in several different places. This could have caused the power wire to ground at times or put a load on the circuit. When we took off the injectors when the car arrived they did have the gummy residue on them. Its very hard to say exactly what cause the cylinder to run lean but we believe that it was a combination of the injectors have the gummy residue on the tips and also the fuel pumps wiring. David from Deatschwerks is working on a writeup for customers that are considering running E85 in there cars with tips and information about this gumming that occurs on injector tips. Also we recommend that anyone running E85 occasionally switch to gasoline periodically to clean out the fuel system and the injectors.
Old Aug 29, 2009, 08:41 PM
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Originally Posted by Andrew@AMS
I would just like everyone to know that the damage to the motor was a damaged valve in the head from to much heat/running lean. The bottom end of the motor was fine. I was talking to David from Deatschwerks about the injectors and they were cleaned, tested, and are working fine. They were cleaned before they were flow tested so we really don't know if one injector was clogged. This vehicle was equipped with a Flow Blown Racing double pumper system. We wanted to inspect the rest of the fuel system to see if there were any other issues and we did find that there was faulting wiring at the pumps. The car had been sitting for some time and it looks like a rodent such as a mouse made a home on top of the fuel tank by the fuel pump assembly. The power wires for the pumps and the signal wire had the insulation chewed off in several different places. This could have caused the power wire to ground at times or put a load on the circuit. When we took off the injectors when the car arrived they did have the gummy residue on them. Its very hard to say exactly what cause the cylinder to run lean but we believe that it was a combination of the injectors have the gummy residue on the tips and also the fuel pumps wiring. David from Deatschwerks is working on a writeup for customers that are considering running E85 in there cars with tips and information about this gumming that occurs on injector tips. Also we recommend that anyone running E85 occasionally switch to gasoline periodically to clean out the fuel system and the injectors.
I've been following the gummed up injector issue on several forums, and it seems that the cause is a high amount of a gum by-product of the ethanol production process that some ethanol manufacturers let stay in the ethanol. Running gasoline once in a while is probably ok, but my thought would be that anyone experiencing this issue ought to consider finding another E85 filling station.
Old Aug 29, 2009, 09:06 PM
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I'm having trouble buying into that theory, as ethanol is produced from distillation (e.g. pure grain alcohol), and the residue in question isn't something that would distill. Furthermore, it is far more soluble in gasoline than ethanol, which implies that it is an impurity from the petroleum fraction, not the ethanol. The reason why we don't see it with straight gasoline is because gasoline dissolves it readily.
Old Aug 30, 2009, 12:23 PM
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so is it safe to run e85 on stock lines with 1200 cc injectors im running that now with about 1000 miles and no problems havnt switched to 93 yet
Old Aug 30, 2009, 07:21 PM
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Originally Posted by gen3eclipsegt
so is it safe to run e85 on stock lines with 1200 cc injectors im running that now with about 1000 miles and no problems havnt switched to 93 yet

No one is saying that its unsafe its just let it be noted to take extra precations when running this fuel.... ie: frequent fuel injector checks would be advised.
Old Aug 30, 2009, 07:35 PM
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Originally Posted by 1BAMF
No one is saying that its unsafe its just let it be noted to take extra precations when running this fuel.... ie: frequent fuel injector checks would be advised.
very good advice, here is what my injectors looked like after about 10 months on e85
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Old Aug 31, 2009, 06:21 AM
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Originally Posted by Ted B
I'm having trouble buying into that theory, as ethanol is produced from distillation (e.g. pure grain alcohol), and the residue in question isn't something that would distill. Furthermore, it is far more soluble in gasoline than ethanol, which implies that it is an impurity from the petroleum fraction, not the ethanol. The reason why we don't see it with straight gasoline is because gasoline dissolves it readily.
ok, that's fine. There is one further step needed to make fuel grade anyhdrous ethanol - all the water has to be removed. I haven't researched the process in sufficient detail, but it looks like the most common method used now is a molecular sieve that captures the water from the distilled ethanol. So you're very likely correct about the gum not being a result of the ethanol production process. However, with that said, it is very likely that a gum is getting into the E85. It could be from crappy gasoline being used in the denaturing process and/or the blending process. It could be the storage tank at the gas station.

I posted the specs on fuel ethanol and E85 a while ago. If you haven't seen them before, its an interesting read:

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/al...s-e75-e85.html

The appendix has some discussion on gum content.

This book has some more general discussion on gum content in fuel:

http://books.google.com/books?id=3Fk...%20gum&f=false
Old Aug 31, 2009, 06:46 AM
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I have notice with the precision injectors I have the meth eat up the o-rings within about a 1k miles and started to leak badly. No big deal tough, I just double the o-rings and it's fix.
Old Sep 7, 2009, 09:50 AM
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interesting read indeed. good job all on finding resources/tests conducted to find the source of the black tar/sludge found from e85 use from specific service stations.

My question is whether I should use 93+ octane (from pumps that normally add cleaning agents) as a mix or would it be recommended to use a tank of high octane gas (VP C16/Q16) mix or non-mix solution? Thanks

And I am presently not on e85, but am planning too very soon..


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