PLMS

Quick update for SA guys. A mate went down to the ENFFUE servo at Mawson Lakes last night and they had E85 for $1.20 per litre. The guy working there said that they had a new supplier and the future looked promising. Make of that what you will. PL

Good to know. Looks like a few places that traditionally do race fuels are starting to supply their own E85/98 blends. $1.70 is still a lot more than the mainstream places - but at least you know what you're getting. And it's at the pump - no drums! PL

Got a call from my mate this weekend. He's been running E85 in his 180SX and intended to go for a drive back to the Riverland (SA) for the weekend. Went to get E85 from EFFUE at Mawson Lakes only to be told that they had none! If this keeps happening then E85 is not going to be a realistic option in SA. Very annoying. Fortunately we still had the tune we did for 98 (he's running Z32 AFM + 740's) so I set him up with a multiple map board and now he can switch between the two. Not quite "flex-fuel" but at least it'll get him out of a bind. Gotta make sure he empties one fuel type before filling with the other that's all... PL

I've heard the same about Walbros - but not seen any evidence to support it yet. The first car I tuned for E85 is running a Walbro and still going strong. PL

Theoretically the mixtures wouldn't change but you'd have a bit more octane - so all good. PL

I'm guessing it's gonna be quite a bit more per litre than what you'll get it for at the pump. But at least you'll know what you're getting. Plus you're more in control of your fuel - E85 is commonly known to have a real affinity for water. If you've got it in a sealed drum then hopefully you could minimise this. I'm thinking that the drums would be great for track cars (assuming the price isn't silly). You'd have a consistent fuel instead of "oh, I got it from a different servo and it just doesn't seem right". And you wouldn't get caught out if there are supply issues. There was a recent drift event here and when the guys went to fill up they were told that the servo was out of E85. Kinda ruins your day. But for road cars it would be a right pain. Anyone who has ever man-handled a full 200l drum will know that it's no easy task. I guess you could get the 20l drums but it hardly seems worth it. Not to mention the risks and legality issues with keeping fuel at home! I'm hoping that we'll eventually see more E85 at the servos and we'll also be able to work out who keeps what brew etc. Apparently the setup costs for a servo to keep E85 are considerable. It's not just a matter of emptying an existing tank, slapping an E85 tag on it and saying "fill 'er up with the good gear mate" when the tanker pulls up. It shouldn't be this hard! If the gubberment would just push ethanol fuels a bit more then things would change. But now that fuel prices are down and the world economy has turned to shit they've kinda got other things on their mind... If GM/Ford would just release their flex-fuel vehicles here I'm sure we'd see some action too. PL

Running E85 and a slightly smaller turbo certainly seems like a good recipe if you care about boost response - seeing you can safely push smaller turbos that bit harder on E85. Depends how much that peak HP figure means to you I guess! FWIW the 274rwkw SR I did was running 740's and they went to 92% duty at 7100rpm. Running std fuel pressure. That duty was measured via the consult port rather than at the actual injector so the reading will be a bit high. So still some injector headroom there. Looks like I screwed up that big block link - I'll try again. It's great to read about how other people go about making power - and to read their first hand experiences with E85. I can't help but be in awe of those monster 500ci+ mills they play with over there. Sure, for the capacity they don't make much power. But imagine what they sound like!!! Good ol boys Simon (Morpowa) showed me an add in one of the motorsport mags last night for E85. They sell it in 200l drums and specify that it's 85% ethanol + 15% BP Ultimate. So there's the E85/98 you spoke of. Elf Race Fuels E85 More E85 ramblings later... PL

Oh, I've never seen it expressed as E85/91 or E85/98 - I've always just assumed it was 85% Ethanol and 15% "filler". Skorpos owns that big place down south. I think the owner's name is Nick Skorpos. It used to be famous for the number of pumps it had. I'm from out NE burbs so I've never even been there - I'm sure the boys from down south will know it. PL

At the risk of becoming a posting whore so early in my career - check out what the good ol' boys are doing with E85 and *high* compression in their big block hemis. Fun read: http://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/showfl...part=1&vc=1 They also mention a concern about E85 consistency. This worries me a bit too. It's no use if you tune for a certain brew and then next tank it's something different... PL

Thanks guys. The cars I've been doing have also been sourcing their E85 from ENFFUE - and they've been making the numbers. 20% gain over 98 every time. Interestingly those 2 Dattos I did last week were both down on power compared to other tunes. At this stage I'm putting them in the "inconclusive" pile because they both suffered severe traction issues. I assumed this was all to do with the flappy IRS used on these cars. We ended up with the rear of the dyno bay sparayed in rubber - I had to sweep it out before we left! Neither were using sticky track rubber but both cars are track rats and were set up with a lot of -ve camber on the rear. So the harder you strap them the worse it gets. Anyway, what I was getting at is both of these cars filled up with E85 from the Skorpos (spelling?) servo down south. Not ENFFUE. Hmmmmm. I thought ALL E85 was around 105 RON by default - simply because ethanol is higher octane than normal petrol? PL

Greetings Skyline ppls, I've just been searching around for other people's experiences with E85 and I ended up here. Great to see other people using this wonder-fuel. Just thought I'd add my 2c worth. I've now tuned a few cars on E85 and I'm absolutely loving it. So I hope supply continues. I've been trying to get as many people onto it as possible - idea being that the larger the demand the more likely we'll see it a little more commonly at the servos. I'm SA based and do my tuning at Morpowa out Tea Tree Gully way. I tune factory ECU's using NIStune. Almost exclusively SR's but occasionally I stray and do some RB's. Much of the work contributes to NIStune system development. Sometimes I do a bit of a write-up and stick it on my website. Most of the E85 tunes I've done have netted around 20% peak power gain and have required around 30% more fuel. The bit that I like is that you seem to be able to get more power from a certain size turbo than should theoretically be possible. I did an SR with a baby GT2510 on it. On 98 it was all over at around 200rwkw. We then tuned for E10 and it went to 217 and then to E85 and got 230. That turbo really shouldn't be making that sort of power. http://www.plmsdevelopments.com/customers/chris_ceffy.shtml Once you're running E85 you can push things to the limit without fear of knock. I've done some experiments and the engines will take a phenomenal amount of timing with no sign of knock. It's almost spoooky! I just had to stop once we reached 35 degrees at full load. It's not like it was making any more power so I backed the timing off to more sane levels. But the beauty of this is that you can use a little turbo and keep your snappy boost response - and still have a decent peak power figure. Normally you'd need to be careful not to push too hard up top with a small turbo or inlet air temps increase and knock will come to git ya. With E85 this isn't a problem. One of my mates has a 180SX that we've been playing with for years now. It's running a 2871 with a 0.64 housing. He's kept to 0.64 in the interests of boost response and we'd kinda plateaued (spelling?) at around 230rwkw. Didn't matter what we did the poor thing just wasn't gonna give much more in that configuration. Then one day Paul turned up with a couple jerry cans of E85 and wanted to have a go. First dyno pull gave 264 and after a bit of a tweak we got 274. There's just no way that turbo should make that power. Especially on a well worn red-top SR! Full story here: http://www.plmsdevelopments.com/customers/paul_180sx.shtml I've found E85 to be extremely flexible to tune with. AFR's and timing figures are nowhere near as critical as with 98. I usually aim for 0.84 lambda. I've run down to 0.7 and up to 0.9 and the power differences were not huge. Going from 0.84 to 0.90 gave about 3rwkw difference. Not that I'd wanna run 0.90 all the time! But it's not all good. As most E85 punters have now found out - you need to watch your fuel system after you change over. It effectively takes all the rubbish and dissolves it into the fuel. I've only seen one pump failure but it's almost mandatory to do at least one filter change. It's almost worth having a fuel pressure gauge or running a permanent install WB AFR meter. I did another 2x E85 tunes last week (both SR's in Datto 1600's) so word is starting to get around! I don't know about E85 being an eco-friendly planet saver. I reckon they should re-think their marketing strategy and promote it as the full-on performance fuel that it really is! Go E85!!!! Pete L