E-85 in a Turbo Mopar

[Kerry K]

E-85 has recently become availible in my area and I have been kicking around the idea of converting my Lebaron to run it. Not because I am a "green" freak but just to stick it to the Arab's. Have been reading up on this and I think it is doable. Would love to have some feedback on this.

[Rampage16V]

also been looking into this Ethanol vs Methenal E85 is less corrosive and the 15% gasoline might make the injector size a little smaller too. Is there any lb per horsepower tables around on the web?

[TylerEss]

One thing I've been worried about with it would be if you're in an emissions-inspection area. I think that converting the car to run on E-85 would be "illegal tampering" even if it made the emissions lower! I'm still looking into this, but not making much headway.

That said, if I can stick it to OPEC and it's 110 octane, sign me up!

[jckrieger]

I'm not sure how well the stock fuel lines,injectors,pump, and regulator will hold up, but there's no problem revising the calibration to run the fuel. I've been considering the same idea, but I have to drive 30 miles to get the fuel... Just be sure to run big injectors if you're wanting to make big power.

[Frank]

I will see if I can find information on it for you all.

By the way, sticking it to the oil companies means sticking it to the Canadians... They supply 50% of the oil with Opec supplying less then 25%.... just FYI.


Frank

[Frank]

I found this page and what I can tell from one of my books and other sources, this is pretty accurate... not mention it has the most information in a single place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-85

[WVRampage]

Thats some good info now if there was more E-85 in my area id think real hard about it,nowing how my TD runs on 100 low lead avaition fuel im sure 110 wouldnt hurt.

[Rampage16V]

I found this page and what I can tell from one of my books and other sources, this is pretty accurate... not mention it has the most information in a single place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-85
Thanks Frank thats a great page lots of info there!

[wallace]

I've read you need about 40% more fuel....that being said could you just add 40% larger injectors and run a factory tune to start out?

[Rampage16V]

I've read you need about 40% more fuel....that being said could you just add 40% larger injectors and run a factory tune to start out?

I've read as little as 27%. Check out the page referenced above.

[Tony Hanna]

That's pretty neat. According to the wikipedia article the e85 is comparable to 105 octane gasoline. In a properly tuned setup, this would mean being able to run more boost with no detonation without resorting to race gas or alky injection. It's a shame there aren't more stations around here that sell it, or I'd be willing to try to switch the Sundance over.

[Frank]

That is not true. The 105 octane is only the RON - Research Octane Number. It is more equivelent to 98 octane pump rating or so. This is using the pump rating of (RON + MON)/2. Most people dont realize that.


Frank

[Frank]

http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4686

[89acclaim]

Since we are talking on alcohol fuels you might be interested in this. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/presentations/sae-2002-01-2743.pdf

I think it is neat, at least the part of using EGR to throttle is interesting.

Daniel Merrill

[Tony Hanna]

That is not true. The 105 octane is only the RON - Research Octane Number. It is more equivelent to 98 octane pump rating or so. This is using the pump rating of (RON + MON)/2. Most people dont realize that.


Frank

Ok, so taking that into account methanol is only 99. That leads me to wonder how people are running so much boost with pump gas and Methanol injection?
Personally, I've run close to 30 psi with 93 octane pump gas and Methanol, and I've seen post by people running well above that. Is it just the cooling effect? There's gotta be something to it, because trying to run that much boost on only premium pump gas would result in detonation wouldn't it?

[Frank]

The cooling effects, aka specific heat etc, is awesome! I love methanol and ethanol as a injection for performance on turbo cars when injected before the port.

When used as a fuel supplement, I loose my faith in it. Its no cheaper and it decreases your mean time between the gas station. E-10 is the worse because there is no benifit period besides a marketing ploy and to make worthless pinging cheap gas buyable. E-85 is better for emissions, but has less power and fuel consumption goes up. Yes it maybe cheaper, but cost for vehicle and gas station locations makes it no feasable.


Frank

[Tony Hanna]

But what's the cooling effect from e85 like? Wouldn't you get the same benefit from spraying the ethanol in from the injectors or does the extra time spent passing through the intake from spraying before the throttlebody help?

[Frank]

In my limited capacity, its the time that ads. The other problem with E85 is that it has a significant less BTU output then gasoline, so you have loss of power in when compared to gasoline. Flex fuel cars can compensate some to become viable because of the proper timing for their fuel and such. There is talks about a super high compression port injection E-100 fuel having more BTUs then gasoline... acutally near diesel output actually... however that is neither here or there.

[Tony Hanna]

Gotcha, but couldn't you compensate by adjusting the cal for timing, and in a turbo application, the super high compression part could be achieved by adding a bunch of boost right? This is all providing you wanted to run e85, e100, whatever all the time though.

[89acclaim]

acutally near diesel output actually... however that is neither here or there.

The link form post 14:D it is an interesting read. Not really performance oriented though.

Daniel Merrill

[Frank]

Gotcha, but couldn't you compensate by adjusting the cal for timing, and in a turbo application, the super high compression part could be achieved by adding a bunch of boost right? This is all providing you wanted to run e85, e100, whatever all the time though.

Still not effective, but those buying E-85 cars are not looking for our kind of performance.


Frank

[Tony Hanna]

Still not effective, but those buying E-85 cars are not looking for our kind of performance.


Frank

I hear ya. I guess I was just getting excited at the idea of an affordable fuel that would let you run a bunch of boost without resorting to alky injection or race gas.

[4cefedomni]

ethanol has a ron of 96 and a mon of 130 its (R+M)/2 is 113 but the 96 mon affects us more so it wont perform as well as other 113 octane fuels but its definately better than pump gas.

[Frank]

http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=48720#post48720

[deuce dodge]

just as a note mopar magazine has a write up this month on converting to e 85 and it sounds way sweet.

and i have e 85 gas close buy for 50 cents less per gal.

deuce