E-85 gas

Just wondering if it was possible to make the 420a motor use E-85. I live in Fargo and it's $1.50 a gallon a $.60 difference than regular gas. Our van uses it and I know that sometimes it clogs injectors.

85? Is that uber crap gas? Use it if you don't care if your injectors get clogged...ur lucky...210 for normal gas is nice...240 for 87 here.

E-85 isn't normal gas it means it's 85% ethanol which is derived from corn.

You need to find out the octane rating. E-85 is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. It has about 2/3 the energy of a gallon of regular gasoline. Special production cars, particularly from Ford and GM are being made in the midwest to take advantage of it. If the octane rating is as low as I think it is, I wouldn't run it in even an nt motor. But find out, don't quote me on it :)

Yeah, what is the octane for E-85? I thought it was a direct substitution for 87 octane, but I dont know. We only have one gas station around here with it, but it could save me an ass load of money if it will work in the cavy!

I just found this site on E-85.
www.e85fuel.com
Check it out, its interesting. At the bottom of the page it says its 105 octane. And I think it is safe to go into the Cavy :grinyes:.

I wouldn't run that in my car nomatter how cheap it is.

So after reading on that website I guess it's illegal and if it's possible it takes alot of money/time.

yes, you would need new injectors, fuel rail, and a completely custom programmed computer. The timing and fuel rates for ethanol are really different. Flex-Fuel Fords also have slightly higher compression than their Gas brethren and also have forged pistons.

Weird i've never seen it for sale around here. It sounds like the major problem with converting to e-85 is emissions, it doesn't seem like it could really be 105 octane especially because they say the 15% gasoline is to help in cold starts. I don't think it sounds like a good idea but if you want to do it let us know how it goes.

it doesn't seem like it could really be 105 octane especially because they say the 15% gasoline is to help in cold starts.
A higher octane rating means the fuel is more resistant to combustion. Thats why hi-compression engines use higher octane gas. Put 110 octane gas in an engine designed to run on 87 octane and it will be hard or impossible to start. An engine setup to run on E85 will make more power then one running on normal gas because it can run high compression or in the case of Saab more boost. link (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/e65b89c49db84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html)

the 15% gas is also to denature the ethanol (make it poisonous so that bums don't pay $1.50 for a gallon of that night's booze fix) and to make it burn with a visible flame for safety reasons.

for a turbo application, it's great stuff. high octane, great latent heat of vaporization and cheap. yes, you have to run more of it to get the same energy out of it, BUT it also means that you can run the mixture leaner than gasoline (0.85 lambda as opposed to 0.75-0.80 lambda on gasoline) because there is more thermal mass present in the combustion chamber to absorb heat for detonation resistance.

most cars are compatible with certain mixtures of ethanol, but not likely up to 85%. the biggest challenge is galvanic corrosion, where two dissimilar metals are in contact with one another in the presence of an electrolyte. easy solution is to make sure there's no steel contacting aluminum directly within your fuel system.

for some reason it also has a tendency to build up varnish on the injector nozzles after time. a little paint thinner in a tank will clear that right up.

some people have also reported misfires while using it, so it may be a good idea to run one heat range hotter spark plugs to avoid this.

if you have an EPROM ecu in your car, tuning for it is as easy as multiplying the fuel tables by 1.25 (and leaning out the high load/rpm areas) in tunerpro, burning the chip and plugging it in. (i believe fuel calculations are 1886.1/x for AFR (x being the decimal value of the data in that cell), and 128/x for lambda. the nice thing is you can have a chip for street, then a chip for the track when you fill up with e85..

It's too bad they put that 15% gasoline in there... I might have just filled up a gallon jug, or two, for recreational use! I had to say it. ;-)

Oh yeah, gas is $3.10 /gal here in Rochester, MI. If I ever go above 3k RPM I start to feel it in my wallet!

Oh yeah, gas is $3.10 /gal here in Rochester, MI. If I ever go above 3k RPM I start to feel it in my wallet!
It's like $2.60-2.70 in Maine.

A higher octane rating means the fuel is more resistant to combustion

you're half-right on that comment...a higher octane rating doesn't mean it's more resistant to combustion..if it was..then the higher the octane the harder it would be to make a car run.....the higher the octane rating means it's more resistant to SELF-combustion...igniting itself from the heat and pressure inside a cylinder. that's why higher performance cars use it becuase they tend to run harder and closer tolerances. if you ran a high-performance car on 87 octane, it would probably knock and ping quite nicely, somewhat to the sound of a horrible orchestra. but running a higher octane won't give you any more "performance". your car isn't going to suddenly be able to burn the tires for blocks and blocks.

to get a car to run on a higher octane, you need a hotter sparkplug to ignite the higher self-combustion rating. now i'm not an expert on e-85 so don't go start filling up with e-85 and just throw in some hotter spark plugs and think it's gonna work because i have no idea if it will....i just wanted to clear things up a little bit.

the higher the octane rating means it's more resistant to SELF-combustion...igniting itself from the heat and pressure inside a cylinder. that's why higher performance cars use it becuase they tend to run harder and closer tolerances.
That's what I was trying say guess I could have done a better job of saying it.