Converting to E85 ethanol

Has anyone ever tried or experimented with using E85 as a fuel for their street rods? In case anyone is wondering, E85 is fuel that is blended with 85% ethanol (the "Budweiser" alcohol) and 15% gasoline and it's supposedly selling for about 50 cents less than 87 unleaded. I hear the octane rating is around 106. All the info I've found says that jetting/injectors needs to be 25-30% larger and timing bumped up 10-15 degrees. I imagine that some of the rubber fuel lines, carb floats, or fuel pumps, etc might need upgraded, but I also hear that ethanol is no where near as corrosive as the methanol (poisonous) alcohol that the blown alkys use. I know that my 5.0 HO powered 87 T-Bird likes the 10% gasohol blend, but I'm thinking about bumping up the compression up to

12:1 on my next engine build and giving E85 a try. Tips and info on ethanol conversions would be greatly be appreciated.

Mike

Reply to
Mgrant
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Thanks for the tips on MPG improvements, weight is a HUGE factor! Another factor I found with the T-Bird is air resistance. Being that this car is an aero-Bird, I have seen mileage of 29 mpg at 65 mph, 33 mpg at 55 mph. But when there is a headwind or when I cruise over 75 mph, it will drop clear down to 18. Anything or any driving technique that presents an additional parasitic load on the engine, no matter how small, will always require the engine to use more fuel.

Converting a caburetor to E85 should be simple and straight forward, but EFI seems like it can be a bit more complicated with the BTU/stoitmeric differences between E85 and 92 unleaded. If I do convert the T-Bird, it would be tuned to run E85 only, not flex fuel. I will most likely have to bump up fuel flow with larger, ethanol resistant injectors or re-program the ECM. I could possibly fool it with a different sample tube in the C&L MAF, but MAF fooling can cause high RPM lean issues. As far as engine work, I will be buying high flowing AFE heads, GT-40 intake, cats, exhaust, etc anyway, regardless of what fuel I decide to burn. I decided to send a inquirery to Ford Motorsport/SVT about covnerting to E85, so hopefully I'll get some answers regarding a Ford EFI system. I was just curious to hear any feedback from anyone that did an E85 conversion, EFI or carburated. Thanks Mike

D> > Has anyone ever tried or experimented with using E85 as a fuel for

Reply to
Mgrant

thanks for the link, the "corn-thanol" is getting some serious looks from congress they seem to think alternative fuels are a good idea and they want to encourage farmers to produce it, yet then in another breath they want to take the tax incentives away from growing corn for ethanol because it's not food? MAKE UP YOUR MINDS SENATORS... anyhow Brazil drives most cars on nearly straight alcohol and you might get some ideas from down south on converting the fuel system.

the company across the street from mine is reclaiming spoiled products for the alcohol content & selling the alcohol for fuel blends (big still setup) john

Reply to
john

Easy to convert a carbureted car. Just drill out main jets by 40% extra (twice area). Both methanol and ethanol will burn nicely over a wider mixture range than gasoline, so one does not need to be too precise. Fine tune with float level.

I am not sure what the diameter should be to run E85. The reason for the E85 is that alcohol is not that volatile (in spite of what TV announcers say about the "high volatility" racing fuels used in Indy cars). So cold weather starting on pure alcohol is a problem- one needs some gasoline in mixture in cold weather.

Reply to
Don Stauffer

Just for extra info, I looked up the BTU content of gasoline, methanol, ethanol, and E85 ethanol.

Unleaded= 114,100 BTU Methanol=56,800 BTU Ethanol=76,100 BTU E85 Ethanol=81,800

Converting from gas to E85, I would assume that you could use these numbers to compute how much more fuel you will need to maintain stoich. Unleaded to E85 computes to 29% larger jetting. I still planning on trying this on the T-Bird, but I have yet to hear from Ford Motorsport. I am in the process of building an aluminum jetboat and I plan on stroking a 460 out to 514 cid and running the compression up to

11:1 and run E85, which is 105 octane.

BTW, I've run across some stuff called butanol, which is being researched as a direct gasoline replacement. All I have learned is that it no more corrosive that gasoline, same BTUs, and can be derived from fermentation like ethanol is, but with the added byproduct of hydrogen, which can be used in fuel cells. Anyone else have any info to offer about this stuff?

Mike

Reply to
Mgrant

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