If your car is stock I can't say that I've heard of anybody doing an e85 conversion as their first mod. Most everybody gets an intake some exhaust mods first. The stock air box and stock exhaust manifolds/U bend are fairly restrictive. Generally the better your motor can "breathe" the smaller pulley you can run. In just about all cases E85 will allow you to run a smaller pulley than you could run with premium gas though. Most guys go with 60 lb. injectors with e85 but with a mild build you may get away with 42.5's. The plugs will depend on what you do to your motor. Usually a slightly colder plug is needed with smaller pulleys and more boost. As far as ZZP goes they are a big name in the 3800 world and I'm sure they could tune your car. I would seriously doubt that they would have a mail order tune they could send you for e85 that you could just run forever.

One thing to keep in mind if you do convert to e85 is that you need about 1/3 more available fuel at WOT so a high flow fuel pump is needed along with a new fuel filter change or two. Another thing to keep in mind is that most states have three blends of e85... spring/Fall, summer and winter blends. Make sure to get your car tuned with the summer blend. The car will just run a little richer in colds months and won't have a an optimum tune unless you have another tune for the cold months. I see your in Missouri so you have e85 available which his a plus for sure. I don't run my car in the winter so I have no experience with hard cold starts but that can be an issue with e85.

As far as wasting your time it all depends what you want from your car and how much time and money you want to put into it. You mentioned a smaller pulley and reliability so you must want a quicker car you can drive all the time right? From my experience e85 is an awesome fuel for the 3.8 supercharged engine and offers higher horse power compared to premium fuel at a much lower cost and "fights" KR with its cooling properties. it will take some time, money and effort to get the car converted and tuned however. I ordered a ball park e85 tune from Intense based on my mods for my first start up with a full tank of e85. I drove the car with that ball park tune a few hundred miles to Intense/Dyno Motor Sports to get tuned. I dropped from a 3.2 to a 2.8 with zero knock and gained a lot of horse power so it was well worth it. Like another poster mentioned You will want a scan gauge to scan for KR for sure.

Hope that helps a little