Thread: E85 Pro's and Con's ?

e85, 3.2, 20* of timing, 0 kr, NO IC...........**** gas lol e85 ftw. i cant imagine how wonderful e85 is in a turbo car, (fosho).

nice. push it farther, time for a 3.0 pulley.

Originally Posted by Bio248

nice. push it farther, time for a 3.0 pulley.

Here's my experience with e85. I already had a very good tune on gas, and I was able to run 16psi and 16* timing on the twin-charged setup with zero KR. That seemed to be where I maxed out power. I could run more timing when the engine was cold, probably around 20*, but at operating temps, I had it dropped back to 16* to keep it safe.

I already had 65# injectors, a Racetronix fuel pump and rewire, adjustable FPR, and a fuel pressure sender tied into my scanner through the EGR. When my tank was just about empty, I drove to the station and filled up with e85. Before driving off, I changed my IFR table to reflect 25% more fuel. That was it. I drove around the next few days and monitored trims, and they were just about perfect. At the next fill, I adjusted the IFR a few percent richer. Trims still looked great, and I started taking a few WOT runs. First thing I noticed is that even in the 90+ degree heat I had zero KR, so I pushed up the timing and boost. Eventually, I was able to run 18-20psi with 18* of timing and zero KR consistently. I ran over 20psi a couple times, and even hit 23psi on one run, but I ran out of injector, and started going a little lean, and got a couple degrees of KR, so for now I'll keep it around 18psi until I can get bigger injectors. The difference is amazing. This car is stupid fast now.

I also raised cruise timing a lot. With e85, you can run a lot more timing across the board, and help improve the mpg's. However, I noticed that I would get a lot of blips of KR at cruise with higher timing, and the KR was random and unpredictable. I realized that the closed loop fuel oscillation was to blame, so I started running open loop full-time. Open loop made a huge improvement, and really made it easier to tune, but you really need to keep on top of the tune more because you won't have the trims to keep things in line from weather changes and ethanol content changes.

The last couple of weeks I have been running a 50/50 mix of 93 and e85. I wanted to try a mix to see how easy it would be to tune, and see how much power I could still have. Seems like it might be a good way to go for the winter also. Startups should be a lot easier on a mix. It was easy enough to tune. I adjusted the IFR and tweaked the MAF. I turned down the boost to around 16psi, but I haven't seen any KR, so it still makes good power.

As far as cost goes, I haven't really found that the increase in e85 fueling is that much more expensive. e85 is $2.39 around here, and premium (93) is usually about .50 to .60 more. So, e85 is 20-25% cheaper, and you use about 25% more fuel. Although, even if e85 was the same price as premium, I'd still buy it for the performance.

E85> gas end of story, if you have it get it now.

Originally Posted by TorqueAutoMotiv

wnder how fbody's and lt1's respond to it

boosted cars love e85 alot more.....boost plus added timing=amazing, advancing timing isnt as much a challenge on a NA car.

Ethanol is more environmentally friendly than pertroleum. You can make it out of renewable products, potatoes, corn, beans, they are trying sugar kane right now. The only way gas is comparable is that it takes about the same amount of water to make a gallon of ethanol/gas. There are plenty of advancements in farming over the last 10 years to improve the amount of harvest/yield while still using less fuel in the process.

When you get fuel from the pump, they have to post the MINIMUM octane rating of the blend. The blend % differs from summer/winter depending on the area. The minimum octane rating posted on E85 is 105 octane. This doesn't mean that it's always 105 octane.

For the gas station to make the blends of ethanol at the pump, they take 87 octane fuel and blend it with E100-pure ethanol, which E100 is widely accepted as being 113 octane. Your 89 octane blend contains 90% 87 octane and 10% E100. The winter blend of E85 contains 70% E100 and 30% 87 octane fuel which rates it at 105 octane. The summer blend of E85 contains 85% E100 and 15% 87 octane fuel RATED AT 109 OCTANE. I usually get E85 for $2.00-2.20 a gallon.

Now, the common drawback is the poor gas mileage
with Ethanol. In the past few years, car manufacturers developing flex fuel vehicles started out with a 30% reduction in gas mileage when running E85. In the most recent years, those car now only see 10-15% percent reduction in gas mileage. The manufacturers are only starting to touch some of the key benefits of E85. Most of them (from clubgp experiences) is the amount of timing you can add without ill affects/knock on the car is huge. The other thing being that E85 has a relatively large range of air/fuel ratio that the car still makes power, it is more forgiving. The last thing being the cooler burn, some carburated racers who have converted notice a 20* drop in engine temp from the normal. Most boosted cars have noticed the ability to run more pounds of boost as well as more timing on E85 rather than 110 leaded fuel. Therefore if cars were to run a leaner AFR and max timing in cruise, you are able to recoup most of that gas mileage. If someone really tried, they probably would be able to get 30mpg on a grand prix without replacing the engine every year. Remember, $2.00 a gallon for pump gas 109 race fuel

There has also been some racers replacing Q16 with E85. In some classes, E85 is considered a power adder and not allowed.

i know this is old but the topic came up again, and i wanted to post some more..

tengis, you really cant tell me you think 20mpg is good, i have a massive cam and still get over 700km/ tank cruising, 550-600 mixed driving


also a boosted car over 18* of timing is pointless unless you want to become unrelaible, blowing out even mls gaskets,

we build vettes up here on 94 octane and meth making over 1200whp with no knock and no issues, still getting good gas mileage while cruising,

Fail. You should expect a hit in mileage with E85. Weve got all stories about how this and this is awesome for whatever reason. I really dont care. Have fun spraying meth.

Did you get any track times yet?