Effects of E-85

donour · Oct 4, 2004, 03:42 PM

I just noticed that a filling station near my house sells E-85 (http://www.e85fuel.com/). Would I see preformance gains in using it in a stock Evo? How and with what should I mix it? What are the longterm ill effects?

It's priced at $2.01 / gal.

d

Keyser Soze · Oct 4, 2004, 03:49 PM

I dont know about using this stuff .. i dont see mitsu on the site at all

Quote:

What is a flexible fuel vehicle?

A total of 3.5 million E85 vehicles are anticipated to be on the road by the end of model year 2004. DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GMC, Mazda, Mercury and Isuzu all produce or produced vehicles that can run on E85 or gasoline when E85 is unavailable. Ask for an FFV at your favorite showroom - it costs little to nothing extra and may just save you a bundle...since your engine may last longer. What types of FFVs are currently available?"

Isuzu

mfoerschler · Oct 4, 2004, 03:54 PM

I asked my dealer about using E-85 and he advised against it. He said the any type of premium unleaded or ethanol-enhanced prelium unleaded was what Mitsu recommended. It seems E-85 is available and some cars/vans are approved for it, though. I just noticed 2 days ago that the dealer had put an E-85 approved sticker inside the fuel door of my 2001 Dodge Caravan. I don't remember that being there before...

machron1 · Nov 3, 2004, 02:28 PM

Guys, don't put this in your car without modifying it, or you will run lean and blow up your motor. Stoichiometric for ethanol is about 1.5 times times that of gasoline. Even with E85 (15% unleaded, 85% ethanol) it's still not close enough for your computer to run it correctly.

However, I'll bet with 800cc or 900cc injectors, your computer would work fine. You could up your boost to crazy limits, run cooler, no knock, it would be badass. Mileage would be almost as good as normal gas since high turbo boost can take advantage of the high octane E85 fuel. I think E85 is about 106 octane? I could be off a bit, but it's at least over 100.

Mitsubishi only warrantees our cars to run 10% ethanol or less. Any more than that, you lose warranty, and run into problems.

MalibuJack · Nov 3, 2004, 02:44 PM

You'd definitely need to tune the car to take advantage of it.. Plus raise your boost, keep in mind that the power output will drop slightly if the car was tuned with the same boost levels so its almost a prerequisite.

Here's a few known issues with Ethanol..

1) cold weather = hard starting
2) produces less "Heat output" than gasoline, therefore its power levels are slightly lower
3) Corrosive to some metals and rubbers (If your car is not flex fuel certified, it could corrode the inside of the gas tanke, fuel lines, or other places that come in contact with the fuel for long durations)

The advantages are its harder to "Vaporize" therefore its equivalant octane rating is pretty high, you can run really high levels of boost (keep in mind you would have to raise your boost anyway to get the power back you lost) and aggressive timing, You will need custom tuning, and the stoichiometric ratio for Ethanol is different than gasoline, so you would immediately need a retune and bigger injectors as mentioned above.. PLUS it renders very low emissions therefore a catalytic converter is unecessary.

IF someone could confirm that the fuel system, gas tank, seals, etc.. are tolerant of flex fuels (alcohols and blends) then you can run E85.

However since mitsubishi doesnt recommend alcohol contents greater than 10% and will void your warranty if you do use it, its safe to assume that the car isn't built to tolerate the corrosive properties of alcohol based fuels.

Ok.. with all this said.. If I saw E85 pumps around, and they were practical to use, I would absolutely convert the car to run it. The one advantage of a turbocharged car is its ability to be tuned for different fuels that produce different outputs without changing compression.. you would alter your tune and boost accordingly.

donour · Nov 3, 2004, 02:53 PM

Quote:

Ok.. with all this said.. If I saw E85 pumps around, and they were practical to use, I would absolutely convert the car to run it. The one advantage of a turbocharged car is its ability to be tuned for different fuels that produce different outputs without changing compression.. you would alter your tune and boost accordingly.

I've seen it in pumps around chicago and price is holding at $2/gal, which is 30% cheaper than the 93 you can get at the same station. Maybe it's time to buy that xede...

EDIT: I just noticed something odd. There's a E85 refueling station VERY close to AMS' shop.

d

MalibuJack · Nov 3, 2004, 09:28 PM

Woah, I just discovered that some converted cars can run dirtier than a gasoline engine.. I don't understand why, but Its the first I've ever read about that.

EVOTEXAS · Nov 3, 2004, 09:49 PM

You have to have an FFV (flexible fuel vehicle) to run this. The 2005 NIssan Titans are offered this way and soon all vehicles will. It is a no-cost option that upgrades the fuel pump, lines and seals to accomodate. If you do not have the appropriate fuel system, you will ruin it.

MalibuJack · Nov 4, 2004, 08:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EVOTEXAS

You have to have an FFV (flexible fuel vehicle) to run this. The 2005 NIssan Titans are offered this way and soon all vehicles will. It is a no-cost option that upgrades the fuel pump, lines and seals to accomodate. If you do not have the appropriate fuel system, you will ruin it.

Also, the ECU's are capable of detecting the different fuels and map the fuel curve accordingly.

Its a huge job for someone to do, its not impossible but likely not practical. The one thing I am reading about is that many of the converted vehicles end up not running any cleaner than when it ran on Gasoline, which is just a bizzarre paradox for me to grasp.

I would consider running alcohol for the reasons that you can make power using lots of boost and timing (High octane) and that it should run clean, but if the car's can't run clean, then I don't see the point besides the cost of it being cheaper than gasoline for the time being.

I do have a car that is capable of running alcohol, since its using a carb built for alcohol and its fuel system was built with running it in mind. BUt its not really a street car. Its currently tuned (and its boost is set at 7psi) for Premium pump gas though. But I never did an "Emission test" on it when I originally built it and ran it on alcohol for a month (Until I realized I couldn't find any place to get the fuel)

machron1 · Nov 7, 2004, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MalibuJack

Woah, I just discovered that some converted cars can run dirtier than a gasoline engine.. I don't understand why, but Its the first I've ever read about that.

I think it has something to do with the fact that FFV vehicles normally are not turbocharged, and run low compression to be able to run regular lower octane gasoline. You can only mess with the timing so much until you reach the limit of normally aspirated duel-fuel tuning. You can't easily change the static compression ratio of course

So, basically they aren't optimized for E85 and can't burn it cleanly because they have to be FFV and not E85-only. Take that same car, up the compression and/or add forced induction, and I'll bet it would run way cleaner.

EVO8 WHOA · May 4, 2006, 08:57 AM

ok side note, other than ethanol being the one u can drink if pure with no additives, whats the difference with methanol and ethanol???

KevinD · May 4, 2006, 09:34 AM

methanol is CH3OH, ethanol is C2H5OH. slightly different hydrocarbon chains. the methanol is toxic to humans, ethanol is the alcohol we drink (but don't drink the stuff out of the pumps, it has poisons added so you don't drink it). methanol has a much high latent head of vaporization meaning it cools your intake charge significantly more then ethanol, which is already significantly more then gasoline. end result, you can run even more boost

one thing with methanol, its stoich ratio is about 6:1 whereas ethanol is 9:1. when you mix the ethanol with gasoline, for E85 it moves to about 9.8:1 you need giant injectors for methanol, and it is much, much more corrosive then the ethanol is.

MalibuJack · May 4, 2006, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by machron1

I think it has something to do with the fact that FFV vehicles normally are not turbocharged, and run low compression to be able to run regular lower octane gasoline. You can only mess with the timing so much until you reach the limit of normally aspirated duel-fuel tuning. You can't easily change the static compression ratio of course

So, basically they aren't optimized for E85 and can't burn it cleanly because they have to be FFV and not E85-only. Take that same car, up the compression and/or add forced induction, and I'll bet it would run way cleaner.

Thats actually a really good point.. Which explains why I never really saw an Ethanol vehicle run dirtier, but only read about it.. Every one I've seen ran a turbocharger..

**Speedlimit** · May 4, 2006, 06:55 PM

Hi,

This thread has a good deal of info worth saving and I'm going to move it to the advance forum after cleaning a few OT comments. Please observe the strict OT rules in that forum. Thanks.

Speedlimit...

MalibuJack · May 4, 2006, 08:03 PM

This should be merged with the other E85 thread..