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Guilt-toy Now Running On E85 !


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I have been using a 10% ethanol fuel for about six months with no ill effects that I can tell but an 85% mix sounds a bit much. Ethanol contains less energy than petrol so your fuel consumption will get worse. (People who think it is an economy fuel will imagine that it is getting better but you need to accurately measure your fuel use in litres per 100km) If you are buying the E85 much cheaper than ordinary petrol then you may save money.It has a higher octane rating which means you can advance the timing a bit and make up for some of the power you are losing. It would be good to dyno a car with only a change in fuel and tuning optimal for each fuel. I suspect with E85 it would make less power but haven't done this myself.

The main reason for using ethanol in cars is to save the planet, not make the car go faster (that's nos). But it is only good for the planet if it is coming from a sustainable source ( e.g. a by product of dairy factories) and is not diverting crops from food production as with highly subsidised US farmers.

PS Lambda settings should not be different for a car using an ethanol mix. If you have a meter set to read in afrs then you should continue to use the same numbers although the actual air/fuel ratios will be different (yes i had to think about that for a while too!)

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I'm not really in agreeance with you there KiwiRS4T , there are several good reasons for running E85 and it's not about feeling all warm and gluey rubbing naked against trees .

If tuned properly with E85 it will help make more power than 98 PULP , yes you have to use more of it but the cost is so much less than exotic race fuels .

From a running cost viewpoint it's not the miles per gallon or liters per 100 km that's important , it's the dollars per 100 km at the end of the day .

What virtually everyone ends up discovering is that the claimed 1/3 extra fuel required to run E85 is not a realistic figure in cruise and light load use . Because a fair bit of extra ignition timing can be used the mixtures can be leaned out (or not richened up as much depending on which way you look at it) you don't use as much . There is advantages in running a fuel than creates lower combustion temps - from what I read burning E85 you get lower peak cylinder pressure on the power strokes but a higher average cylinder pressure and I imagine this ties in with it being a less detonation prone fuel .

So without having done it I have to agree that in WOT mode yes your going to have to spray in possibly 1/3 more fuel and that will mean doing something with injectors and maybe the fuel pump .

When you can run best mean torque timing you can run more pocket friendly fuel flows in light load use , its the in damage control retarded ignition timing and some peoples desire to tip more fuel into the engine to attemp to control charge temps that sends the fuel usage rate skywards .

I like Alec Guinesses (sp ?) quote , "A lot of the truthes we cling to depend on a point of view" .

It's now up to the locals to prove what our petrol head brothers (and sisters) from overseas have done with E85 , I doubt those over there are telling pure porkies .

Have a read in some of those links and don't forget that some of those people spend squillions on their cars , cheers A .

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Ill be jumping on the E85 bandwagon as soon as i get my car back together.

I dont drive the skyline much so the fuel consumption wont bother me. I just like the idea of more timing,more power,less knock.

Great combo!

Top work Guilt-toy!!

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PS Lambda settings should not be different for a car using an ethanol mix. If you have a meter set to read in afrs then you should continue to use the same numbers although the actual air/fuel ratios will be different (yes i had to think about that for a while too!)

Your lambda should be the same, as you have said, but the AFR changes. If your meter reads in lambda then use the same number as before, if it reads in AFR then you will have to adjust your targets for ethanol. I believe stoich AFR for E85 is around 9.76 as opposed to 14.7 for petrol. Lambda ratio at stoich is 1.0 for both kinds of fuel.

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as disco has said i have seen the yanks get good results from this fuel on the gto forums, heres one of them on stock heads, cams, etc running e85, the results are huge and he said he made more power than on vp race fuel, this guy works in one of the biggest gto shops in the US and has the 2nd fastest one in the world so he isnt some keyboard mechanic either. anyway have a look at his results and comments on it...

http://www.3si.org/forum/f1/707awhp-620awt...ump-gas-431072/

Edited by unique1
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ohhh my little KMON is worth more then its weight in $2 coins at a $2 hooker house in asia. but i will post up about it when i get more time later in the other thread :/

good stuff, how did you get your head around the K-MON? handy little fkr.... mine is nearly worn out :P
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Your lambda should be the same, as you have said, but the AFR changes. If your meter reads in lambda then use the same number as before, if it reads in AFR then you will have to adjust your targets for ethanol. I believe stoich AFR for E85 is around 9.76 as opposed to 14.7 for petrol. Lambda ratio at stoich is 1.0 for both kinds of fuel.
Your meter reads lambda but it can be set to display lambda or it could be set to express the lambda as an air/fuel ratio (typically 14.7 down to 12 under power). It is not measuring the air fuel ratio but simply displaying an equivalent figure. So at a lambda of 1 the afr for petrol will be displayed as 14.7 . If you change to E85 then at a lambda of 1 your meter will still say 14.7 which is fine for tuning purposes although the actual ratio will be very different (your figure of 9.76 for example). Some meters (such as my LM2) can be recalibrated to read the afr for say E85 but there is not much point as you can just as easily tune it with the lambda figure or the numbers with which you are familiar. Also if you find yourself somewhere that doesn't have E85 you will then have a tank full of E50 until your tank is full of either petrol or E85. If you leave your meter as it is it will always give you a meaningful reading. Also if you use your meter on other cars with no ethanol you don't have to keep changing the display.
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as disco has said i have seen the yanks get good results from this fuel on the gto forums, heres one of them on stock heads, cams, etc running e85, the results are huge and he said he made more power than on vp race fuel, this guy works in one of the biggest gto shops in the US and has the 2nd fastest one in the world so he isnt some keyboard mechanic either. anyway have a look at his results and comments on it...

http://www.3si.org/forum/f1/707awhp-620awt...ump-gas-431072/

Looks good. It seems the inherently lower energy content is more than compensated for by the ability to run a lot more advance and boost (so possibly not better for n/a cars but will be interested in any test results).

I look forward to seeing Guilt Toy's results.

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i spoke to Peter at techedge, (very helpfull if you can understand half of the technical info he gives you) and he said that his sensors read LAMDA and then does the conversion to AFR based on the gasoline conversion!

The tech edge exchange conversion from lamda to afr is configurable, but i dont need to change it i will continue to tune on lamda

So no matter what fuel i use in my car it will always read 14.7 when the car is at 1.0 lamda. Which answered a few questions that i had previously.

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Good to see someone else has had a go. For the last 3 years I have been using ethanol in gradually ever increasing volumes. Firstly 10% as was in V Power Racing (VPR), then mixing E85 and 98 myself to get similar results to VPR (70% x 98 + 30% x E85). This gave almost exactly the same power, fuel usage and performance as VPR. With no changes to fuel pump, tune or injectors. Lately I have been using 60% x E85 and 40% x 98, to give even more scope for inlet air temp and ignition advance. The downside was the need for larger injectors (740 cc's to 1000 cc's), an increase in the fuel pump's capacity and a bit of tuning. I didn't need the 740 to 1000 increase for the 60/40 mix, but I had the future in mind when I chose the 1000's. I will also go to 2 x 044's instead of the 1 x 044 that I curently use. The next step is to 100% E85 which was always on the agenda, but it looks like it might be sooner rather than later.

Cheers

Gary

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very interesting read guilt toy, i filled up boost 98 at the other united station this morning after leaving the city, but before i got there i saw the E85 for sale at the other united and i was seriously wandering who uses this fuel..... my questions have just been answerd. I think this is a good thing to do especially since oil prices are rediculously high and most of our oil is comming from the same nations that wish we were dead. 100% of the ethanol is from australia so we keep our money in the australian economy. Not to mention ethanol is safer, cheaper and cleaner to use and make.

also when can we see your car in sydney, i'd like to have a squiz if i could???

cheers

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Thursday cruise if he has time... he owes me a lift :P

Plus I have never actually been in it... I still don't think you can legally pass it without a cat, any vehicle (after 1986) must have one by law. It doesn't matter if it actually does or cleans anything, it just has to have one.

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Excellent topic. Stickied for a while to get some more exposure. E85 is where it's at for pump fuel and I can't wait to see it everywhere.

ohhhh sticky, thanks :) I thought my thread got deleted for a second there :)

very interesting read guilt toy, i filled up boost 98 at the other united station this morning after leaving the city, but before i got there i saw the E85 for sale at the other united and i was seriously wandering who uses this fuel..... my questions have just been answerd. I think this is a good thing to do especially since oil prices are rediculously high and most of our oil is comming from the same nations that wish we were dead. 100% of the ethanol is from australia so we keep our money in the australian economy. Not to mention ethanol is safer, cheaper and cleaner to use and make.

also when can we see your car in sydney, i'd like to have a squiz if i could???

cheers

I live in sydney during the week (Ryde) , pm me and i can give you my phone number

see you at Wayne's on Saturday :(

Np's mate, just follow the smell of cooking oil - lol

Thursday cruise if he has time... he owes me a lift :(

Plus I have never actually been in it... I still don't think you can legally pass it without a cat, any vehicle (after 1986) must have one by law. It doesn't matter if it actually does or cleans anything, it just has to have one.

Yeah might be keen to do a cruise to the coast on e85... or maybe the week after this one.

Also i forgot to mention!

Cold Start!! I was expecting to have to play with cold start settings, instead the car only needed one more revolution when kicking over, so it started on the 4th turn instead of the third.

Very impressed! more so that i am still running on my guess tune and its running so good. I cannot tell ANY difference between e85 and BP98 at all!

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