Man, I feel like a post *****...

Anyway, powerlabs, I don't disagree with everything you've said. The only thing I do disagree with is cold starting.

In my experience, without adding more fuel at startup, I have started LS1's and LS2's down to 0 degrees. It takes about 2 more seconds of cranking time though.

With adding fuel at startup (via OLFA in lower ECT), startup is 99% normal, however at very low temps, it does take a tick longer of cranking.

 

SpinMonster,

Also, most, if not all, newer GM flex fuel use a virtual composition sensor based off fuel trims to adjust stoich. This is not enabled in any C6 cal however.

 

Everything I have read says you are confusing ethanol with methanol. E85 cars that did this conversion and checked 110k miles later with an engine tear down showed no deteriorization and ethanol attacks nothing in our car's fuel system including rubber componenets.

Methanol does.

All the sites I showed were very specific about this.

 

I did look at it. The difference between you is that I am comparing it to the cost of race gas and you are looking to save money. I have a 700hp car and need 105 octane. What are you looking at?Guys with 450rwhp will gaon 20rwhp from using E85. It uses 87 octane as the 'average gas price' and I hope you're not using 87 in your car. So now add the 20 cents to the average gas price and compare and you will see its 20% cheaper for E85 in 70% of the country. I am looking for 105 octane and a cleaner running engine so I dont car if it cost 20% more.

Race gas here is 4.55 a gallon. E85 runs my engine cleaner and will have less carbon deposit issues as well as make my car smel better.

Performance guys do things for performance reasons and accounts buy whats cheaper. If E85 was the same as race gas cost, I would be getting a alky system and its not for economy.

I guess it comes down to what you do mods for. I do it for power and performance and I'm not looking to make my vette as fuel efficient as a honda civic. The fact that thie main issue here is economy, I guess I posted it for the wrong crowd.

Perofrmance guys are eyeing the octane rating and comparing 105-106 octane with an alky system that is only on under boost conditions. E85 cant fail and is cheaper where I am at this time. If gas was 4 bucks a gallon then E85 would not rise as fast and woud then have lots of accountants looking. Torco is way more money btu doesnt require anything to be modded on the car.

I can tune any corvette to run 100% fine with 87 octane and thats 20 cents cheaper a gallon (it will reduce power and save gas money)but its not why I'm here.

So ask yourself if you need 105 octane and then compare prices.

 

Nice right up bro..Very nice read..I am getting edumicated..

 

Widebands are discussed in the links I provided but......: Widebands measure voltage and therefore they will read 14.7 for stoic for any fuel that reassigns the voltage to be centered where its new stoic is. So telling an engine to center 9.765 as stoic will then also read 14.7 on a wideband for stoic on an E85 vehicle.

Widebands measure lambda/voltage not the actual a/f ratio. Your cars narrawbands also hold stoic forthe same reason. They are told by the table I posted that stoic is 14.699 and thus the narraowbands will hold the center at the the input value of E85 based on the voltage being assigned to 9.765.

 

Hmmm, experience has nothing to do with it. They are facts, except for maybe the last one. The fact is, ethanol is corrosive. It corrodes rubber, steel and aluminum. Flex fuel pumps and E85 pumps have their metal components made from stainless steel for this reason. As to how long it will take before this causes a failure, I don't know.

Lots of Corvettes sit for much longer than a couple of weeks. I never said "it will happen", just that this is one of the properties of ethanol and it does happen in the boating world enough so that boat motors have been reported to be ruined from hydrolocking, caused by pumping the non combustible water/ethanol mixture that accumulated on the bottom of the fuel tank into the cylinders.

Gotcha, thanks. I was thinking too hard about it and wasn't even thinking about Lambda. Good luck with the build, it will be interesting.

 

The build I posted on had 110k miles with E85 as the only fuel and they reported nothing corroded. Until that is addressed by someone showing corrosive effects in a build (actual owner posting) I dont see a reason to think the guys saying the two are being confused should be disbelieved. I have seen it posted so many times that methenol, not ethanol is the corrosive fuel that is being confused.

It seems to me that this one is going to persist until an authority comes in and says its wrong. Todays vehicles are all E85 compatible in build materials. The only verhicle owners that should be concerned about corrosive elemments are cars from the 80's but fuel lines, pumps, and o-rings today are completely compatible with ethanol because its in our current gas so the elements harmed were designed out.

Meth is corrosive and even those guys using it for long terms have noted little to be concerned with.

Ethanol isnt harming anything since its in your car now.

 

Joe,
you mean the one in Hallandale? Thats too far for me in Deerfield Bch.

 

The city of Portland, Oregon uses E85 in most of it's fleet and passed a law requiring all gas stations to provide E85 by a certain date. I think it was running about $3 when gas was at $4. However, the price is and will forever be dependent on government subsides because it costs much more to produce than gasoline.

 

Great info and nice discussion.

 

Not in my cars. We don't have any E85. We have quite a bit of E10, but non ethanol gas is still available and that is all I run in any of my cars.




Have you seen this Hot Rod article?

http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/h...uel/index.html

Excerpt:
You remember Kurt Urban, the guy wheeling the killer green Nova ("Sucker's Bet," Nov. '06). Well, when not out doing his Clark Kent thing with one of the most outrageous sleepers ever built, Urban handles engine development at Wheel to Wheel Powertrain (W2W) in Madison Heights, Michigan. Recently we looked in on a dyno shootout Urban conducted featuring gasoline versus E85. The test mule was W2W's standard LS2 crate engine, 402 ci with electronic fuel injection, Mahle 10.2:1 pistons, and ported cathedral heads.

To simplify the test, a BigStuff3 engine-control unit with both pump gas and E85 calibrations handy was plugged into the EFI harness. On 100-octane gasoline, the combination made 509 lb-ft of torque at 5,200 rpm and 540 hp at 6,000 rpm. (W2W tests its pump-gas engines on 100-octane for safety's sake, then performs its final validations with 93-octane pump fuel.) With no other changes except in the software calibrations, on E85 the engine made 524 lb-ft of torque and 546 hp. So the numbers were very similar for both fuels, with E85 squeaking out a slight edge. The real difference here, of course, is that one fuel is an expensive racing blend while the other sells for less than regular. And Urban felt that with some optimizing of the spark curve to exploit E85's greater octane, further gains were well within reach.

Just for fun, Urban then bolted up his standard turbocharger combination, a Garrett GT42 blower and Precision Turbo air/water intercooler, to the well-worn test mule. Still running 10.2:1 compression and E85, at 13 psi of boost the engine made an easy 833 lb-ft of torque at 5,000 rpm and 850 hp at 5,900 rpm. You will note there are no comparable test results for pump gas with this combination. "There's no sense even trying it with this boost and compression," Urban says. "You just can't do this with pump gas." With its knock-stifling 105 road octane, E85 is a pump fuel that performs like race fuel. "I love this stuff," Urban says. "It's high-octane fuel for everyone, 105 you can buy on the road."


Of course, the biggest tuning change when switching from gasoline to E85 is in fuel delivery. Yes, you will need more, just as you have heard-considerably more, in the range of 25 percent. Josh Ksiazkiewsicz is a GM Powertrain engineer and one of GM Performance Division's resident E85 gurus. A recent graduate of Kettering University, he is currently writing a rather thick master's thesis on ethanol fuels. And just to let you know where he is coming from: The 730hp, 496ci Rat motor in his personal hot rod, a '69 Chevy half-ton pickup, runs on E85 with a Demon carburetor. He says, "If you compare gasoline and E85, they have roughly a 20 to 25 percent differential in energy density by mass. We can't change that. What we can do is compensate for it by delivering more fuel mass to make up the difference."

And that points directly to one of the clear tradeoffs with E85: When you pump in roughly 25 percent more fuel, you take an approximate 25 percent hit in fuel economy as well, though it can be offset somewhat with careful tuning. And while drivers can switch back and forth from gasoline to E85 at will with the flex-fuel vehicles currently offered by the automakers, that is some fairly advanced technology beyond the reach of most backyard tuners. Once you've recalibrated your fuel system for ethanol, you're committed to ethanol until you change the calibration back again.

 

You know gas is corrosive also. Just cause it's corrosive doesn't mean it's going to eat your fuel system tomorrow.

I'm not trying to convince you to use it, but saying it's not safe is just wrong.

 

Hey Spin, I'll convince you to use your vette instead of your truck

Stock LS1 with a cam and procharger. FI really loves E85, especially in the summer. Guess which one is which...


By the way, stock fuel system still looks perfect after years.

 

Sure it is, but they put anti-corrosion additives in ethanol for a reason.

Where did I say it was unsafe? I'm not against the use of ethanol. Where else can you buy race gas cheaper than regular gas?

I am more curious about its use and how well cars that are designed to use no more than 10% ethanol fare when using 75% more than they are designed for.

 

I'm not going to get in a pissing match with you. I've seen it work and work very well. I don't like it when people post up or propagate info that they read somewhere and draw conculsions from it. It's hard to get to the real truth from people who are actually putting E85 in real cars with real fuel systems. I have only seen 1 person that claimed to use E85 and it ate his system in a month and it was in an old camaro and it looks like the guy actually filled up with methanol instead of E85. Every other car I've personally seen or collaborated with has seen ZERO evidence of corrosion in a variety of years/models.

So take that for what it's worth to you.

 

theres a place 23 miles from me. if they opened a few more im definately considering it.

 

That's probably the biggest problem. Depending on your location, you really have to plan out a long trip and make sure you're getting fuel when you need to. The biggest problem is usually cruises that go out in the country where E85 may not be available. Some are long enough where you need to fill up before you get home.

 

I live in MN where E85 is available in quite a few gas stations. It's becoming more and more popular for performance cars to use it. E85 loves high compression. I've experimented with E85 tuning for my TB SS with mixed results, though I focused more on a flex fuel tune than increased power. The TB SS ECM has quite a few E85 tables including a flex fuel enable option which makes it somewhat easier to tune for E85. As mentioned above it takes an experienced tuner with patience to dial in a optimized tune for your particular vehicle.

Cold starts can be a problem and E85 does not have an affect on IAT, but rather intake valve temperature. Something else to consider is to make sure the gas stations are truly setup for E85. The percentage of ethanol can vary as well from station and during the year. Finally consider your warranty if your vehicle is not specifically designed to run it. If you take your vehicle in for warranty work and the dealer suspects E85 is the cause of the problem they will take a sample of the gas for analysis and flat out deny your claim and the warranty. This almost happened to my friend with a 07 Silverado who fortunately had his gas receipt and contacted the station owner who was kind enough to provide recent state certification for the corrent blend in the underground tanks.

 

im not worried about it i think my warranty is has been over for a while