E85. Lessons learned.
 

This is a copy and paste from another forum so ignore that which doesn't apply. But I hope that this helps others looking to make the switch.

Well, in a very compressed time frame, I upgraded my fuel setup to work with E85. Here are some lessons learned for those of you wanting to go down this path. Hopefully this will alleviate some of the issues that I faced.

Bear in mind, this is all on the assumption that you're not doing some sump or surge tank setup and just the drop in.

1-Time! Don't rush it. Not that it can't be done, but you'll end up pulling your hair out. In my case, I don't have a lot of hair left, so you'll resort to finding it elsewhere.

2-Plan ahead. It's those little gotchas that...getcha. Whether it's wiring or plumbing, you'll miss something and either have to start all over again or take several steps backward to do it right. Make sure you get all the fittings you think you'll need a head of time. Don't worry about getting more than you need, as it may not be what you need or not enough. You can always return things later.

In terms of specifics.

3-Teflon everything that isn't an AN fitting. This is on the assumption that you're removing fittings from your initial installation. In my case, that's what I did. Not thinking that the fittings would give a little, I had to remove all of them (just from the rails) to add teflon. They didn't leak, but they did seep.

4-Drop and clean your tank. If you think your tank is clean, it isn't. If you drain it and look at it and it looks clean, it isn't. If you think that the first tank of E85 will clean it for you, it won't.

5-Buy extra pick up socks. In case you ignore #4.

6-If you're still on a stock fuel setup and are looking to upgrade, plan well ahead. If you're looking for a simple dual walbro setup on 93, but think you may go bigger later, beef up the wiring during the first upgrade instead of again later. You'll thank yourself for not having to rip out what will become a somewhat tedious wiring job. I highly recommend 10 gauge minimum for all pump wiring. More on that later.

7-Get hard lines (or rather, fab them), in particular with the Bosch 044 pumps. They're just too big for clean, simple and efficient plumbing there. As you'll see in the other thread, that plumbing job equates to fitting a square peg in a round hole. Or more specifically in this case, shoving a whole watermelon down your throat. Hard lines will make installation and removal super easy and cut free. With my setup, I have to remove the lines from the top of the plate and the pumps and let them fall into the tank. There's no other way to remove it.

8-Build redundancy. In my case, I used two relays. More of a safety thing than anything. If for some reason one dies, I still have one pump working. For as much fuel I'm pushing at the pressures I'm running, I don't need to risk loss of all fuel. One pump will suffice in terms of carrying the load under normal driving. Perhaps even spirited driving.

9-Wear goggles. E85 is alcohol. I don't know how many of you have ever gotten gas in your eyes. As you know, it sucks. This is worse. It won't cause damage if proper first aid is given, but it stings like a sonofabitch.

10-Be sure to have your return sit in the baffle. Otherwise, even sitting there, any level that would be below the top edge of the baffle will cause starvation in about 10 seconds with both pumps going. These things flow a LOT.

11- Be damn careful. Don't go blowing yourselves up.


So my pump wiring setup goes something like this.

-(2) 40A relays from Radio Shack mounted on the assembly plate.
-10 gauge leads from the battery to terminal 30.
-Split the 12v stock power lead with 14 gauge to terminal 86.
-10 gauge from terminal 87 to the pumps (+).
-14 gauge grounds from terminal 85 to the assembly plate.
-10 gauge from the pumps (-) to the battery ground.
-Level sensor grounded to the assembly plate.
-Stock ground wire to the assembly plate.


In terms of the hardware:

-CJ Motorsports 4 injector secondary rail.
-CJ Motorsports Bosch pump assembly.
-(2) 180 deg M12x1.5 to -6 for pump outlets
-(4) 90 deg -6 to hose end for the lines
-(2) Pegasus Auto Racing's high pressure pick up socks. http://www.pegasusautoracing.com/pro...asp?RecID=5813
-(2) Pegasus Auto Racing's Bosch inlet sock adapter. http://www.pegasusautoracing.com/pro...asp?RecID=5812
-(1) Canton Racing 8 micron fuel filter. (this thing is a tank) http://www.cantonracingproducts.com/...ion&key=25-915
-(1) Magnafuel -6 to -8 "Y" adapter. http://www.magnafuel.com/products/ac...ings/index.htm
-Aeromotive A1000-6 FPR
-Still using the FJO injector driver. Even though these are High-Z injectors, I opted to keep this in line for ease of installation.


In terms of the plumbing...

-6 lines from the pumps to the "Y" using front and rear plate ports.
-8 to the secondary rail.
-6 line from the split on secondary rail to the front side of the primary rail.
-Return from secondary to right side FPR.
-Return from primary to left side FPR.
-6 return from bottom of FPR to center port.
-Fuel pressure sending unit on second port of secondary rail.
-Base pressure at 80 PSI
-(6) ID1000 injectors (87 PSI @ 14v flow 1200cc)

My old setup used two Walbros at 38ish base. Simens 850 and 1680 injectors @ 20 PSI on 100 octane made 439 RWHP.

This new setup.............TBD.

e85 is i good fuel and for those running turbos its great because it has a extremely high octane rating its like 114 or somewhere around there.

123 octane to be exact

its really like 104-105 octane. but nice thread.

Actually.....

Comparisons to regular gasoline

E85 has an octane rating higher than that of regular gasoline's typical rating of 87, or premium gasoline's 91-93. This allows it to be used in higher compression engines which tend to produce more power per unit of displacement than their gasoline counterparts. The Renewable Fuels Foundation states in its Changes in Gasoline IV manual, "There is no requirement to post octane on an E85 dispenser. If a retailer chooses to post octane, they should be aware that the often cited 105 octane is incorrect. This number was derived by using ethanol’s blending octane value in gasoline. This is not the proper way to calculate the octane of E85. Ethanol’s true octane value should be used to calculate E85’s octane value. This results in an octane range of 94-96 (R+M)/2. These calculations have been confirmed by actual octane engine tests." [12]

Anti-Knock Index (AKI)

In most countries, including all of those of Australia and Europe the "headline" octane rating shown on the pump is the RON, but in Canada, the United States and some other countries,[which?] the headline number is the average of the RON and the MON, called the Anti-Knock Index (AKI, and often written on pumps as (R+M)/2). It may also sometimes be called the Road Octane Number (RdON), Pump Octane Number (PON), or (R+M)/2.

Difference between RON and AKI
Because of the 8 to 10 point difference noted above, the octane rating shown in the United States is 4 to 5 points lower than the rating shown elsewhere in the world for the same fuel. See the table in the following section for a comparison.
Examples of octane ratings

The MON of n-heptane and iso-octane are exactly 0 and 100, by definition. The following table lists octane ratings for various other fuels.[4][5][10]
Fuel RON MON AKI
hexadecane < -30
n-octane -10
n-heptane (MON 0 by definition) 0
diesel fuel 15–25
2-methylheptane 23
n-hexane 25
2-methylhexane 44
1-heptene 60
n-pentane 62
requirement for a typical two-stroke outboard engine[6] 69 65 67
1-pentene 84
n-butanol 96 78 87
n-butane 91
"regular" gasoline in Canada and the US 91–92 82–83 87
"EuroSuper" or "EuroPremium" 95 85–86 90–91
"premium" gasoline in Indonesia 90
"premium" gasoline in the US 97-98 88–89 93
"SuperPlus" in Germany, Great Britain and Slovenia 98 89–90 93–94
iso-octane (MON 100 by definition) 100
benzene 101
"BP Ultimate 102"[7] 102 93–94 97–98
t-butanol 103 91 97
ethane 108
propane 110
toluene 111 95 103
E85 gasoline 100-105[8]
xylene 117
isopropanol 118 98 108
ethanol 129 116 122
methanol 133 105 119
methane 135 122 129
hydrogen> 130 very low[9]

A couple of other thing to know about about E85: Ethanol as a fuel burns at a lower temperature than gasoline. This would help a lot of rx7s out there that suffer from over-heating problems. Ethanol also helps remove carbon build-up. This would eliminate the need to rebuild many engines that are choked out by carbon build up. It seems like a fuel that could be very beneficial to rx7 owners.

jpieps

P.S. METHANOL ( A highly corrosive racing fuel made from ethanol and sulfuric acid, don't get the two mixed up.) burns much hotter than gasoline, resulting in some rumors floating around that ethanol also burns hotter. This is simply not true.

Good info

Going E85 in just a couple weeks.
Using 2- Bosch 044's from a 2 gal. surge tank fed by a Walbro in tank, 2- 10 micron fuel filters. Fuel line is the blue nylon stuff that is currently in the car.
4-2200cc injectors. Primarys are made by Injector Dynamics so I can idle the damn thing.
Engine is a halfbridgeport 13B with a T72 turbo.
Hoping for 600 RWHP and 10 second time slips.

Unfortunately, I think you're going to be WAY short of your goal if you stick to a single Walbro in-tank.

I've setup a similar fuel system and my Supra in-tank pump is the fuel flow bottleneck at ~5300 cc/min with 13.5V and 0 PSI outlet pressure. Since the largest Walbros have similar flow rates, you'll probabley only see ~450RWHP.

BTW, I assume the fuel filters you mention are stainless 10mm elements. If so, would you share the source? I'd appreciqte it because I've had trouble finding them down to the filtration level.

After giving this some more thought, I withdraw my statement that you won't hit you're numbers. The only caveat is the the huge surge tank is full at start.

Assuming 43psi base fuel pressure and 25 lbs of boost, the twin Bosch pump will be flowing ~7500 cc/min at 70 psi or about 2200 cc/min more that is coming in to the surge tank. Since 2 gals = 7570 cc, you've got almost 3.4 miutes till you drain the surge tank. That amount of time shouldn't be an issue at max power.

Carlos, I was gonna say......
Anyway..... That was a mistatement. They only filter down to 45 microns.
I do know there are 10 micron filters out there tho.

e85 does not make your water temperatures any lower. It does how ever lower egts by a good chunk.

Hum? I would think it would?

The thermostat controls water temperature.

What if you don't have a thermostat?
My reasoning is, E85 does make your intake temps much cooler than gas.
Wouldn't that make the whole engine run cooler? Makes sence to me!

How much cooler do you think the EGTs are with E85?

ive been told that e85 really doesnt detonate that it just eventually starts to melt internals if you take it to that level. so my guess as far as egt's goes is probably based on the tune. my friends evo dropped about 350 degrees.

Hope it doesnt melt my new ALS Seals! :nod:

not a chance Bruce, ALS seals are made of kryptonite. I'm impressed, they lasted in my cracked rear iron, its still pulling 17" of vac! I'm still contemplating going HBP on this build... hmm...

Do it!

I just talked to a guy in Arizona and he claimed just the opposite of what you said. He said it cools the engine off dramatically.

Another thing I have learned is E85 most generally is NOT 85% ethanol.
You can measure the amount of ethanol by putting it in a graduated cylinder with water.
It's usually between 55% and 77% ethanol.
This could be a useful tool for tuning.

What happens if you run with stock fuel lines? I have heard a few different things about doing this. I know you have to increase the fuel pump by 33% or something like that. A friend of mine is running his Buick Rivera Supercharger on E85. I know this is an american car, but he is the only reference for an E85 swap that I have. He upped the injectors and fuel pump and has not had any issues.