It seems OK for the rest of the cars except for the Corvette... And yes I noticed running cooler and more power with just 2 gallons.

 

Also how do we know we are getting a true octane on fuel? Below is one sample of "lower than advertised" at a couple stations. How much damage is that doing to your car running a low octane.

Here in California and other States we only have 91 0ctane were on the cusp as it is for these cars. Now we all know it's common practice at gas stations to fill a holding tank and then put the remaining in another tank. They bought 3,000 gallons they take 3,000. Now that's great when they have 100 extra gallons of premium and drop it into the mid grade, but what happens when Regular and mid are full? What's a 100 gallons of regular in the Premiums 5,000 gallon tank..... ??

Anyways With 2 gallons of E85 and 14.6 of Premium 91 it equates to 92 octane at a E19%. Ran cooler, Had more power. Driven like I stole it with the new found power. No limp mode, no CEL, nothing!! Not one of the Nay Sayers (even a GM Engineer [which I do question his job duties because of the examples he gave, probably a GM seat belt Engineer which also scares me]) can show proof this is harmful. From the post's above GTR, Audi, BMW and the whole Ricer clan ( but they would run rubbing alcohol and peroxide if they thought it worked) do this. I have done it in my 850 HP drag car Gen 1 motor.

So the Challenge is still out there...

 

 

If running e85 in a boosted high performance application was not harmful to long term durability - why do all OEM performance applications not feature flex fuel capability? Since you question my industry knowledge and even my character, just look at industry standards.

 

If you read his example of how gas is delivered to the stations is all you need to know about the whole thread.

 

Before we decide there was no harm, etc what was your measured lambda at WOT and where did your long term fuel trims settle at part throttle and idle?

 

Yes, but..... They have wideband O2's, which will work and compensate for a lean condition when when in WOT, open loop.

Our cars with narrowband O2's cannot compensate for the leaner mixture when in open loop. Kaboom!

 

Just road tested...

Then how are these cars running with E85 Kits? They don't change out the 02's

Again nothing...

Does anybody like you?

 

How about does anyone really think this bunk statement above is true which about as smart as tossing in 3 gallons of e85 in your not set up for it Corvette you have no idea which changes everything.!
I'm sure you will post when your engine goes!

 

i will say, in northern states, I used to get detonation from other gas stations in my boosted cars if i did not use shell or Sonoco 93+. BP was horrible. So there is a bad quality of gasoline out there, that I agree with.

 

I think E15-E20 is ideal for our cars.
The stock tune is rich, and designed for E10
Adding a small amount of ethanol decreases stoich from 14.1:1 for E10 to 13:6 for E18.
The reduced density of ethanol, if unaccounted for by the stock tune, moves the F/A from 11.5 to 12.
The increased octane makes this somewhat safer to be this lean.
There are many other variables to my crude math. The largest is the actual ethanol content of the fuel. E85 is rarely 85% ethanol, and closer to 50% during the summer. Also, if we’ve already modded our cars without tuning, they could be leaner already.
I think a little E85 is probably a good thing. But as Higgs said, we really don’t know what we’re doing.

 

Most of what you said is wrong.
1. The stock tune is not rich. It is right on the edge of too lean STOCK for emissions and gas mileage.
2. This is the C7 Z06 section. The stock tune is set for 12.2 to 12.6 AIR to FUEL, not 11.5. And it's A/F, air to fuel not fuel to air. A ratio of 11.5 parts of fuel to one part of air wouldn't combust, it would hydrolock the motor.
3. The content of ethanol DOES change with the seasons, but just the opposite of what you said, it has MORE ethanol in the summer, and LESS in winter, for easier startup.

NASTY C7: "Then how are these cars running with E85 Kits? They don't change out the 02's" Maybe you should reread what I wrote. They don't NEED to change their O2's, they're wideband already, and can correctly read leaner mixtures than lambda correctly. It's OURS that cannot.

 

So stating the obvious here, if you do not know what your fuel trims were/are and you do not know what AFR/Lambda you were running at full throttle then how do you know what you are doing is no problem/no big deal/etc? You don't. Appearances are not everything, sometimes healthy looking people are actually quite sick inside, if you know what I mean. You are only looking at the phenotype not the genotype. "It feels good and didn't blow up so it's good to go." This is not evidence enough to make your thread and tell the world it's cool to haphazardly add ethanol to your fuel tank (and without measurements it is indeed haphazard because a couple gallons here and a couple there and quickly one loses track of just what mix is in the tank). Adding 2-3 gallons to an empty tank of 15 gallons of 93 one time forever is not an experiment with practical results. What would be the point of that?

The issue is not that anything is going to fall apart just because you put some ethanol in your car, it won't happen and I am quite certain that a couple gallons of ethanol did not trigger any codes or cause any issues that one time you did it, but that isn't the point of the rebuttals. The point is it isn't something you can do blindly and that is the reason for the flex fuel kit. The flex kit is not justification for pouring ethanol into your car, pouring ethanol into your car is justification for the flex fuel kit. I am a huge proponent of E85 but in an intelligent and controlled manner and without the flex sensor and proper tune you are asking for trouble, maybe not once, but eventually. You aren't going to get cancer from smoking one cigarette and I bet you could get on with life only shooting heroin once, but does that mean you should do it once? Not me.....There are lots of things we "can" do but it doesn't mean we "should" do......We could drive with our feet if we wanted, right? Doesn't mean we should.

The flex fuel sensor measures the content of alcohol in the fuel line going into the engine and, here is the key, ADJUSTS fueling and spark lead accordingly. This means trims and WOT fueling are not out of wack like they are without the sensor and the tune telling the fuel system what to do. Without that adjustment you are just pushing the stock calibration out of it's adjustment range and could potentially run into trouble. You are correct that your car is more than likely fine but the point here is it is an uncontrolled methodology which CAN turn out to be dangerous AND you are getting only a small fraction of the benefit of ethanol without the sensor and tune, no spark lead adjustment, torque model will be off, fueling will be off from ideal, etc.

Running a flex sensor and calibration and a meaningful amount of ethanol is like jumping in and swimming. Pouring a couple gallons in your tank is just putting your big toe in the pool, that's fine, just don't post that youre going to the Olympics for your freestyle. ;-)

 

Couple quotes regarding E15:

• Repeated evaluative studies showed no statistically significant loss of vehicle performance (fuel economy, and maintenance issues) attributable to the use of E15 fuel in MY2001 and newer vehicles.
• In a specific study performed by the U.S. Department of Energy in conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 86 vehicles, representing all makes and models, were driven more than 6 million miles on E15 with zero issues.
• NASCAR has run nearly 11 million miles on E15 with better fuel mileage and horsepower. “E15 is the most exciting addition to NASCAR performance in years,” said Richard Childress, owner of Childress Racing.

 

You are taking advantage of the extra octane over 91 which the stock tune will do assuming it is running E10 fuel with a 14.1 stoich. The issue is that you have not addressed the stoich changes in the tune or adjusted timing specifically for when ethanol is in the tank, nor do you seem to know the limits of ethanol on the stock fuel system. Keep adding more and doing it more often and you will have a failure.

 

Everyone, I've deleted the personal threats, name calling and pissing match. Let me remind ALL of you-personal threats will not be tolerated here on CorvetteForum. If you experience a problem, use the Report Post icon and functionality. Do not try to prove how big you are by retaliating and making personal threats. You will find yourself on the wrong side of a Summer vacation from CorvetteForum.

Also, for those of you that are not aware of this, we also have a Multi-Quote icon. This is the middle icon in the lower right hand side of each post. This icon allows you to answer more than one person in a single response. If you look at post #49, it shows a single response to 4 other posts! It will make your life a lot simpler and much easier too.



Cheers!

 

You folk have given me a great idea! See, I work on the RS-25 rocket engine (formerly Space Shuttle Main Engine). It uses liquid hydrogen for fuel.

Now, it is a well-known fact that the F1 engine from the Saturn V first stage used RP-1 (basically a "special" kerosene) and it produced way more thrust than RS-25. Maybe we should just switch the fuel of RS-25 over to RP-1 and perhaps we can get more thrust that way!

Never mind that the RS-25 wasn't designed for that fuel. Maybe we should just try it and see what happens?! I get all kinds of great ideas from the Corvette Forum...

 

The facts your using are not right. Regular gasoline beats efuels for MPG EVERYTIME in passenger cars which shows gas has better fuel economy over any efuel.

 

Interesting...

-Josh