For you guys running methanol do you just fill up at a gas station, obviously with the E85?

Secondly, assuming with NA C7 getting 30mpg on highway, what kind of mileage do you get on E85?

Everyone wants to say how great it is, does anyone have any negatives?

The local tuner here in Indy suggested it and he said it was an easy conversion and it picked up alot of HP.

Thanks,
Ken

 

Methanol and E85 are two different things. Methanol can be used as a fuel but on a street car is normally injected into the intake tract (with its own dedicated nozzle and pump) on forced induction vehicles from a small dedicated tank--or oftentimes people use the washer tank. The engine still uses gasoline or e85 to run the engine. The methanol is used as a buffer and a way to cool the intake charge and mitigate detonation and pre-ignition.

E85 is 85% ethanol/15% gasoline and you fill up at a station like you would normal gasoline. You need quite a bit more volume as stoich for e85 is alot richer. Often times the fuel pumps have to be upgraded, and a flex fuel sensor incorporated along with an appropriate tune. Big gains with forced induction--lesser gains NA.

E85 has a MUCH higher octane rating (than gasoline, methanol is higher still) but most of the power gains come from the cooling effect of alcohol. The gasoline gets it burning on a cold morning as both ethanol and methanol are harder to ignite.

 

So meth isn’t E85, methanol is wood based and E85 is Ethanol is corn based. May gas stations sell ethanol(E85). If you wanted to purchase Meth used have to buy it from a local speed shop. Meth is stored in a separate tank in you car with its own system and injected into the air intake or port injection setup and you just run 93 octane pump gas in your cars fuel tank. Meth has an octane rating of approx 114 that mixing with your 93 pump gas will raise your overall octane significantly depending on how much meth you’re injecting. Ethanol (E85)has an octane rating of 100-105. If you convert to E85 you’d just fill your gas thank with that. The problem is that you need around 30% more E85 then you would need if running 93 octane so you’d have to upgrade your fuel system to handle that. (New injectors,low side and high side fuel pumps ect…) you’d also be we burning 30% more fuel all the time. If you don’t mind spending the money for all those upgrades E85 Is the way to go if it’s available near you. Most C7 guys with extensive mods will just do Meth injection being you’ll be driving around all the time on 93 and it’s only injected when you’re into the throttle heavy and its a much cheaper conversion. Only thing Is if your meth pump fails or your meth tank runs dry your engine goes 💥.. If your car is pretty much stock you can convert to E85 without needing to upgrade the fuel system but if your car had mods like forced induction you’d need all those fuel system mods I mentioned earlier