Anybody blown their engine on E85?
 

Just wondering.
I used to consistantly blow mine up until I switched over and haven't blown it since.

Yes, abel (orlando shop)blew my engine using e85 while on the.dyno. bnr /id injectors/aeromotive 340 fp. Haltech e6x.

E6x.... was you running waste spark?

All I know is if I was not on E85 I would of blown my current motor.

When I first started this journey I did not realize how horrible the factory FD fuel tank was. I was going lean with spirited driving and the fuel tank started to get below half a tank with dual in tank Bosh 044's. I have multiple logs of 20 + psi and extremely lean A/F's. The motor never missed a beat a still runs and idles beautifully. Pulled the plugs after every encounter with high A/F and high boost and there was never even a hint of detonation on the plugs.

I have fixed the fuel problem related to the fuel tank but still would never even consider going back to normal fuel on a rotary at this point due to how forgiving E85 is. It really helps diminish a lot of the rotary flaws. I have blown 2 motors years back on pump and race gas and was not even close to where I am at now.

e85 is a good thing

No. It was.on factory coils. I have been readig a lot about.tuning since i lost a lot of trust after that dyno sesh. I looked at Abels map and noticed a few things wrong.
1st. Entire ignitions map was 15 deg flat.
2. Entire trailing map was to to flat 0 split.


Yes, hes a fuckig.idiot that lied about being able to tune. He got me.

Factory turboII coils?

That timing map is not uncommon if on direct fire. But waste spark it's bad juju.
waste spark is a killer.

Yes.factory tii coils. Leading = wastepark and trailing = sequential? Not.direct.

The problem is that haltechs e6x ,even in direct fire, should not be runnig a split less than 6-8 deg. Haltech e6x is known for its trigger inconsistencies at higher rpms.

Thats waste spark.

Running your trailing at zero split was not your problem. IT is your leading coils on waste spark. Had nothing to do with e85.

the leading spark on the waste spark, ignited in/on the next combustion chamber and cause engine failure.

The.tuners inexperience cause that failure. Its recommended all over the forum to not do less than 6 deg Split on haltech e6x. Unless you hard wire the coils to ignite.together without any possibility of leading firing.first.

ok, Can't go against the internet.

put a rotor at TDC and put the next rotor opposite TDC(rotor tip facing between the plugs), waste spark fires on the exhausting opposing chamber during exhaust stroke. waste spark would have to be extremely retarded(firing after the rotor passes the leading plug) to be the cause of engine failure.

IF the trailing was waste spark, yes, definitely a big no no. take the same scenario i said above and look at where the trailing plug is located and firing where the front rotor is at TDC, it is igniting the intake stroke on the opposite chamber. this may not be all that noticeable until higher loads due to the obscured trailing plug hole and the tuning to compensate for it(say a 0 split for example with more advance, this is still a scenario for eating an engine).

i've never had a problem with waste spark on leading only, trailing is i believe where you are being confused, i'm not familiar with the older haltechs but maybe this reference is to a single output for the trailing before they actually began supporting rotary ignition features. you cannot run waste spark on all 4 plugs in these engines. most ECUs only offer waste spark leading support anyways(single channel lead, 2 channel trail).

the only other possibility i can see with waste spark leading is with multiple spark discharge and lazy pattern, where the leading may be igniting at high RPMs after the rotor passes lead plug or again, extremely retarded ignition timing at high revs(timing should advance slightly with engine revolutions, many tuners use flat curves and static timing tables). FC engines also have the variable of having incorrect timing pulleys after several engine rebuilds, which can throw the timing out of the appropriate window, this can be remedied by installing a solid racing timing pulley, since the e-shafts are all milled at 9 o'clock for the keyway at #1 rotor TDC, timing maps have to account for the engine being set to TDC versus the original 5/20ATDC setting.

those are rather abnormal scenarios though, but something to consider. another to consider is CAS gear slop, the CAS has roughly 10 degrees of slop in the gear which on decel or misfiring will advance timing 10 or more degrees.

all of the above should be taken into account when building a high performance engine.

Its pretty much a fact. Haltech even.developed an external reluctor for the haltech e6x to help when the trigger.issues.

But.apperantly your the exception when it.come to running 0 split.on an e6x.

i've heard far too much knock running below 10 degrees of split to ever consider pushing it further. E85 may be more forgiving than pump gas in this respect, which is a consideration but not an all around rule. E85 does burn slower and cooler, so in theory you could reduce the split with much less knock, but are there benefits to it? i can't answer that, at least not at this moment.

any fuel has the ability to destroy an engine but with E85 it would take a much larger issue to do it in. if the ignition is firing while the rotor is on the compression stroke it seems to be extremely forgiving. if there is an issue with the plugs firing on the intake stroke, any fuel is going to kill an engine. misfiring can delay ignition not just snuff it, your tuner trying to push through excessive misfiring and laboring the coils was probably what destroyed the engine. take fuel out once you encounter rich ignition break up.

15 degrees of advance is agressively weak for E85. i've seen people run close to 30 degrees at 20psi+ with very little knock.

. I had learned my.lesson. with that so called tuner.
The new setup with fresh engine and bw turbo is waiting for remote tuning from steve kan. Should happen within a month.

Wish me luck.

RR
You have lots to learn! that is all I have to say.

yeah well, i suppose i don't have a choice anyways. because my leading channel only has 1 channel... guess i'll give up, and on the other cars that run wasted spark.

Sleeper7, my coils run just like the factory fc coils would. Thats how my haltech is wired. So its not full wastepark. It should have survived the dyno tuning. Idk why your trying.to.imply the tuner is innocent and that my setup is at fault.

Well, it looks like you can blow it up on E85, just takes a lot to do it!
Given the propensity of easily blowing up the rotary engine, I don't understand why more rotary enthusiast's don't use E85?
I feel like it is the holy grail for our cars!

Where would you draw the line that wasted spark is not a good system and a 4 coil system should be used?

Funny enough I have stock FC coils in place, but received a set of four trailing coils welded together so I could wire them up if there is an advantage of having that over the wasted spark system.

I ask because I'm spending nearly $5k on a rebuild with track time in mind so I dont want to be blowing this up... :)
P.S. I will be running pump gas with water injection.

Never said waste spark is absolutely junk. It's only bad if the trigger system is not accurate. And the FC is not as good as the FD. Waste spark does has it's place but when trying to make power, going sequential ignition is the best. There's a reason why most of the high HP cars are not running waste spark. And if they are there trigger set up is spot on. I have personally seen how far the FC timing can move around. It is crazy. If the senses is you have to have a split greater then 6 degs to prevent trailing firing before leading. is it the trailing of leading timing that is moving around???? Another thing to think about when making big power and waste spark, your sparking the waste spark just before the apex seal travels over the plug. if the plug does not cool in time it will ignite the incoming chamber. There is a reason why Mazda made the trailing plug hole so small. compression and eliminating as much fuel entering the plug area. There's more but.

10 14 years ago this guy was hurting motors on waste spark. E6#. FD. the only thing that help was to eliminate the waste spark. everything else was left alone. And he has one of the fastest FD in the country.

Waste spark IMO is for fuel economy.

And E85 does help with turbo spool. Seen it done it!

Don't know the line/limit. But my current set up is four trailing coils and four leading ignitors. Some will say it's weak sauce but it working and it was cheap.

IMO the trigger set up is what make the car run at it's best.

I already plan on using e85 again. My power goal is 330-350whp. Whatever my bw s360 makes with 14 psi springs on the dual wastegates. I do want to eventually upgrade my e6x to a new platinum so i could use the 4 new ls2 truck coils i have laying around.

Hmmm so it sounds like replacing the CAS is more beneficial than the coil setup.

I plann on doing trigger wheel kit with the platinum haltech in the future. My current e6x cannot.run on that trigger wheel , as far as i know.

basically you just said everything i did earlier, but if you pay attention to the details you can get by with the earlier ignition systems if you understand the flaws. but it seems you're more seeing issues with trigger sensitivity than a decent running waste spark setup with a clean signal.

Said IF they are running waste spark with big power. I cant say everyone is making power is running direct fire ignition. Have no idea what's out there. Know for sure everyone I've talked to and seen at the track is running direct fire ignition. Waste spark is past it's time.

i don't much care for waste spark either but many people are stuck with it depending on their initial choice of ECU.

it's not just for gas mileage/emissions but it was also an effort to save cost when building the cars that the ECU manufacturers just adapted to, since it was there. ideally you have both plugs jumping gaps in the same direction versus one jumping plug chassis to electrode>electrode to chassis on the next.

the mileage benefit is minimal for a high power car, you probably won't even notice its absence.

but it still works, regardless. about 75% of my work is with FCs and out of hundreds of builds only 1 was almost strictly built for drag racing(and was also the most problematic build). the rest are all built for street driven applications and need reliable ignition for many many miles and i rarely run into blown engines from questionable ignition related issues.

Best mod I ever made....Full Function trigger :nod:

Interesting thread in the naturally aspirated section about coils. A few guy feel waste spark is holding them back at higher rpms.

Why they running wasted spark? Direct Fire is the way to go.

another thing about waste spark being bad, the waste spark fires so close to the on coming chamber that if the plug does not have enough time to "cool" it will ignite the on coming chamber. Higher rpm and hp creates more heat. With direct fire the plug has enough time to cool and the coil has enough time for a complete charge.

sleeper 7 i seen a video of your car and what gas are you runing.

E85

another thing to think about when the waste spark happens. actual engine timing is not the same as the timing on the front pulley. So waste spark happens really close to or almost on top of the apex seal. And if the waste spark spark plug does not cool in time, it will ignite the on coming camber. Then add a little timing drift and your asking for trouble.

IMO Waste spark should only be used for low boost application and for NA or higher boost levels direct fire all the way. What's the most HP reliably anyone ever seen on waste spark?

P.S I love the smell of E-85! I think if more turbo rotary cars were E-85 they would last longer. I blew one motor on E-85 but it was a timing issue but wont and don't blame it on the fuel but mechanical error instead.

My engine popped an Apex seal last weekend while running a mixture of E85 / 93. Flexfuel sensor was seeing between 45-49% Ethanol in the mixture. I don't believe the failure was caused by the fuel, but more of a general wear and tear of a tired engine. Was just getting into tuning the AFR's for positive pressure before the seal popped. Did a good clean 3rd gear pull and once we made it back to cruising RPM under vacuum the seal had popped. Here's a pic of the log.

Attachment 663864

Was tuning to 198 kPa (just under 1 bar)

"My engine popped an Apex seal last weekend"

do you have knock data?

What seals?

Am I reading your log right? the afr in the mid 12s at max boost?

I also hurt a motor when running 50/50. But the boost was allot higher then yours.

the issue is the time it takes to charge the coil vs time available, with wastespark you run out of time to charge the coil 100%.

the simplest fix, is just to go direct fire, as you instantly get twice the charge time.

however you could also run a more powerful coil, so that even if its not charged fully it can still ignite the plug, or you could increase the voltage, which will charge the coil faster.

the important thing is to have enough ignition power, and it just happens that the stock FC coils are very powerful, so its cheap and easy to just direct fire them, vs finding some other solution.

post your timing maps

Virtually all of the heat in the spark plug comes from exposure to the combustion process or heat conducted from the block. The arc introduces so little heat into the plug that it is negligible; in the noise. I would not expect it to have any role in the scenario you've described above. (unless, of course, you're using a 1 kiloton ignitor :lol:)

No knock Data, the G4 Rx doesn't have a built in knock sensor like the G4 Extreme / ViPec V88


Engine is a bone stock, used JDM with Mazda Apex seals. AFR's were actually in the mid 11's once at the boost target, there was a lean spot around 8psi for about 1/2 a sec (4200rpm -> 4500rpm), however I don't believe that's what caused it.

*** Need to have either Link G4 or ViPec software installed to view the following ***

Here's a link to download the Link basemap with all the configs:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwlQ...it?usp=sharing

and a link to the log:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwlQ...it?usp=sharing

Other thing to mention is I was pre-mixing about 3/4 ounce per gallon using Klotz Benol.

Don't let Pettit Racing hear all this shit......LOL

Your correct about the waste spark not producing allot of heat or energy. My question is how much heat in the spark plugs does it take to ignite the oncoming chamber as the seal passes over the leading plug? Very little. Compression is very low at this point the in the compression cycle and that make it the easiest time to ignite the chamber.

hey chuck watched your videos car sound sick,
u gona make me drive to dragmania to see it run :)
I have a set of rotor housings that are in great shape
except the trailing plug hole its enlarged to 1/4 inch.
Will that cause problem plug getting hotter and preigniting
the afr mixture with direct fire ignition on e85?
not sure if I should use them

Wildman:

what's w your ignition angle? it shows 40 degrees and is probably not? maybe an offset? i don't see a problem w your AFRs.

howard

The 40 degree entry is the limit for the ign.The active table was the dual ign table. I have it activating when ethanol % > 45 (also why it reverted to fuel / ign table 1 momentarily when the FFS saw 45% ethanol content). Timing on the high end was around 15 with -8 split. Everything from the logs / maps show known good (safe) levels. That's why I believe the failure was just that, a failure of a tired engine.

e85 is still hard to get, especially in northeast and southeast. Most people I know when going for big power stick with the proven c16. However that price for c16 is a killer.

I'd love to go E85....I feel like I'm just flipping a coin in terms of dealing with some of the maintenance that comes with it though. The last thing I want is an injector getting stuck open or filling up the tank only to find out it's still a winter blend.