anyone try tuning for E85

[faust]

i been thinking about this for awhile, ganted idk whats all needed,besides bigger injectors. however i'm going to call ed wright and see if he's done one yet.

[Pro-jection Eng]

30% bigger injectors/fuel pump, tune. Change the factory filter every 6 months minimum and you should be fine, e85 likes to eat paper. Also be aware that walbros are not e85 compliant pumps, even though some are getting good life out of them, its not a guarantee. What specifics are you looking for?

[proace4]

i'm curious as to the specifics of this as well. like how much will you pick up say bone stock and switching to e85, or with a h/c/i setup, also does it work well with nitrous? i dont know anything about e85 cept awd imports like it. school me wicked! lol

[Pro-jection Eng]

e85 will make about 3-4% more power over pump gasoline and even leaded race gas. Only downer is you're using about 25-30% more fuel to do that. It burns alot cooler than gasoline, and also has a cooling effect on the incoming air charge which allows even greater knock resistance than its ~105 octane would suggest. Even an iron headed motor can run 13:1 compression if you're running a healthy cam in there. The tuning window with e85, just like straight ethanol or methanol is very broad. You might not see any power difference running .75-.83 lambda in a N/A motor, .82ish being a good number to shoot for at WOT. The trick to getting decent gas mileage with running e85 is to get a wideband, use the lambda scale, and lean it out in the lower MAP areas (cruising) using as much timing as you can without knock. I was running about 1.05 lambda at cruise, and it loved it there. No hesitation, no knock. It works fine as a nitrous fuel, but you might not see the gains you would with gas, because the nitrous is already cooling the intake charge, it negates that benefit of the e85. Point being here, as always with nitrous is start very conservative with your timing. Plug reading might be a challenge as well, because e85 burns very clean, usually leaving a chalky type residue on the plugs.

If you live in states where it gets cold in the winter, e85 WON'T LIKE IT. Even here in sunny so cal, I would have to crank for about 5 seconds before it would fire. Adding a lot of fuel at cold start makes the starting better. To remedy this, some areas of the country switch to a winter e70 blend to help with a cold start. This could present a dangerous lean condition to you if you're tuned for winter blend e70, and suddenly get a tank of e85. There are several testers available so you can't test at the pump and it takes a few minutes. Luckily my local station doesn't switch, but the owner/manager of your local station should have documentation of the blend in their tanks so ask.

[faust]

thanks 4 the info wicked. decisions decisions

[Pro-jection Eng]

do it! it makes the exhaust smell cool too, but that stuff stinks coming out of the pump

[MoeHorsePower]

Here is an app A/F to shoot for with E85



Air/Fuel Ratios


Fuel Stoich Rich Limit Lean Limit
Gasoline 14.7.1 12.5.1 13.2.1
Methanol 6.4.1 5.4.1 5.7.1
Ethanol 9.0.1 6.4.1 7.8.1
E-85 9.7.1 6.9.1 8.4.1




FORCED INDCUTION OR NITROUS APPLICATIONS

Fuel Stoich Rich Limit Lean Limit
Gasoline 14.7.1 11.5.1 12.2.1
Methanol 6.4.1 4.4.1 4.7.1
Ethanol 9.0.1 5.4.1 6.8.1
E-85 9.7.1 5.9.1 7.4.1

Fuel Stoich Rich Limit Lean Limit
Gasoline 14.7.1 10.5.1 11.2.1
Methanol 6.4.1 3.4.1 3.7.1
Ethanol 9.0.1 4.4.1 5.8.1
E-85 9.7.1 4.9.1 6.4.1

[Pro-jection Eng]

its worth mentioning that a wideband won't read accurate A/F ratios for E85, you need to run it in lambda, which IMO is way easier to work with.

[Nasty93]

what about a turbo car? wouldnt this help with only having one tune? not a race gas and a pump gas tune? Ive used Methanol in N/A engines but never anything street driven or forced induction