Anyone Tried 20-25% Ethanol Blends ?

[discopotato03]

Hi all , I see a number of E85 threads popping up these days and it makes me wonder if the disadvantages of this fuel could be reduced by running Ethanol in smaller percentages ie E20 or E25 .

Does anyone know at what percentages the advantages of Ethanol start to drop off in mostly street driven cars ?

I figure that lower percentages would be less corrosive to more reactive materials in the fuel system and would possibly be not so good at absorbing water .

Thoughts , cheers A .

[sneakey pete]

Can you actually find a reliable mix of E20 or E25? all i ever see around here is E10, which is questionable anyway.

[R31Nismoid]

Questionable in what way?

Adrian - depends what you mean by disadvantages

The whole advantage of E85 is the ability to get the extra power out of it. You'll never get economy... and i don't really see there being a 'compromise' point. Adding Eth will hurt the economy.

E10 perhaps (if the base fuel was decent to begin with), might starve off a bit of detonation or something but overall much... E85 or none!

[discopotato03]

Well by disadvantages I ment things like the corrosive effects on aluminium , water absorption , the need for a significantly higher volume fuel system to keep up with its demands .

I was just wondering what ethanol percentages can be used mainly to supress some detonation in less than full on race engines .

The problem ATM seems mainly to be E85's availability so if you were using less , lower pewrcentage , what you've got would go a bit further .

By a trade off in percentage I mean a usable gain for minimum pain . I guess the problem then becomes tuning for it and accurately blending the same exact ratio every time .

Also there have been engines developed specifically with E85 in mind and they do show very good fuel consumption with it .

They have things like high , by ULP standards high CR's , and reasonably high boost pressures as well with FI .

Aside from availability my bigest issue is water absorption and until someone comes up with some sort of device that continuously seperates any water short of the injectors it will be a major problem .

A .

[LRyder]

United offer a "high performance" 100 ocatane fuel thats 10% ethonol...

http://www.unitedpetroleum.com.au/index.asp?pgID=65

[joeyjoejoejuniorshabadoo]

have a read through my thread and guilt toy's thread, there is a kiwi in one of them that was blending up e30

i think its guilts thread but i'm not positive

[sneakey pete]

Questionable in what way?

Questionable benefits mate.

[discopotato03]

Joey that may have been where the idea came from , or one of the American boards .

I don't think it's doubtful that it would do something positive , just hard to say how much . Must contact SK , I think he played with various blends .

A .

[Lithium]

We tuned an R32 GTSt running a stock internal RB20 and a generic T3/T4 thing with a 30% blend we made up using E100 mixed with 98 running roughly the same boost as its previous pump gas tune. The reason for the E30 mix was basically for the reasons you state, partly influenced by the fact that we figured that E85 would be too much for the 444cc injectors it was running.

We did a base run at 20ish psi on standard 98 and it put down 247wkw, then we drained the tank and put the "E30" mix and retuned it and ended up making 294rwkw and improving spool by a few hundred rpm. It was definitely worth doing, imho

[R31Nismoid]

Questionable benefits mate.

plenty of benefit for E10 - it was made to reduce price among other things with regulations etc

It has done that. Benefit achieved

It was never made to be a performance fuel.

[sneakey pete]

You seem to be missing (for whatever reason) the point i'm trying to make, i thought this thread was talking about perfomence, not price.

[GTR-32U]

Just out of curiosity, How would an e30 blend or e85 blend work with a factory ECU that tends to run the car a little rich under full load ? My understanding of Alcohol type fuels is that they tend to work best when they are running rich ( So I am led to believe)..So I figure economy would suffer,But power ?

[R31Nismoid]

You seem to be missing (for whatever reason) the point i'm trying to make, i thought this thread was talking about perfomence, not price.

Well it simply is not performance.

If you wanted a performance E10, you'd have to make it yourself.

[XRATED]

Aside from availability my bigest issue is water absorption and until someone comes up with some sort of device that continuously seperates any water short of the injectors it will be a major problem .

A .

There are plenty of water/fuel seperator products for marine applications. Check it out.

J.

[JonnoHR31]

Just out of curiosity, How would an e30 blend or e85 blend work with a factory ECU that tends to run the car a little rich under full load ? My understanding of Alcohol type fuels is that they tend to work best when they are running rich ( So I am led to believe)..So I figure economy would suffer,But power ?

might be enough with e30 but not enough with e85, would have to check with a wideband. the newer flex fuel cars that can switch between e85 and ulp use o2 feedback to detect which fuel is being used and changes the map accordingly. from memory stoich for e85 is 9.something:1 compared to 14.7:1 for ulp

[sneakey pete]

Well it simply is not performance.

If you wanted a performance E10, you'd have to make it yourself.

*bashes head on desk*

Yes, that's what i said in my very first post. "only stuff i see is E10, which is questionable", and as you just said, its not for performence.

I'm interested in hearing more about making it yourself though, how hard is it to actually mix your own fuel, and what do you mix in? pure ethanol, and where do you get it from?

[joeyjoejoejuniorshabadoo]

we ran my car on the dyno on e85 with my pulp map a couple of times just to see what would happen...

@ creatd we managed to get a pull all the way to redline, and got an 11rwkw increase from memory, but it was hella rough

@ status 6 months later, the car just wouldn't run enough to complete a pull

the pulp tunes were from 2 different tuners tho

[discopotato03]

Thanks Lithium , that was basically the answer I was looking for .

Cheers A .

[STATUS]

meh just mix methanol with 98.

[LRyder]

Bit of topic, but if you make it yourself, how long, and how much can you keep before it goes stale.