E85 Verdict??

[333pg333]

Guys, I am seriously considering gearing up my car to run E85. There are too many advantages of this v's apparent negs. Are any of you guys using it? I assume it's in the UK by now. It's just getting to us very soon and will be cheaper than regular pump fuel let alone the highway robbery (pun intended, sorry) of race fuel out here. It has better cooling, more oxygen allowing more boost and more advance and it's cheap. Conversly, you need to use a lot more of it (between 25-40% by some accounts) but as it's going to be 30% cheaper than pump, and one fifth of race fuel, so it seems too good not to explore. Some say that ethanol eats away at parts of the fuel system, yet others refute this, blaming the oil companies for spreading rumours. Also there is meant to be a residue that could adversly affect ring wear.
So anyone care to comment please??

 

[Neil Haughey]

I wanted to get a chip tuning kit for it on my daily driver but AFAIK so far they have only done it for the newer models. Its pretty common in scandinavia hence why lots of Saab etc. tuners have recently produced software for running E85. In the UK its availability is pretty limited but my local morrisons is one of the few places around to stock E85. Unfortunately we don't get any financial incentives that are usefull to me in, in fact since the MPG is lower it worked out more expensive for me then running 97 or 98 RON super unleaded.

I have also heard that it is very corrosive in the engine and you have to run shorter servicing intervals, in my case would have been 6k miles instead of 10k/12k, but I run 6k intervals anyway so no real difference.

951 owners do have the advantage that turbo cars seem to be ideal candidates for E85 because of the very high octane rating but like you said you need a fuel system capable of the much higher fuel flow demands.

 

[Diver944]

I don't really know much about E85 ethanol fuels but I've just been reading up on it and it seems more advanced in this country than I furst thought. Most of the stations stocking it are in the east, but there is one 10 miles away from me in Northampton. Current prices are about 5p per litre cheaper, but there are lobbyists trying to get it in the same bracket as LPG due to it's zero CO2 production and environmentally friendly production methods (from Sugar beet). If successful it will also be congestion charge free [] and possibly v.low road tax too [][]

There is a company that does conversions already and it looks like most conversions are a simple remap

http://www.arunautogas.co.uk/E85-aftermarket-ethanol-fuel-systems.htm?gclid=CJ7Mmp3gm5ACFQWVMAodDXIEpg

No mention of effect on fuel lines, rubber hoses or engine internals (as expected from a vendor)

The site also mentions 1200 stations currently exist in the US

 

[333pg333]

I'm sure that you clever guys on here know most details re this stuff, but this is basically what I've found out in a day of looking.
You will need about 30% extra fuel to get equivalent power as high oct fuel but you can wind up the boost to much higher levels in safety plus advance timing at least 5-7 degrees. From the guys that I've emailed who are running it on their 951's, they say that once you've tried it you won't go back. A few of us down here are doing some more research and I'm pretty keen on it so far. You may need a knock counter though for insurance if you're going to tune near the edge. You will need bigger injectors and pump and it could be worthwhile changing over your old fuel cell for a new one & lines too.

One of the guys I know who is running it has done a time from 100kmh to 200kmh in 6.1 sec's. Pretty quick in anyone's language!!

 

[Diver944]

ORIGINAL: 333pg333

One of the guys I know who is running it has done a time from 100kmh to 200kmh in 6.1 sec's. Pretty quick in anyone's language!!

Wow that is quick! I've just been looking through my datalogs when I was tuning my Vitesse MAF at 15psi and to go from 4000rpm in 3rd through to 6000rpm in 4th (which equates as 100kmh-200kmh) took 11 seconds.

I didn't realise there were already 951 owners in the US running on E85. I'd like to know exactly what needs to be done to our cars, preumably any rubber in teh fuel system needs replacing.

Unfortunatley it would not be very financially viable over here if it uses 30% more fuel. The few places that sell it here are only 5% cheaper than normal Super Unleaded and we are already paying circa £1.10 a litre for Super (which equates to around $10 US a gallon [] - I think that would astonish some of our Rennlist friends)

Now if the chancellor classed it the same as LPG and dropped the price to 60p a litre [8D]

 

[333pg333]

Well it's actually a Swedish guy known as Corleone on Rennlist. His car is VERY nice and stonkingly quick. It has 625whp at 1.25 bar on E85! That's pretty handy on relatively low boost. ST would have used considerably more boost and race fuel on a US dyno although Corleone's car is 3.0ltr. I suppose that a good way of determining the power of our cars around the world is something like this 100-200kmh test as there is nothing to it but mash the pedal. We should start something like this in tandem with all the dyno figure lists that are not exactly apples to apples. Once I get my car back I might just do that...and try not to get arrested.[&:]
That's a shame that it is so expensive for a cheap to produce fuel. You guys do pay a lot for petrol. What is race fuel worth. We pay about $19au per gallon of 102 race so it's certainly not cheap. That's why this E85 is so attractive. Less than $4 per gallon projection when available. See why it's so tempting??
If you want to know more on the details for this car do a search on Rennlist under Corleone. Worth it.

 

[Diver944]

I've just read all about Corleones 3.0L car in Sweden running on E85. It looks impressive and seems like he has only just started tuning for the E85 so there is more to come. Once I get my car back I will datalog a 4th gear run from 3000rpm to 6000rpm which equates to 100-200kmh. This should be a fairly good indication for worldwide comparison (of course I could do it on a -5 degrees C day to help [] )

BP sell a 102RON superfuel at about 20 stations around the country but when I last checked my closest one was 20 miles away and sold at £2.50 a litre which is going to equate to $22.50 US a gallon [] I bet it's close to £3.00 a litre now as it was last year I saw that.

I'm more than happy with 98-99RON to be honest

 

[sawood12]

The only problem with this conversion I can see is you have to have a dirty great tank in your boot. Not too much of a worry in a saloon car or something where it is not in the same space as you, but when the tank is in the car with you i'd be a bit concerned in the event of a crash. It could get pretty darn hot in there if any of that stuff leaks out and ignites. Also, what does that weight high up in the car do for handling?

Other than that it sounds like a great conversion.

 

[Neil Haughey]

I am confused, there isn't any conversion other then tuning the ECU to work with E85 and making sure there is enough injector and fuel pump capacity to deliver the required fuel. The reason why there are all these flex fuel / dual fuel cars or what ever the OEMS want to call them is down to clever ECU's that detect pretty quickly which fuel is in the tank and adapt the mapping either towards the set of values for E85 or the values for normal petrol. This is the case with aftermarket kits for cars like recent Saab 9-5's which only consist of an ECU swap or reflash using a programmer that plugs into the OBD port like this one here:

http://en.bsrab.se/products/t1161/

(sorry John)

 

[944Turbo]

ORIGINAL: 333pg333

Well it's actually a Swedish guy known as Corleone on Rennlist. His car is VERY nice and stonkingly quick. It has 625whp at 1.25 bar on E85! That's pretty handy on relatively low boost. ST would have used considerably more boost and race fuel on a US dyno although Corleone's car is 3.0ltr. I suppose that a good way of determining the power of our cars around the world is something like this 100-200kmh test as there is nothing to it but mash the pedal. We should start something like this in tandem with all the dyno figure lists that are not exactly apples to apples. Once I get my car back I might just do that...and try not to get arrested.[&:]
That's a shame that it is so expensive for a cheap to produce fuel. You guys do pay a lot for petrol. What is race fuel worth. We pay about $19au per gallon of 102 race so it's certainly not cheap. That's why this E85 is so attractive. Less than $4 per gallon projection when available. See why it's so tempting??
If you want to know more on the details for this car do a search on Rennlist under Corleone. Worth it.

Does the magic wand holding the bonnet open have anything to do with the performance? []
Tony

 

[333pg333]

Paul, that is so expensive! I can see why you don't want to use E85 with the amount of fuel needed.

Scott, well you either need a larger tank or dual maps that can allow you to run normal fuel in day to day driving, and switch to E85 for the track that allows you to run a lot more boost and timing.

Neil, you're right that is about all you need to do. Possibly change your fuel lines to s/s braided and maybe change your old fuel cell over to a new one in regards to perishing. Probably have to run 2 pumps too.

Tony, I was wondering when someone would point that out. []

 

[Neil Haughey]

Found this on the same website as my previous posting:

http://en.bsrab.se/faq/ethanol/

Lots of interesting info about running ethanol in general

 

[sawood12]

ORIGINAL: 333pg333

Paul, that is so expensive! I can see why you don't want to use E85 with the amount of fuel needed.

Scott, well you either need a larger tank or dual maps that can allow you to run normal fuel in day to day driving, and switch to E85 for the track that allows you to run a lot more boost and timing.

Neil, you're right that is about all you need to do. Possibly change your fuel lines to s/s braided and maybe change your old fuel cell over to a new one in regards to perishing. Probably have to run 2 pumps too.

Tony, I was wondering when someone would point that out. []

Are these conversions the same as LPG ones or is this different? Do you mean you can mix the fuel in your current fuel tank with normal petrol? The LPG conversions usually use a second fuel tank with a completely secondary fuel injection system with piggy back controller and you and you have a switch on the dashboard to switch between petrol and LPG.

I've actually been looking into a large petrol engined estate car (e.g. an A6 Avant) and getting it converted, as they are so much cheaper than the equivalent diesel. You can buy one and pay for the conversion for the same cost as a Diesel one and I know which one i'd rather be driving!

 

[333pg333]

No Scott, you use the standard tank (although it may be worth changing to a new one after 20 year old may perish?) bigger inj., I would also look to change fuel lines from rubber to s/steel. The main this is you would probably need to go to standalone ems.

 

[Diver944]

The more I read and think about E85 Bio-fuel, the more I feel I would really like to convert to this fuel:
[blockquote]
No worries about running out of oil, we can grow our own.

The emissions are far, far cleaner than petrol.

The act of growing it actually absorbs harmful CO2

Oh and finally, it will make our cars go faster [][/blockquote]
The biggest stumbling block (in the early days) will be an extremely limited number of petrol stations that stock it, but that will hopefully change. I wouldn't want to mess about with a dual fuel setup, I'd just want to run bio-fuel 100%. I think the list of things for my car would be bigger injectors, maybe a second fuel pump, remove rubber from the fuel lines and finally a remap to get the best out of the fuel.

It would really make me smile if all us nasty, gas guzzling sportscar drivers made an early switch over to bio-fuel before the rest of the population, showing how wonderfully caring we were (while all the time it was really to get more power [8D] )

I found this interesting article about a bio-fuel Lotus Exige tested by Pistonheads - 875kg and 265bhp :

http://www.pistonheads.com/Lotus/default.asp?storyId=14864

 

[morris944s2john]

Fine argument, except "The act of growing it actually absorbs harmful CO2
"

CO2 isnt harmful. Dont believe all the enviroMENTAL nonsense, Its an airborne fertiliser for plant life.

 

[Neil Haughey]

ORIGINAL: sawood12

Do you mean you can mix the fuel in your current fuel tank with normal petrol? 

In theory yes. It seems to come down to how advanced the ECU and associated electronics on the car are in terms of how well and quickly it can adapt to the different fuel types. There are definitely no special valves or fuel sensors required because the 'kit' for the slightly newer version of my daily driver is just an ECU re-program. The car as it came from the factory several years ago was only designed to run on petrol, so in effect I assume the adaptation for E85 vs 95RON is like an extension to the adaptations required when going between say 98RON up or down to 92RON fuels (My guess) .

BTW from what I have read in many countries it is a growing practice to have say 5% of petrol as ethanol, and it seems they want to up it to 10%.

With a fancy stand alone EMS on the 951 one could run both fuels but I would guess that a hell of a lot of development would be involved to get it to work well for all circumstances.

 

[333pg333]

Motec did a convention down here (Aussie company[]) and they showed test results on an EVO I believe, and by using the 100oct with 5% ethanol, they were able to advance timing by 7degrees and this gave over 10% rise in tq.
This chart 'pasted' slightly askew but you can see what I mean.
[FONT=arial"]Fuel [FONT=arial"]Timing Advance (Deg) [FONT=arial"]Torque [FONT=arial"]
Premium 98 Octane X [FONT=arial"] 0 [FONT=arial"]328.1 [FONT=arial"]
Premium 98 Octane Y [FONT=arial"] 0 [FONT=arial"]328.1 [FONT=arial"]
100 Octane V-Power Racing [FONT=arial"] 7 [FONT=arial"]363.5
As far as it having no detractors, well unfortunately that's not true. I did a search on Rennlist of 'E85' to see what they thought and there are many disatisfied people in the US in regards to this. Not that it has much to do with the actual performance gains, very much more the political side and the resulting effects of growing Corn to make the fuel. Interesting....I'm still very much into it by the way as it is too good a proposition to ignore at the price. It will also require a bit of dyno work to get the maps right and probably by a real old school guy that actually uses a stethoscope to listen for knock.

 

[os951]

E85 is quite readily avaialble in the Nordic & Baltic countries. It gives some benefits for turbo use, but there are also negative side. For example most of the Swedish E85 raw material is imported from Brazil, where ethanol production destroys rainforests. So cleaner fuel also have it's downside. Cars also burn E85 much more than regular petrol...
Any way most likely i am going to use it with my 3.0L turbo. Perhaps can even fabricate my own fuel in my garage, some for me and some for my car []

 

[Neil Haughey]

Well said os951. There is a bit of a myth going round that using agricultural land to produce oil producing crops is like a green freebie. The other week there was a program on the telly about Farming facing a new golden age across the EU fueled bizarrely by massive economic growth in China and India. We need every acre of good land here in the EU to produce food for ourselves and the world. This means like you said that crops to make ethanol are likely to always be grown in places like south america or somewhere outside the EU that means its not really that green.

Personally I have always wanted a nuclear powered car (not fantasy, one was built many years ago), but I don't see that being allowed. I wonder of it would get round the London congestion charge