TDIT

Thanks buddy =)

Appreciate the kind words! It'll be three years in December, but it will be worth it! So long as I remember I'm driving one of the most powerful cars on the road, I should keep her out of trouble! Seriously said though, the traction control is a must - I mean it will have more power to weight than a lambo when I'm running top street trim. On paper it will get close to the Veyron - which is just scary - especially with two wheel drive and the (current) skinny **** 245's! Of course getting that power down will be next to impossible - even with traction control, but finding out if I can is half the fun =) I wonder how long my license will last...? =)

Keep your dreams alive

AngeloMelchiorri

Looks awesome

Snail 7

Exhaust system looks good.

TDIT

Thanks man, hopefully it will do its job without further mods! Should know in a week...

Stredrotor

I've been watching this thread for a while, she's coming along great.

Where in Aus are located?

TDIT

And the winner is.... Sydney Australia! A famous quote from um, the Olympic guy - wassisname? Sameranch? Anyway, that's where I be =)
So close I'm going mad - well, madder with anticipation! Soon.... Mmmmm... Sooon!

TDIT

Thanks to DrKJ the world is a balanced place once more - many thanks =)

As of a month ago, here is where things are at:

I had no joy finding a 20B map from any forum member I tried. Even did a yahoo answers question to no avail - even Wolf USA proved no joy. Although the people at Wolf Australia didn't reply to my email - F knows why - they did contact the builder of the car and have now supplied a map they think should work to get the car firing.

So, here we are, Wolf supplied map loaded, battery connected, ignition off, but Wolf and ignition lights have come on - wtf? Remember the amazing sparky I was recommended? I used to think he should change jobs, now I'm sure of it. He's made several MORE mistakes which are being resolved currently. These include no power to the fuel pumps - a true wtf moment since he wired them through the Wolf, plus a number of ignition wiring problems. I know I have stressed this before, and now I have learnt a HUGE lesson (who says middle aged guys can't learn new ****?) Know your sparky!! Either personally or by massive reputation. We were flat out looking for someone who could do this work originally (as our two preferred chaps were unavailable ongoing due to getting full time jobs), so we went with a second hand recommendation - big mistake. I think he was colour blind - and no, I'm not joking. Anyway, I won't name names, but want to stress to all people looking at doing this sort of thing that this is where I screwed up - don't make my mistake =)

Anyway, the good news is the oil piping is all done - return lines to the turbo done, pressure restriction to the turbo oil channels is in place also. Once the electrics are sorted out, we will be turning the key and hoping for the best. Just to be clear, this is a 20 second firing only to bed in the water seals - which is why there is no water in it currently. If you're unfamiliar with this practice, look it up before you tell me how insane I am. It's common in a rotary build to ensure the water seals bed in fully. After that, we'll add in some coolant and start setting a nice, safe, rpm and boost limited, run in tune.

TDIT

Well, since the above the electrics have been sorted, and several hours of mods were done to the WolfV5 map. End result?

IT'S ALIVE!!

The key was turned many times to no great result. Then, with a few more map mods, this happened (I think I've listened to it about a hundred times =)

Enjoy!!

PS: I had to drop the sample rate quite a bit to get the file size under 100kb - forum rules =) It's still a pretty close sound a-like =)

Aspect28

iTrader: (3)

sweeeeet. I'm gona do this years from now. KEEP IT UP!

pulseforpleasure

Hi, I have just joined up recently, have enjoyed reading through all the posts, invaluable info and appreciate the effort to share too.
I have recently acquired a similar car, but NA and have been finishing it off etc.
(check my intro post on new members for some pics)
I also need a modified sway bar, I am in New Zealand, but was wondering where you got yours done and how much?

TDIT

Hey mate - welcome and thanks for the kind words =)

My sway was done by Penrith Wholesale Suspension (www.wholesalesuspension.com.au.) However I know they sent it off to a third party and didn't do it themselves. I had the car taken there on a flatbed and let them case manage what needed to be done. They have a really good reputation and I have had work done by them before. They had an 'off the shelf' bar that was a close fit, and used this (and my existing) as a template for the new one. Sadly the new one was still made wrong 1st time around, so they cut my existing, made it the exact shape they wanted, then sent that away to be duplicated. That process worked perfectly for me. Mind you, I only needed to change the original because I chose not to move the 20B back - and the standard
bar fouled on the sump. Cost was around $280 supplied and fitted with new bushes - which I was perfectly happy with. The workmanship was also perfect and basically I can say nothing wrong about what they did or how. Is an all good moment.

Will check out your pics =)

Cheers and all the best!

TDIT

Hi everyone,

First of all, I'm a dad for the first time and damn it's a great thing!

Now, onto the car...

Sadly the workshop that was working on the car were unable to complete it. Several reasons apply here (cash flow and inability of time and effort to work on it being two), but at the end of the day they admitted they were not up to the task. That was both dissappointing and extremely annoying. I had fed these guys lots of cash and flexibility and this was the result over 2.5 years of them being cashed up. Anyway, I collected my bits and pieces, the car, and moved on.

The car when to my workshop for a while where I went over it with a fine toothed comb and made a long list... After I did what I could, I found myself needing another rotary shop for more expertise corrections and works.


1st real noise test: Fail.

Needed to be under 95db at 4000 revs. It was 106 at 3000. The car had no throttle cable at this point, and the thermal choke had been left disconnected, but not disabled, so the idle and ability to hold steady revs was shithouse.


Emissions test: Catastrophic fail.

Hydrocarbons (HC) has to under 100 parts per million (ppm) at idle - although the official check is done via weight over distance and not ppm, 100ppm is a good indicator. After disabling the thermal choke and doing a base tune with a 5 gas analyser, the emissions reading was nearly 2400ppm. Even though I'm running pre-mix at 1% ratio to 98 octane fuel, this result was a shock and a half - to say the least.

The result of the emissions test lead me to one simple conclusions:

The two 3.5"'metal cat' catalytic converters in series (which the manufacturer claimed would "be a good starting point and may be legal day one") are hopeless under specked for the task at hand. Don;t go there on a 20B, seriously don't waste your time and money.

The metal cats have been removed. Meaning that the section of pipe which housed the cats (see earlier pics) has been removed and a new one is being made up.

New cats:
I'm using three Walker cc106 cats to try to get me over the legal line (or at least close to it.) The cc106's are a 400 cell count, have more surface area, and very importantly are 2.5" in inlet diameter. The importance of going to 2.5" is simple... I need to slow down the gases in the cats to increase efficiency. Yes I know I'll loose power (well duh) but I need this car registered first. Then I'll unleash the power AFTER a solid run in period.

I have cut down the cc106's (see pics) and will weld them together - adding an air intake port just before the last cat. Reason for the air port is to make sure the third cat has a chance to stay hot and hopefully burn off any residual fuel that gets past the first two. If you're aware of the way the third gen's have a combustion chamber inside the main cat, then you'll get an idea of what I'm trying to achieve here with forced air induction here. Doing this does have two potential downsides though, which I'll go into in a bit.

The air feed system for the new cats is a three way experiment:

1) I have electric pumps (around 65 watts each) which I know have a high volume, but the pressure is pretty low. I'm not sure if they will have enough pressure to open the one way valve.
2) Electric twin piston air compressor - 4WD tire inflater type. These things have good pressure, but average flow.
3. Using the original cosmo air pump, but running it off an electric motor as there is absolutely no way it will fit in the engine bay.
If the above fails, I'll panic, run in circles, swear incesently, then get trashed and have a bloody good think...

Like I said, it's an experiment - which I'm listing here so others don't need to try.

On a side note I'm also going to try and get the water injection running on idle - if only so I can pass the emmisions test. Once said I'll likely need a bigger and better spark to do that, which is around k$2.5, and hence a pretty expensive experiment. So I'll only go down that road if the above new setup doesn't work. And lastly, I will run the car on e85 only if I have to, to help pass emmisions.

TDIT

Okay, the above post was written 2 weeks ago. Now the updates:

98 octane petrol (premix 1:100 castrol semi) with original cats - 2400ppm
98 octane petrol (same premix) with new cc106's (3 butt welded) - 950ppm -- nice difference
Above with 1:500 acetone - 900ppm

Okay, not enough, but acetone made an interesting difference.

Time for e85!

First e85 test (1:100 castrol premix) with a flushed tank - 430ppm - getting there!!
As above, but with 1:500 acetone - 550ppm - wtf??

NOTE TO ALL: Acetone and petrol - good result. Acetone and predominantly ethanol based fuel - bad result. Reason (as far as I can tell) is that the acetone burns slower than ethanol and as such leaves more unburnt fuel in the emissions.

So the best I have without air injection is 430 ppm of HC - and that's running bloody lean.

Basically as lean as we could get it without misfiring or per-igniting.

Problems and ideas:

* For the official emissions test the car has to be run in 3rd and 4th gears at 60 to 70km/h. The emissions are captured (think large vacuum cleaner attachment) and weighed. So diluting with air won't help. The only benefit gained will be if the pumped air can help the third cat burn hotter, instead of putting out the fire with cold air.

* 430ppm just isn't low enough. So I am considering a few ideas to overcome this...

* I might need a pre-cat! I need to cut the Dp and put a pre-cat behind the turbo. Don't want to, but I might need to.

* e85 in Australia can be 70 to 85% ethanol at the pump, and you don't know what the mix will be when you fill up. Now, ethanol is roughly 30% less dense than petrol, so an e85 tune will only give constant results for as long as the tank of fuel remains at the same mixture. But therein is the problem - e85 isn't a constant fuel! There can be a 15% difference in the ethanol amount per liter. That density variance totally fracks up your tune. So e85 should be called e70 to 85, and really should only be used by cars that can automatically compensate for the variance - which my build can't. Frack!

* So what fuel will the car pass on?! e85 has the best chance, unless I run e100 (which is 1% petrol and 99% ethanol.) Problem there is that fuel isn't legal in a street car. Oh, and it's around $2.30 per liter.

* Another problem - yeah I know - e85 and pre-mix = bloody bad idea! A) They don't mix, separations happens quite quickly regardless of whether mineral or synthetic. Only solution: Castor oil. Unfortunately castor oil is a hell of a lot denser than 2-stroke oil, so 100:1 needs to be changed to between 130 and 140 to one to achieve the same lubrication results.

Anyway!!
The good news is I've driven my car for the first time since the conversion. Rev limited to 3750, which means I hit the fuel cut pulling away from a stop and between first second and third gears. That was the legal drive from the second workshop back to my workshop. With the twin plates brass button clutch, my life was hell and the leaking clutch master cylinder made the pedal soft. That's easy to fix, and upping the rev limit to 4500 will help so long as I keep the load low. The next legal drive will be to the emissions test center in a week or so. Maybe I should try running on pure methylated spirits! Rofl... Hmmm... Maybe... I need to look up its composition before I pour it into the tank!

Cheers all, more soon. Pics very soon.

TDIT

Forgot to mention the reduced gas speed also reduced my noise levels. Not sure if it's enough, but I can add some restrictors at the tips if I need to.

TDIT

Hey all,

Few cat pics. 2 'metal cats' in series = useless for emissions control.
3 cc106's took HC's from 2300ppm to 900 on same fuel and tune.

Cheers

PS: The drain plug on the oil cooler was considered fine by the previous rotary workshop (wtf?!) It's been changed to a 5mm flat plug now... =)

Ottoman

I wish you luck bro, inspections are a pain in the butt..

in my part of the world, emissions are not tested...

but noise test is performed by ear (so 1 day u can pass another u can fail depending on who "deems" your car too loud)

and engine swaps are not allowed... (if they know)

so all the honda/nissan/etc guys carry two motors, and swap between them once a year just to pass the inspection...

you can also fail on things like FMIC, and racing wheels/seats rollcages etc

i'm not sure who has it worse you or me :p

TDIT

Dude, at the moment, it's you! At least there are rules here that you need to comply with at least once. But it seems you have to deal with the random nature of someones opinion... eeek! I couldn't swap engines once a year, would drive me nuts - even if I could. SO much in the bay has changed from the S5 13B to the 20B in there now. It would be nightmare stuff!

I've done further testing on e85 (70 to 85) and it's not going to cut it. The variance is too high. I can get real e85 (mixed by elf racing in victoria), or I can run on pure methonol - which burns without hydrocarbons (only bi-products are co2 and h2o). They cost about the same, but the pure methonol will get me over the line if anything will - so thats the direction I'm going down. I'll have the fuel Thursday, and the street tune done over the weekend, then actual emissions test Tuesday. I'm nervous as hell! If it fails I'll literally have to go back to the drawing board on how to pass it.

Cheers buddy - all the best

Sabora

Good luck can't wait for mine to finish as well but your definitely right about time and money yours is amazing

TDIT

Super quick update:
I had to cancel the emissions test as the methanol supplier fell through. Have been told they could probably tell the car was running on methanol anyway, so I'm not really worried about it. I now have an e99 (99% ethanol, 1% premium petrol) supplier. 50ltrs for $175 - yikes. Good thing I'm only doing this once. New emissions test date tba. Fingers crossed not more than a week or two. It never friggin ends. Good thing is I have driven the car a little to do a street tune on e85. Already hate the twin plate button clutch - but that's to be expected. I'm the one who has to get used to it, not the other way around.

TDIT

Hi all,
Still haven't done emissions test, but have finally got a dyno'd run in tune in the car. Had to go back to the shop I wasn't happy with for the dyno if I wanted engine build warranty. And they had to fix a list of things I put in front of them. Sadly they said they fixed the lot, but I still have no tacho or water temp reading in the dash. On the computer I have both, but that's not the point. I also gave them written instructions to do an economical tune with special care to be as lean as possible - just till I get the emissions test done, then we could go for a nice (semi rich run in.) What I got was a guy excited to tell me the car made over 240hp at the wheels at only 5 pound. WTF?! When did I ask for a power tune... As you can imagine the hydrocarbons are now through the roof (again), and I'm none to impressed with the seemingly limited ability to follow my written instructions. Oh, want a laugh? The business owner told me the car made (wait for it) 1000 foot pound of torque - roughly 1300+ nm. I tried to explain that those torque figures were just a tad on the black hole side of impossible, but he was convinced they were accurate. I smiled and said, 'ok.' Then started laughing when I was out of ear shot.
Since then I've saved the tune (which is a good tune in general, but useless for emissions), turned the boost down to about 1pound by adding a super soft spring to the gate, and have turned off the secondary injectors. Now I'm back in the ballpark for emissions, however next week I'm cutting the dump pipe, adding some flanges, and putting a cat right behind the turbo. Again, this is only for emissions. After that a straight pipe will go in its place and the "pre cat" will likely be removed. But since I'm only planning to make 5 pound max (and then only after 1000miles & until I get to 2000miles, when I'll let the hounds of hell loose with 14 pound), I don't see any harm in keeping it there.
Anyway, that's my update. If I sound annoyed it's because I am. They also put a brassbutton clutch in it that shudders like a son of a bitch at every gentle launch. It's being changed, but they want me to pay for 80% of it. More on that later.
Cheers to all!

TDIT

Hey all,
Here's an update... If you're planning to building a street legal 20B in Australia, or anywhere that epa laws are extremely ****, then this post will be of special interest to you.

Firstly, clutch is being changed - their expense. Pre-cat never got done. Why? Wanted to see how close the car could get to being legal without it, and space/ heat generation was going to be a friggin pain in the ****.

So had the emissions test done.... What happened?

Well, the car failed the emissions test - badly, actually very badly, actually extremely badly... Get the picture? Here's the details.

For the age of the engine and car, I had to get close to the following:

(All figures are in grams/kilometer.)

Actual:
HC 5.7
NO 0.03
CO 33
Co2 320

Kilowatt load (max) used during test 8.5

Required figures (or as close to them as possible):
HC 0.93
NO 1.93
CO 9.3
Co2 as much as possible.

The HC’s were 0.8 g/km at idle. So that tune was never going to get over the line.

Next I went to a leaner tune, and only activated it just before the test. Since it lasts less than 5 minutes and uses sfa load, I wasn't concerned about doing lean running damage. So here's what I did. Secondary injectors, off. Load limiter to 25% (just o be safe). Boost - zero. Timing altered. Injector load, no more than 30%. afr - f'ing lean. So lean that the car 'only just' didn't lean out and stall when the throttle was opened under tiny load. Okay, next I piped approx 5% of the exhaust back into the airbox. Okay, so remember I have three cats in neat series also, and am running e85. So end result?

HC 3.2
NO 0.04
CO 19
Co2 255

Okay, at this point I'd just about had enough. There is nothing else I can do with this setup and it has no chance of passing as is.

Why? Simple. As I've touched on before, the 20B for all its amazing power achievements, is so damn dirty, that it MUST have a high surface area pre-cat directly behind the turbo in order to convert the exhaust gases correctly. You can't adjust them out with an engine that has been even slightly ported (and I question bog standard) - it's just too much to ask of the rotary engine, unless it's running on LPG.

So wtf am I going to do? Nothing to the car. I was going to do the pre-cat but it presented it's own set of problems that I didn;t want to have to address. Instead I am following up on a technicality which looks like it will allow the car to be emissions test exempt. Pipe dream? I believe not (frack I hope not!)

More when I have it.

Cheers all.

TDIT

Hey guys and gals! It's been a busy time!!



Okay, short post today, more to come promise.

Engineering - still pending. But the cars on the road.

Emmisions test - the technicality would have worked a 2 years ago, but not now. Rule change, screwed that idea. The idea btw was this: if the car is running the ecu it came from the factory with, then it's except of emmisions testing - it doesn;t have to be running the car, but if it's removed the car can't run. Think about it, easily done. But the rules have changerd and that option is no longer the case, so ...

Had another emmisions test on e85 (had no choice - long story) but the tune wasn't ideal and yep, it failed again - though not by as much this time. I hope to have a resolution to this in the next month. Whatever it takes now. Seriously. Whatever the hell it takes.

The car:

Rev limited to 4500 rpm now and running boost off the wastegate controlled soft spring only with a decent tune. Boost loads up to 7psi. On the dyno it was rev limited to 5000rpm and spiked to 6psi. hp 242 at 5000 at the rears on what is a very safe tune. Rev limit back to 4500, for the first 1000k's, then to 4750 and I'm in heaven! Fuel eco **** - really ****. 4km/ltr - 8 on the highway. But I don't care. When enough k's are done I'll be doing water injection and tune to 8000rpm with same soft spring (for now) in the wastegate. She kicks sideways now if I give her a fist full. Can only imagine what will happen when the rev limiter gloves come off!

Had the clutch plates changes - did I mention that before? Huge difference and very drivable once they bed in. Went from an 8 pad to a 5. In hind sight, I should have gone twin rag face and will when these expire.

Needs:
Water injection installed - working on that atm.
New bushes (probably all round) - any advice on a good suppler will be appreciated.
Standard height +1 pound springs in the front. It's too low at the front atm (rear is std already and fine), and will need slightly stiffer springs to handle the extra weight over the nose. Have calculated 1.2pound would be ideal, so going with std +1. Have local manufacturer and springs are on order.


Coming up:

1) Next post will cover gearbox mounts and how **** the standard ones are, plus my solution to that particular problem.

2) e85 fuel: why in Australia it's not worth the effort to run on going - unless your car is made for it.

Cheers!

Pindrop

Funny this.... I was just wondering the other day how this build was going. Thanks for the update.

Hope your next emissions test passes, what a bastard this must be to deal with. Who is tuning the car?

I have also been toying with the idea of running e85 on my 20B, so I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Cheers
John

TDIT

Hi John
I can’t say greetings from the land of Oz to you huh?!

Okay, e85… I love it and hate it. But I’ll be fair and explain why…

Since this project has started I was eagerly awaiting e85 to become available, thinking it would be the holy grail of fuels. Lots of power with a claimed 117 octane level, cooler running due to the alcohol content, cheaper pricing at the pump, and of course lower emissions. So when it became available I was keen to start using it, and even made a habit of trips to the supplying servo (in car that wasn’t as thirsty as the 20B) that had it – some 45 minutes away. I had the 20B tuned for it, nice safe tune for my new engine with minimal boost and low rev limiter.

I knew I couldn’t run two-stroke pre-mix, as it doesn’t mix with alcohol and when I did the “jar” test with e85, it separated faster than I can type “crap.” I wasn’t running the electric OMP either (because the unmodified standard ones are crap for reliability and even housing flow), so I had to do something. The answer was Castor Oil. I worked out the consistency variance (based on viscosity and recommendation) and ran 140 to 1 with e85. I did a quick jar test and all was good. It burns cleaner than two-stroke and has a better smell – so yay right?

Day one I noticed the car was powerful, remember this was my first real drive in the car with a decent tune and wow – loved it. It really pulled in third, though at 4500 the limiter came up so fast it spoiled my fun. After less than 175k’s though, I needed to fill up. Reason? E85 requires about 30% more enrichment compared to 98ron premium fuel. So it uses just under a third more per duty cycle. Add to that it was a safe tune, and you can understand that the fuel won’t last long, and that’s even when I was going gentle on the right foot. So I grabbed my trusty fuel container that I had filled less than a fortnight earlier, 40ltrs exactly, wacked in the castor oil, gave it a shake and poured it in.

1st noted problem:
When I started the car it was idling ****. When cold, it would stall a few times on warm up idle (no I don’t let it warm up to running temp before driving away – I let it get close then baby it until everything is warm.) I thought maybe there was a difference in the e85 petrol to ethanol ratio. Not a bad guess as in Australia the product “bioflex e85” can be anything from 70 to 85% ethanol. Now it is obvious that a 15% variance in fuel density is going to mess with any tune where the computer can’t “sense” the difference and auto adjust for it. So I adjusted the overall trim plus, then minus 5 - 10% from original and noted the difference. Um, there was no improvement – it just got worse either way. A true wtf moment! I decided to take the car for a long drive, load it up a bit on hills and generally see if there was a minor blockage that would work itself out. The car performed wonderfully, except it now had exhaust pops on trailing throttle and but it still idled poorly. I decided I would fill up again, this time from the pump, even though I had only used less than half of a tank. I did, added more castor oil to match, and noticed the idle was much improved, and the pop’s on deceleration had reduced. (I wasn’t running overrun cut back then*.)

Conclusion: Because I couldn’t mixture tune the idle back to normal, the only logical conclusion I could make re the cause was that the shelf life of e85 somewhat sucks**.

The remaining e85 I had at home was then destined for the lawn mower!

From that point I only filled up the car with e85 from the pump. But guess what happened next time I filled up? It idled badly, but didn’t pop on trailing throttle. By now I had an afr gauge and noticed I was 1.2points off the norm at idle. Now just think about that for a second – 1.2 points is a lot for any engine… Master trim adjustment made everything better again. It was a richer adjustment, but everything went back to normal after the change. This unfortunately would be the norm. Fill up, adjust the trim to suite the fuel. If I didn’t, I could expect decelerations pops, often smelly cabin, uneven pull from the engine, and “always” crap idle and stalls. Sometimes the variance was small, sometimes it was large, larger than it should have been with a fuel that was only supposed to have a variance of 15%. More on this later***.

After a two months of living with mixture adjustments, I noticed a whine coming from the “in-tank” original Walbro fuel pumps. It shitted me. It was loud and annoying. So much so that when the car ran below half a tank and the pumps were exposed, it was louder than the engine on idle. In my investigations to the problem I discovered something troubling – ethanol corrodes aluminium. What are the fuel fittings made out of, the new fuel lines, the internals of the fuel pumps…! Was this what I was seeing? The fuel pumps starting to die after ethanol has been pumped through them?? I had a think about it and decided I had only one sure-fire way of finding out. I let the tank run low to the point the fuel regulator started popping (so I knew I was way low on fuel), then filled up with 98ron and 100:1 two-stroke oil. I did a mixture adjustment (around 30% as a start, then fine tuned with the afr and my experiences with the car) and got to a happy point – though still on the richer side (new engine rules.) The fuel pump noise was still present however – even after a few days.

Next tank load I did the same thing. 98ron, two-stroke, and a minor mixture adjustment (as the last tank still had some e85 in it.) The car pulled well, idled well, and smelt like two-stroke is expected to smell – ie: bad. The exhaust tips were black, but the tune per the afr and the cars performance was correct. (The cause of this was found – see below****)

I’d done a 1000k’s. Time for my first oil and filter change. I’d noticed that car used a little water and oil for the first 200k’s then settled down to nothing – though I checked both daily. That’s expected for new seals and engine. The engine was warmed up when I dropped the oil – but wtf? It was a little gluggy and oddly milky – but not like water in the oil milky – this was different. Lighter… I was running Penrite oil in the car and still do. Love it. If I were in the States I’d run Mobile1, but the Mobile1 we get in Australia is not the same as the US product. Same label, different oil. (Ours is not as good – more the pity.) I made some enquiries and started getting the same answer from different ethanol race users. It shortens the life of oil, can turn it milky, and give it an uneven consistency.

*** I had a chat to the guys who helped develop the first e85 factory Holden Commodore. They told me two things (use stainless steel everywhere in the fuel system and the e85 from the pump was not 70-85% ethanol – that was a huge bit of confirming news. They had tested batches and seen it as low as 52% - and never higher than 83% this was from the same servo I had been filling up from, AND two others. Right. That explains the major changes required in tunes. This annoyed me, but honestly it wasn’t a complete shock. I’d seen the end results and done enough adjustments to know it wasn’t 15%.

The next few days I had the chance to do some highway driving, and yes, in a few places it was spirited driving =) Every now and then however, I thought I could smell castor oil burning. Odd, since I’d stopped using it more than 2 tanks earlier. It only seemed to be when I gave it a fist full, so I did some test runs and sure enough, I was right. An unmistakable aroma of castor oil was coming out the pipes and finding it’s way back into the cabin.

When I got home I jacked up the car and drained the tank completely. What I found stunned me. There was almost a litre of castor oil in the tank! Now I know there was a little bit of fuel in the tank when I switched from e85 to 98premium, but all that should have been left was a proportional amount of 140:1 of castor oil – ie: less than 50 mils.

At this point I went back to my jar testing. Did six tests and let them sit overnight:

1) e85 and castor 140:1
2) ethanol and castor 140:1
3) 50/50 e85 and premium then castor 140:1
Then, same as above but with 280:1 castor oil. (Jars 4 to 6.)

The following morning this was the results:

1) Some separation had occurred.
2) No separation.
3) Separation, more than #1
4) Small amount of separation – half #1.
5) No separation.
6) Half separation of test #3.

So the only jars that hadn’t separated were the pure ethanol and castor oil ones. The e85 and e85 with Premium mix, both had separated – but here’s the eureka moment that this and more testing let me to:

• The amount of separation was proportional to the amount of ethanol present. I did several more tests to confirm this, but here’s the low down:

o Castor Oil and Ethanol blended fuels will only mix together to the proportionate saturation point of the ethanol present. So at 140:1 if it’s 100% ethanol, it will mix 100%, if it’s 50% ethanol per volume, it will mix 50%. The same was present with the 280:1 and 210:1 tests I carried out. The rest of the oil will separate and stay in the tank and accumulate.

So two things were explained here:

1) The fuel pumps were choking on castor oil because at 140:1, the e85 fuel had insufficient ethanol to mix with it fully. This explained the whine – which is now long gone as the car is running 98ron and two-stroke oil.

2) Each time I put the correct ratio of oil to e85 in the tank, I was wrongly assuming that all the oil was mixing. It was not, and literally couldn’t, so the excess was being left in the tank – plus it was building up each and every time I filled up. What made this worse was my assumption that the e85 product was between 70 and 85% ethanol – which I now know to be incorrect.

Here are the overall results of the experience and testing:

a) Ethanol corrodes aluminium. So go stainless where possible, and remember that fuel pumps contain aluminium internals in most cases.

b) E85 doesn’t fully mix with castor oil at 140 to 280:1. Bad news on several levels.

c) E85 is a great source of power (compared to 91, 95 and 98 ron) and does burn *very* cleanly, but its shelf life is poor.

d) E85 should not be considered “ethanol at 85%”, it is actually E(50 something to 80 something %) so good luck tuning it.

That’s my experiences with e85 in Australia. As a fuel, so long as the tune is correct, it’s very powerful. For use in rotaries without an omp, I respectfully say, forget it. If you have an omp and your car is correctly tuned for it, AND can compensate for the variance in the ratio of petrol to ethanol, then all you have to worry about is the corrosion factor it has on aluminium. Get past all of that and you’ll love it! It burns great, has very few emissions, and lots of power!


Sub notes:

* Overrun cut: Originally had it turned off to aid better tuning. Then turned it on and set it above the highest idle point (which was when the car would idle on warm up.) Also it was only active when the car was at running temperature. Sounds good right? Well, for me it wasn’t. Unfortunately I had to turn it back off as, on decel, when the revs got to the point where the overrun would disengage, when I would go round a slow corner or turn a street, the revs would drop outside of the O.R range and the engine would surge for a moment – then go back into the O.R range. That made for jerky unpredictability and it annoyed the ^%$%$ out of me. So I turned it off completely and tuned the decel range on 95% closed throttle (or above) to minimise exhaust pops. It’s not perfect, and I’m the first to admit that, but the jerky moments of on/off/on/off O.R are a thing of the past.

** Shelf life of e85: I spoke to a number of people regarding this, but the most useful information came from the Manildra Group in Sydney. Short version: The fuel goes off in a matter of weeks. The octane level drops quickly, and can drop to the point where a car with a perfect tune simply will not start due to stale e85.

*** Larger than 15% fuel variance. I’ve covered this above, but suffice to say: Even if e85 was 70 – 85% ethanol, it’s too big a margin for a rigid map to deal with. And being fair it shouldn’t be asked to. If the ecu is expected a set fuel density, then give it to it. We’re the ones letting it down, not the other way around. Of course I now know the pump e85 has a much larger variance than the claimed proportional 15%/volume, so really it’s just all too hard unless your ecu/ems can deal with ever changing density differences.

**** The reason my premium 98 ron fuel and 100:1 two stroke mix was so much on the nose was the oil I was using. It was Castrol 2T and I won’t be using it again unless desperate. Since then I’ve tested most oils I could find at local auto shops and even mower shops. My testing was firstly done in chainsaws and edgers, as I wasn’t going to risk the new engine on something until it had passed the first basic tests.

Here are the ones that I found too high in smoke to even consider using in the car:
Ryobi
Any non-race motorcycle two stroke
Any lawn mower or edger recommended oil

Here are those which I found good, but not great:
Castrol r30 or is it rc30? Dammit can’t remember.
Motorcycle racing oil – plus too costly imho.
Full synthetic two-stroke oil – bloody expensive and not worth said expense imho.

Any here are the winners – by a large margin:
Stihl two-stroke oil
Husqvarna XP two-stroke oil

The Stihl & Husqvarna oils are like for like in so much as they are (as far as I could see) completely smokeless at 100:1. I did a test run in an edger and chainsaw at 100:1, 50:1 and 25:1 using both and the result was almost zero smoke at 50, and none visible at 100. Their lubrication qualities are exceptional, and their cost is only slightly above the norm for oil. 4 ltrs cost me AU$36 per 4 ltr container of Husq. I’m running it in the 20B atm and I swear it starts and runs smoother since I started using it. It pulls cleanly, oil and water temps are spot on, and the plugs are exactly as they are supposed to be. AFR is unchanged, and basically everything is happy. Even the chainsaw is easier to start using it at 50:1, and it runs for a full tank near flat out at a bizzillion rpm without issue. So if someone can fault it, please tell me and explain why. Right now it looks to be a very good pre-mix option.

That’s it. I’ve been writing this off and on for a week, so I hope someone managed to read it all and found it useful! I’ve edited it too many times already, so if there are typo’s still in there then consider them a gift!

Ciao all!
=)

bumpstart

great post... i hope others going this path in aus are taking note
.. the availability , variance and shelf life of local e85 and attrition of fuel components is something ive long tried to point out

i bet you are also regretting seeing LPG currently at 56 cents per litre in aus
if you was starting out again.. rebate or not ...

comparing to e85-
LPG vapour injection would have given you the octane and homogenous mix
water injection would give back the latent charge cooling and chamber quench

and you would have eaten cake on the way back from the EPA testing



im currently running 17/23 L on 105 ish RON LPG for highway /city driving on a 300 rwhp 13bt set up ( that is a mixer carb with lambda control )
im cruising and idling at lambda

most 13bt petrol microtech /big secondary 300 rwhp setup will be returning 15/20 L highway/city on 98 RON petrol
and are not idling anywhere near lambda ( cant )

-just an example of where the homogeneous nature of LPG is making the engine much more efficient , much cleaner running , taking advantage of LPG inherent low hydrocarbon and low CO
.. and the large / rapid quench area in the wankel contributing to cutting the NOx

so much so.. it is almost negating the relative differences in energy density , litre per litre to petrol 98


food for thought for those starting new on a 20b project that might be subject to IM240
the dedicated LPG conversion will also allow legal changes to ECU.. and inlet manifolds
,, that may not be allowable under petrol 98
also keep in mind the LPG vapour systems don't have fuel pumps etc .. negating significant setup costs

PS.. LPG in perth ( oz ) is 56 cents per litre ATM.. 98 octane PULP is closer to $1.60 where i am