Anything new to report on E85?
 

What's up guys. I just got done with my single turbo conversion, and I've been hearing all these success stories on e85 for other car brands. Being it has higher octane ratings you could tune it for more boost, and still fill up at the pump. I searched but the only threads I could find were from last year. Is anyone else running this, and have you had success with it?

I know there is one guy that is running a 20b on e85. i looked into it but since the amount of energy in ethanol is less than gasoline/volume, i would have needed to add injectors. I opted to not go this route. Also, for me there are not alot of places that carry e85.

I have 850/1600 injectors, fpr, 2 fuel pumps... I should have enough gas. I'm just trying to see if there has been any negative effects or anything.

It depends. I have the same injector set up and when i was looking into E85 that wasn't enough fuel. It takes a lot.

i have been running e85 on a six port turbo at 8psi with 550's and 680's on stock ecu. i have had no problems. only time i had a problem was driving to an event on the highway, it didnt want to stay at stead throttle without getting pissed off. i went and put a few gallons of 93 in with the e85 and it was fine. lol

It takes roughly 33% more fuel for the same power.
It's not the higher octane that's important but the cooling properties of ethanol in a rotary application.

I just wish there were more fuel stations available or at least one in my area! :(

Im not a rotory guy!
 

I did some research on this about 2 years ago, and there are a lot of myths about E 85 that many people just dont understand unless your an engine biulder.

There was an article I read from the University of Nebraska Lincoln and E 85, for those of you who might wish to read it,it will clear up all the myths that so many people dont understand!!!! ITS VERY GOOD!!! ITS VERY CLEAR!!!!

The way i understood the article was its 33% less efficiant YES! however,thats not the one thing you rotory guys are probaly going to have trouble with,ITS VERY DRY FUEL!!!! By that i mean all the lubricating properties that you would have with normal gasiline Will not be present with E 85!

By trade Im a diesel mechanic, Now we know as mechanics that fuel needs to have a certain amount of lubricating properties! It used to be LEAD! As in Leaded gas!

Im no rotory guy but i do understand the rotories worst enemy is a DRY apex seal!
either caused by Lean mix or over reving(causing a lean mix),,In normal driving conditions! More fuel would possibly help to a point, but more dry fuel isnt going to help much at all!

I would think that if your going to use E 85, with any success, you would need to add some kind of lubricant to the fuel! Kind of like a 2 stroke!

Depending on where you live,this would Kill your emissions!!!!

As far as the question on boost? Well more compression will make it more efficiant,
However the DRY condition may not be worth all the effort with a rotary!

Alcohol has been used for more then 50 years in racing,but you dont hear about 100,000 mile life spans on those engines!!!! Because they dont exist!

In a piston engine E 85 is very effective when the compression ratio rises to between 11.5 and 14 to 1! How you get that compression doesnt really matter!

The big trouble in a piston engine really comes from oxidation in the combustion chanber,an fuel system itself!things like O rings, seals,If not made from the right materials,the will fail very quick! And pistons,heads, intake runners all get eaten up from this fuel unless its made to run on it!Thats why so many piston are now coated with some knid of protection,with ethanol in every engine in the country, there is always some damage from the fuel itself!

SERIOUSLY, CHECK OUT http://www.engr.unl.edu/~ethanol/

Or just type in:(universiy of nebraska lincoln and E 85 fuel), its a good article

lots of info!!!!!!

and the lubricating properties were exactly my concern. I didn't even consider this until the guy who will be tuning my car brought it up when I asked him if we could tune on e85. this makes sense, and thanks alot of this feedback. so from what I'm seeing so far... the most some of you do is a 91-93 e85 mix?

ok now i feel like a douche for not making a real post. search for my name in the 2nd gen forum, i have done all the math on why i couldnt run e85. Since i was tryign to get 500 to the wheels i was going to need something like 8 1680cc/min to keep my injectors below 90% duty cycle. I dunno it was a rediculous amount of fuel. And to support that amount of injector i would need like $1200 of pump to suply it. This is assuming i would only use alcohol rated pumps, walboros have been used successfuly with e85 by quite a few people but i do not want to risk poping my engine on hear say.

When running 100% Methanol/Alcohol is not uncommon to double your premix. My choice in premix lubricant for those type of fuels would be some type of 'castor' oil.
BeNol from Klotz or RC-3 from VP fuels are my choice in pre-mix.
Premix levels are normally 8-12oz per 5 gallons of fuel.
Ethanol being not as corrosive especially in E85 format would require less pre-mix offcourse.

When running 100% Methanol/Alcohol is not uncommon to double your premix. My choice in premix lubricant for those type of fuels would be some type of 'castor' oil.
BeNol from Klotz or RC-3 from VP fuels are my choice in pre-mix.
Premix levels are normally 8-12oz per 5 gallons of fuel.
Ethanol being not as corrosive especially in E85 format would require less pre-mix offcourse

I would have to agree 100% with you on this! IM also new here! I also assumed that he was talking about a "STREET DRIVEN CAR".

In a drag car, i guess it wouldnt matter to much Methanol/Ehtanol, as far as i know there pretty much the same just refined from different products.

For street use? Another thing to consider is you climate! if its cold (below freezing) your going to have some trouble starting!

In that article they talked about this, they used several ways to defeat this! One was diesel glow plugs! Another was a fuel preheater! Another was starting on gas then switching to ethenol after initial start!

The one thing that caught my attention was when the mentioned how they coated the pistons with platinum! Being i diesel mechanic im familiar with platinum,its used in glow plugs! glow plugs are rated based on how much platinum is in them!

Platinum is also a natural "Glow PLug" when in contact with ethanol as a vapor!
Which i why they used it!

It naturally warms up based on the purity,which is VERY effective for cold start!

Its also resistant to corrosion from ethanol.

I suppose if you were to coat the rotors with something like it it would work but the apex seals really would still be the week link!

I dont know anything about Apex seals and what there made from,or what aftermarket stuff is available for this but, i would be looking into it before i switched to ethenol in a rotary engine!Maybe you drag race guys have some answers for this?

Dont quote this as fact but the article i read said they got 300 HP out of the truck they tested on E 85. I guess what they did was Raise the compression to like 11.25 to 1,then used an electric supercharger to boost it to more like 14 to 1,then they could be dual fuel, running E 85, or premium depending on the availablity.just by switching off the supercharger!

WOW WHAT A CONCEPT!! VARIABLE COMPRESSION!!!!

E85 require 25-35% more fuel to maintain the same air ratios you would not need 8 1680's maybe 4 should get you to 600 at the fly @90% based on a fuel calculator.

so moral of the story... for a street car. stick to the piss water 91 octane for pump gas.

E85 is 105 octane
E85 is less energy dense than gasoline booo... but
E85 has a Stoich of 9.7 as opposed to gasoline @ 14.7
If you calculate the power available based on the air volume available to burn with you will come out slightly ahead with E85 (~4% if my calcs are correct)
The extra volume of atomizing liquid acts as a heat sink cooling the intake charge (water/alcohol injection effect)
If you then consider the additional boost you could safely run with 105 octane with cooler intake charges I would imagine the difference would be worth pursuing, that is if you can afford the necessary hardware and the gas itself.

I agree being able to run more boost without aux injection should run cooler with less emissions at a price comparable to our current 91-93 octane. I think its definetly worth looking into still. Its not like we aren't getting terrible gas mileage already so the extra fuel required shouldn't be much of a concern. I worry about converting over to it and not having it be supported for more than a couple years.

anyone else have any more feedback on this subject. this is something I'm going to give a try when I tune on the 17th.

well I am going to give this a shot, and just to be safe I"m going to throw a premix in there. what do you suggest, and at what ratio. which vendors can I purchase this from?

Well they officially opened the 1st public accessable E-85 station here in Miami yesterday.
Picked up 10 gallons of the corn juice tonight to give it a try. At $2.55 per gallon you just can't complain vs the cost of race fuel. Can't wait to see the results.

I think you will be very pleased. We've had great success with E85 on piston engines. Have not tried on a rotor yet.

We use this a lot in sweden but I have only seen it on one rex, but we blend in highly "dust free" (don't know the name) oil in the fuel. It's for the rotors and for the intank fuel pumps, the rx7 made 600hp with a t88 and two intank bosch fuel pumps. Many other "street race" cars have it here, just for it's great cooling capacity and high octane (the price is almost same cuz u have to stop for gas all the time).

Thanks for the info guys.
I'll see in a couple of days what the fuel can take.

Did you make any changes to your fueling system and what do you plan on using for E85?

Keep in mind you still are using crankcase oil via the metering system and oil nozzles for chamber lube.
Try 100:1 ratio fuel to premix or fuel lube.
Take into consideration that you are displacing fuel, a 1% lean down, when you do this, a negligable effect I think.
Klotz is a good product for alcohol fuels.

Thanks for the advice but I tune and run rotaries on 100% methanol so I'm aware of the problems. All setups are fed a steady diet of Castor oil either from Klotz of Vp racing fuels. The fuel system on this particular car is allready setup to handle the fuel involved. This is just going to be my first experience with E-85 as fuel. One of the side benefits of E-85 over the rest of fuels in it's class is being less corrosive and being compatble with most modern day fuel systems. I only have one part to be worried about and that's the aluminum surge tank which I'm going to keep my eyes on and if any problems show up I'll just have it anodised.

Some applications using E-85 fuel.

Thses guys been tuning E-85 fueled applications for some time.
http://www.rune85.com/

http://www.rune85.com/f2vette

http://www.rune85.com/turbocobra.htm


Found this on the supra forum.
GT42 turbo Supra.
http://www.supraforums.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=427200

A Nissan RB26 powered 240sx on 25psi.
http://www.supraforums.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=452656