Whizbang

between here and nopistons, i have found little to the affect of running ethanol fuels in a rotary engine.

its is 110 octane but you need to use more of the fuel than you would with gasoline.

but to what extent. and can you still premix with the stuff? im very tempted to try to convert to E85 in my black gslse with 180k on it, while i getting the new motor together for it, and document what happens. because there seems to be no information about running this sort of alcohol.

Secondmessiah

the answer is in your manual (at least it is in mine , i have an 87 turboII)

dont run more than 10% ethanol of course, if youre not stock thats probably different

rotarygod

iTrader: (1)

^the only reason it says that is because the stock ecu can't compensate for it. It has nothing to do with whether or not the engine will run well on it.

With E85 you will have to run richer. If you can tune it for this fuel, it will run great. Will you get as much power or mileage? Probably not. It'll go down little bit. The rotary will run on damn near anything and do it quite well.

Whizbang

well the purpose is im thinking about having my project vechile be built to use a higher Ethanol mix like E85 as it becoming more and more avalible. im just looking into what it takes and have some good ideas. it comes down to how long you want your motor to last. seeing im using a 1/2 bridge turbo, the motor isnt going to last long enough to worry about the weak acids affecting the engine internals. but will proper building, i could in affect eliminate any wear issues presented by the ethanol.

fritts

iTrader: (5)

Bring back an old thread to get more info.

Seeing as E85 has an octane of 100-105, costs avg 2.60, runs cooler, has less CO emissions, and isn't shipped from the middle east, I am also looking at it for my rotaries.

I too though have not found much on running it in a rotary. Does anyone know of anyone that has run it in a street vehicle. I know a few shops have run Ethanol in race vehicles but I would like to get 40-60k on an engine. I would think with the benefits others would be looking at this too.

I have been thinking about taking some injector o-rings, coolant seals, oil seals, and other o-rings and soak them in E-85 to see if they break down or balloon. I would think with the modern sealing materials used in a rotary that wouldn't be an issue though. I wonder though if the oil in our engines would break down faster with E85.

Anyone have any experience with E85???

ABIEX

Why dont you wait few days.....
And I will give you more accurate answer!!!

Have been using Ethanol for about 2 yers now and there is many positive things about it, but also few negative things....

I hope I dont forget this thread....

longwaytofall

Im sure you can use alcohol in your engine, it has been used in all types of engines before. You can premix it, it has been done in 2 strokes. The reason why E-85 is cheaper is that u get worse milage than gasoline. Compairing one unit of alcohol vs gasoline, the alcohol will have less energy, something like 25% less? however the stoichiometric ratio for alcohol is closer to 7:1, instead of 14.7:1 for gas. So that means for it not to be lean, u need to dump in twice as much fuel, so that is where u get more power, about %40 mabey. I have read that E85 doesnt give you more power, it is surely a computer controlled limit, if u had a stand alone and tuned it correctly you would get more. Alcohol rotary sounds sweet, what about a 75% alcohol 25% nitromethane? now THAT would put out some insane numbers.

ABIEX

longwaytofall has right...if you can change the ignition and the injection map then its grrat to change to E85...

I have recently made over 700hp and almost 900torque...with that fuel on my 20b and HKS T51r turbo.....and it works great I love E85. But remember its not cheaper then regular gasolin, just because the engine needs over 30% more fuel so it does not lean out!

and you should also change your fuel line, fuel filter and orings to some kind ruber that can resist the alky fuels...and insted of puting regular 2 stroke oil in the tank...put castor based 2 stroke oil...its very important otherwise your fuel pump will have a short life.....and in the same time...maybe you should also delete the omp....if you dont want to have to much oil in the burning chamber....oil is destroying the fuel and it makes the engine to detonate.

I put 1% castor based oil in my tank....some times I put 1,5%.

GUITARJUNKIE28

ethanol is for drinking

slpin

iTrader: (9)

... and gasoline is for cleaning parts

fidelity101

iTrader: (11)

you may want to read this article.

http://rotarynews.com/node/view/815

lots of benefits to ethanol

jprcars

We have e85 running in a 1990 Miata, The power has been great, MPG very good also, The Change over took less than 30 minutes, the Kit was Flextek unit ask for Allen, Now we have a Flex Fuel Miata. The only Problem is the e85 Gas Station is 120 Miles away, But that is about to change will be getting a 500 Gallon tank for home and 1000 gallon for work and buying @ wholesale Price $1.55 a gallon

jprcars

We have e85 running in a 1990 Miata, The power has been great, MPG very good also, The Change over took less than 30 minutes, the Kit was Flextek unit ask for Allen, Now we have a Flex Fuel Miata. The only Problem is the e85 Gas Station is 120 Miles away, But that is about to change will be getting a 500 Gallon tank for home and 1000 gallon for work and buying @ wholesale Price $1.55 a gallon

Chuck

iTrader: (2)

So, for stock N/A RX-7's there are no tuning changes needed if running 10% C2H5OH? The gas availability here in this area is pretty much Citgo, Shell, Exxon or BP/Amoco and all of them are now 10% Ethanol.

fstrnyou

just curious here, but if it takes...say 30% more fuel with ethanol, can't you install 30% larger injectors to compensate? no re-tune required. makes sense to me. should run like stock, except for the much worse MPG.

so basically, if you're tuned for 550's, swap them for 720's and call it a day.

Eson

No, gasoline and ethanol is burning diffrently. If you dont either increase the compression or the ignition you will lose efficiency/gas-mile. If you tune your ethanol engine right, you can get 30% more power compared to normal oktan gasoline. Because if you increase the compression your engine is more efficient.

fstrnyou

where do you get high compression rotors from? i guess in my case, just turn up the boost. that increases the cynamic compression ratio quite a bit.

ethanol burns slower because it's a higher octane. i guess increasing the compression ratio speeds things back up a little.