E85
Turbo Mini Forums

Ok lads was just doing some research, E85 looks like it could be a great source of power for the Fuel Injection lads. Has anyone looked it to using it ??

no,

WWW.FORCE-RACING.CO.UK PLEASE CLICK HERE

i've looked at it a bit,

iirc on a na moter you wont gain anything, apart from a higher fuel bill, but for forced induction it will allow you to wind the boost more up as its more resistant to knock. but you will need another map to stick in around a 1/3 more fuel.

I have with great interest, I did a fairly large study based project in my final year at university on alternative fuels mainly e85.

If anywhere near me had it at the pump both my cars would be running on the stuff, it goes fantastically well in turbocharged applications.

Just fit a big fuel tank if you plan on driving any distance!

Edited by SumpNut on 31st Mar, 2009.

I've read that e85 likes to eat aluminium, some plastics and some rubbers. I wish it was as simple as changing your map.

Team Racing

most fuel pipe rubber post late 80's is normally ok.

To get round problem with aluminum you need to anodise. Easy enough to do at home with a caustic soda and care.

Also if you run a carb the float chamber in an SU will need doing too.

Well what I have found out so far,

to run E85 the changes you need to make are,
Stainless steel fuel lines or braded PTFE (no great shakes)
change your Fuel map and Ignition map (again no great shakes)
if you run an alloy tank it needs anodising little bit of hassle if you have run it with fuel before.

but the benefits seem great
104 Octane
very high Nock suppressant

all that means more boost so why ant we using it ??

surely this means we could keep the same boost and increase the compression meaning less boost need to make the same power meaning cheaper turbos lasting longer.

from what i've read modern fuel hose is ok with e85, not sure i'd trust it though judging by the rate of deterioration of most rubber parts theses days

it is meant to attack bare alluminium, but as alluminium quickly builds up a barier oxide layer (like a thin anodising) i personally dont think this would be a massive issue. also e85 is run in lots of egines with ally heads (read ports) and there does not seem to be an issue there.

another issue is that e85 will "clean" your fuel system, so any crap in the tank/ fuel lines etc will dislodge and can cause issues blocking stuff, floatvalves, regs etc.

I put my fuel system together with the thought of using e85 at a later date, I sealled the twin tanks with POR tank sealer, ran ptfe lined airoquip hoses, anodised the fuel rail. Megasuirt has the capability to read alcohol content from a flex fuel sensor and interpolate between a petrol and e85 map. all you need to do then is make sure you don't use too much boost with too little e85 lol.

the yanks are really big on this at the moment and i quite often read a magazine called hot rod and they often do alot of good reading material about e85 and the differences in power gains over normal fuel!!

id highly recomend buying a few copys!! this mag is a really good read!!

Ya but you would have to live with the shame of buying an American Hot rod magazine, I'd sooner by gay porn at least you would get a sympathetic look from the girl behind the till :(

nah its not about hot rods, there crap!!!...lol

this is a pure muscle car mag goes really indepth with tunning and does loads of articles on budget engine builds to full blown 3000hp motors!!

they go really in depth and its a very good mag!!

Team Racing

WWW.FORCE-RACING.CO.UK PLEASE CLICK HERE

You are already putting 5% ethanol into your tank, so Unless you intend to go E100 I dont think the aluminium thing is going to be an issue. After all, cylinder heads these days are aluminium.

I would have expected the fueling to be injection rather than carburation and AFRs tend to increase to around 9:1

I looked into this as there is a pump just 12 miles from me. More of a challenge than anything else, and simply to say that I have one of the cleanest running Mini engines. The environmental renewable energy aspect of it is some what debateable.

There are a lot of people, mainly in the US, who have used E85 on standard engines and management systems for thousands of miles without issue, despite manufactures warnings that it will damage the engine and fuel pumps. However, this may well be down to the lack of testing done by the manufacturers, and not wanting to commit themselves to any liability with the slightest possability of any failures attributed to E85. Ususal story, some one says in theory you cannot, but in practice, you can.

E85 is an excellent fuel system cleaner, stripping the varnish left by petrol on all the fuel system, and then dumping it at the injector with the obvious result. It is recommended to fit an aditional fuel filter as close to the injectors as possible for a period to catch all that crap. It can then be removed.

One down side is with the mini, is the size of the fuel tank. If the car is anything other than short duration racer, you need to fill the tank more often, and if its a road car, you have no chance of getting from one station to the next, where the actualy sell E85.

http://www.efiminis.olicentral.com/index.p...msg3563#msg3563

I am seriously thinking of runing it in the racer there is a Maxoil station 10 miles from my house which has it. It should alow me run a very stable boosted engine with higher compression,

I take it that it has no afect on wide band O2 sensors as there only reading O2

Can you get this stuff at the pump in England? I only use Shell V-Power. Anything else and the car throws a wobbly!! Even the Tesco 99 RON stuff

feature=mhum

there are (was) about 15 pumps in the uk that have it,

you can search where they are online.

Thanks Colin, Slowly starting to get my head around this Watch out in the coming weeks Ill get a build thred going on EFI just need to have somthing to show first :)

Not worth using IMO. Somewhere on here, I posted the old skool fuels brew, including E85.

You would be a lot better off adding 4% TEL/EDB and 2% methyl aniline to 95 octane petrol. That's as close as you can get to avgas without buying a weird feedstock.

The calorific value is less, which is a snag.

I would most certainly try it, but I would expect to find a much of a muchness. I expect it would yield similar £/hp as normal petrol. Money spent better is better spent on additives. One of the worlds largest TEL manufacturer is in the UK and you would be able to get Me-Aniline from a chemical supplier.

Do a google search for di-cyclopentadiene and have a look at it's MON!

I personally think E85 is probably good for cutting up with a bit of methanol and nitromethane for strip fuel for something.

I'd be very interested in a direct comparison with proper fuel.

good luck!

Edited by Hedgemonkey on 1st Apr, 2009.

Bugger off, I'm getting there.

i think you've missed the point stu,

85 is classed as pump fuel, and although may be a grey area could be considered eligable for some race clases, where as dyspazmo-hyromethane mixed with amal nitrate won't be.

yes your right that it has a lower calorific value, but it will stand a lot more boost.

If you use lambda rather than AFR for the fueling tables, it wont matter what fuels you uses, stoich is always lambda 1, however with AFR stoich might be 14.7:1 for petrol and 9:1 for E85

Lambda is a factor rather than a ratio