This may be a stupid question. But are there chances of gains running e85 with a heads cam na car? Of course it would be tuned as well. Or does e85 only benefit fi cars?

 

Probably not a ton... I saw a guy who had bolt ons, cam-only (stock heads) go to E85 and gains were minimal over 93 octane. Which tells me he was hitting MBT just fine on 93. If you were rebuilding the whole motor and went with high compression pistons there would certainly be power to be had going with E85.

 

you should be able to pick up some just from some extra timing. but the worse MPG might not be a compromise you want. depends on your priorities.

the FI cars pick up big time from E85 because they get to up the boost and timing. my buddies turbo Mitsubishi picked up 50hp with just bigger injectors and an e85 tune and dropped a full second on his ET.

 

You're not going to pick up any sort of power unless you're not able to hit MBT with current grade fuel. Same reason running 100+ octane is just a waste of money for a stock-ish car etc. FI cars almost always pick up power with E85 because most setups are knock limited on timing. E85 has some other benefits though like running cooler etc though.

If I had access to E85 I would shoot for a high dynamic compression ratio on the heads/cam build and I would definitely switch over to E85... fuel economy no care.

 

When I had my 92 Grand Am tube chassis car, I switched to E85 from 110. My car picked up 1.5 tenth in the 1/8 plus 60 ft went from 1.32 to to 1.20 and mph went up 2 mph. But I had 13.8/1 compression. You might gain some bottom end with E85 but unless you are going to run a real aggressive cam, you probably won't see much difference unless you bump up the compression quite a bit. For a low compression street car I'd just tune it for 91 or 93 if it's available.

 

E85 is great and I was planning on making the switch NA also. Cars just run smoother on E85 and cooler. When I made the switch on my boost NIssan it was night and day difference how smooth it was.

But cold starts were annoying. The other problem is that if you have no way to tune on the Fly, your Air fuels will be all over the place depending on what the mix at the pump is. I found myself having to tweak my tune a little during every fill up. With fillups coming alot more frequent then with Gas it can be annoying. But during the dead summer with two of the same cars with same mods. The E85 car will run cooler, more consistent times and stronger. Camaro guys seem to try more stuff then vette guys do. I was just reading some threads over there yesterday about all motor e85 LS cars.

 

e85 is more piece of mind for me to run the timing I want... I've had bad experience with pump octane seemingly not consistent. I'm kinda new to LS and not sure how close to peak pressure we can get on pump... dyno would tell you. I know the stock timing leaves power on the table and can't up the timing on 91 in summer.
I would guess even with 93 can't reach peak pressure in summer. Hotter cylinder generally requires more adv for peak pressure, but it's retarded due to octane.

Ethanol is not only for octane though... you will gain a little in VE (added O2 and denser mixture).

 

Thanks for the info guys. I'm almost thinking that the cons may out weigh the pros for a basic setup like mine though.

 

85 is waaaay worse as far as what you get. It's rarely ever 85.. I've even seen a barrel of vp that was 70. Most gas stations will be 50-7. And even worse in winter. It's scrappy the c5 ecu won't handle flex fuel. The c6 will :-/ unless you have a lot of compression it's really a wash. The 10-15 hp isn't worth a new tune, pump, and injectors.

 

Yeah, I gotcha.

In my experience though (1 gas station) the mix is very consistent... we don't have winter blends in AZ. The variability is more for AFR, since octane should be plenty for NA. And less ethanol, richer you are and vise versa... which is what you want, until trims adjust. E85 you can run lambda 0.7 to 0.9 at WOT and at least 1.1 at cruise without much issue.

Not as complicated as people think IMO.
But I am in hot AZ with crappy 91, so more of an advantage for me.

 

Do you know this for a fact? Or are you just repeating hog wash? The station I buy from has always had 85 to 86 and I test it every time I buy it. I've never tested it in winter but I run it all summer long in my race car.

 

Not sure of your area or who the f you are..but it is fact from the people who I personally know who run flex fuel that have the software to report what ethanol content they are getting

 

Prove it! Just google software for testing E85 and see what you get. Everybody that I know uses a test tube to test E85 content. People against E85 come up with all kinds of ****, that they don't know what they're talking about. Just prove it!

 

Lol. You are an idiot. I'm not against 85. Wish I could run it. But I will be sure to take a picture of the screen every time one of my buddy's fill up. Just for you.

 

SO when someone asked you to prove your statements, you call them an idiot? What are you 12 years old? You've seen a barrel of VP E85 that only tested 70, you're full of crap. I don't believe a word you say. You can buy 98 from VP if you want it.

You can go this route, but not many guys are going to do this because of cost. It's not just soft ware though, it's a test instrument.

http://www.zeitronix.com/Products/ECA/ECA.shtml

 

I actually had a response to your first post I was gonna put up also and then decided not to. Your first post is kinda off though.

They probably cant legaly call it E85 and it be that off % wise. Its called e85 because of the % of the ethanol that it is. If it had 50% ethanol it would be called E50 at the pump. If its 90% its called E90 and on and on.

It would be like saying that 87 is actually 93 octane at the pump. People would be blowing cars up left and right. That would cause a company to lose money.

 

this is from one of the best tunersaround

 

You are an idiot because you are having a nervous breakdown about gasoline

 

http://ethanolproducer.com/articles/...-to-51-percent

 

How Much Ethanol / E85 is in your car's gas tank? This gauge can tell you: