just be careful of you still materals and you are doing it right or you can be drunk and blind and then u can not drive your car at all.



it is a joke but kinda for real too.

 

My honda civic was the first car I experimented with E85, I was fortunate to have access to a 55 gallon drum of E85 to experiment with.. But its not easily available here. I'm hoping that changes very soon.. I have several cars built specifically to run E85 (or at least flexible fuel)

Long Island is somewhat agricultural.. I'm hoping that someone decides to work with the local farmers and others to create a local source for E85

 

Portland Oregon just passed a law that by 2008 all gas stations within the city limits must offer an alternative fuel, be it E85 or Biodiesel. Things are looking up!

 

your rules of thumb are not good rules.

first off, why do you need fuel control? ECUflash with some bigger injectors and you should be fine.

next, if you start at 10.5:1 and work your way to 11.2:1 you are starting lean, and getting even leaner. stoic ratio for E-85 is 9.8:1 you should start at 8.5:1 and work your way up. however, widebands don't recognize what fuel you are using unless you reprogram them. you need to use the lambda meter to get proper values for alternative fuels. then you can run .85-.9 lambda. any decent wideband better display lambda for you.

richening it up by 25% is not enough. simple chemistry will tell you that. aim for more like 35%.

and mixing fuel is only going to make tuning a nitemare every time you go to fill up. improper mixture will mean a new tune is needed. just go straight to E-85 if you are ever going to do it.

 

This is a very informative thread guys. I have read thread after thread, article after article about E85, and this is the first time everything has come together.

This thread should be a sticky in general or something.

Some Evo owner should run E85, and open the doorway for other owners, because i'm sure myself as well as many other would love to try this.

 

I can help give some info on runing E85 in a Turbo Honda and then a GSX-R600 turbo too but not in a EVO yet.

 

The easiest and least pain in the *** way to run E85 is to select injectors about 35% or so larger.. You should need very little else other than some fine tuning..

Also, Most AFR Widebands read LAMBDA (the remaining oxygen as a voltage) the gage converts the value to an AFR, so here's the strange part.. the number will still read 14.7 for stoich on a gage that isnt switched over to Alcohol mode.. This is why more advanced tuning is done by Lambda value, where it doesnt matter the fuel type and won't confuse people..

With all of that said, even the narrowband works similarly, so only upgrading the injectors should do the job..

Just remember 35% more fuel means about 30% less fuel mileage.. so even though you can make more power, you will have poorer fuel mileage, weigh that with your expenses in filling up the car (when/if E85 is available, it would have to be 35-40% cheaper per gallon to be actually equivalent in cost per mile)

Prsonally, I plan on running it even if its the same price a gallon.. I prefer to use alcohol for several reasons, higher octane means more power, its cleaner, and domesticly (and usually locally) produced..

 

Really Good info, i didnt know this much about E85 But i think i got it now.



http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/e85t.../e85_fuel.html

Check that out too some more info in it.

 

I only plan on running it for power. But the corrosive property of E85 worries me, and i want someone else to try it on the stock fuel system w/ larger injectors and a tune before i go out and do it.

So basically what i took away from this is you would essentially be running race gas all the time, correct? SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!

The part about the stoich ratio confuses me a bit, so does that mean you would want to tune your car extremely rich?

 

e85 is more or less like running 110 but it does charge cool too.

it is much cheaper then 110 oct gas i know that right now even with a 30% hit in mpg.

most of the time you can buy e85 or 100 Ethanol from your local oil company by the 55 gallon drum if you want.

I do not think the stock pump will flow enough fuel i would do a whole fuel system upgrade.

 

methanol is very corrosive.. Ethanol isn't as corrosive.. E85 is mostly ethanol.. We're already running 10% ethanol in most of the country, in some areas as much as 30%.. I think the owners manual states you can use fuel with as much as 30% ethanol, I suspect anything more will alter the tune, and not have much to do with being corrosive to the materials used. Most cars built nowadays have Ethanol resistent components anyway, even if the tuning isn't designed for flexible fuel use..

 

FWIW if you do some research on the flexible fuel vehicles, they do there job by always running in closed loop, and most have a wideband O2 sensor.. Once you use open loop maps, you need to either have multiple maps and the ability to tell the difference between the fuels, or you don't use it for flexible fuel use.

 

I was talking about the pump volume not material.

I love using ethanol.

i sell equipment for the ethanol industry. so it is pro for me too.

 

Well, I'd certainly upgrade the pump as one of the injector upgrade mods anyway.. But you can get away with a stock pump if the entire car is stock except for upgraded injectors and you aren't running much over 20psi of boost.. But just like anything else, the pump upgrade is a good preventative mod..

 

Just in case anyone cares I just filled up with a tank of E-85...

My fuel map needed to be adjusted roughly 15% across the board... it seems a little rich at WOT right now but I am too tired to play with it anymore.

Also, just for some food for thought. I do not have an intercooler. I was going to run a water to air and then I got the bright idea to run the car on methanol so E-85 was the first step of the way. I am running a GT35r with lots of mods... I havent tried to run it at my normal pump gas rate yet mainly because I was worried with no intercooler It did take ~17 psi for a full 2nd-3rd gear pull to 8k without any sign of knock... in fact its the lowest knock voltages I have ever seen. The intake temps with the intercooler on a day like today would normally be around 95-100 degF... a few minutes ago they were at 220 degF. I will do more testing on how much this gas will let you get away with without an intercooler tomorrow. The timing is the exact same as it has been.

On a side note... the stuff does make your exhaust smell a little funky but other than that the car is running perfect. Idles perfect and no signs of any hiccups. Kinda cool so far