E85 -- experience

Er... 49 , my butt!

Many northeastern US states have true California emmisions standards these days.

Reply to
Valued Corporate #120,345 Empl
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There is no more "49 state" and "Cali" calibration any more. ANY new car sold in the USA has to meet the same standards no matter which state it is sold in. No "High Altitude" calibration any more either. OBD2 looks after all of that.

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Reply to
clare at snyder dot ontario do

According to the NY DMV at

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the emissions standard in NY outside of the NYC metro area are (1) all the emission control equjipment installed and operating and (2) no MIL light. In the metro area there is an additional requirement for a sniffer test on the exhaust.

My car is in the Albany area, and it meets the requirements running E29 before any conversion. I expect it to pass running E85 after the conversion.

Ben

Reply to
Uncle Ben

There should be a reset button in the glove box...

Reply to
-rick-

I have more information now about the reset for a different fuel:

The converter I bought (Full Flex from "change2e85.com") has a memory for MAPpings. The recommendation is that after conversion, you should first run a tankful of E50 (roughly half and half of E10 and E85 mixed at the pumps). This gives the converter an easier task finding the right mapping for its first taste of ethanol. It remembers that setting, so that when you try E85 it has less distance (so to speak) to go to find the new right setting. It's like a ladder with a bottom rung, and top rung, and one in the middle.

Then you are ready for anything! No battery disconnects required.

In my case, I started before conversion running E29. Customer service told me that I could then go straight to E85 without a problem.

Ben

PS: Thanks for the info Rick. I don't have such a button. Maybe that is for OEM FFVs only.

Reply to
Uncle Ben

Today the conversion to FFV was finished. It was not as easy as expected:

The converter I bought (Full Flex from "change2e85.com") consists merely of a control box with a pair of wires for each cylinder, 4 in my case. The connectors at the end of the wires are for the fuel injectors, one male, one female. You remove the original connector from the injector, replace it with one of the pair, and connect the other wire to the original connector. This puts the control box in series with your fuel management system for each cylinder.

There is a Youtube video that shows two boys, 12 and 9, making this conversion under adult supervision in about 10 minutes. But the car was not a Subaru.

Unfortunately my 1999 OB 2.5L engine has its fuel injectors way down beneath some other parts, and it was with difficulty that I was able to remove the original connectors. But I did, and then I discovered that Subaru has used two slightly different versions of its injector connectors, and mine was not like the ones supplied with the kit. The difference is a 1/8-inch shift in the position of guide fins on the injector that are supposed to slide into slots on the connector.

Customer service acknowledged that problem and suggested removing the fins with a Dremel tool -- very simple, very easy. Except that one needs to remove the injectors to do that. My Chilton manual said that to remove the injectors one had to disconnect and reposition several items, including the power steering pump. Ouch!

Not being an experienced mechanic, I took the car to my trusted professional. He quoted $80 to remove and reinstall the injectors. Should take an hour of his time. I modified the injectors on the spot with my Dremel tool with a cutter bit.

Turned out to be two hours, because after reinstalling the injectors (without removing anything but the air cleaner), one of the injectors was leaking. Sanding down a bit of corrosion and replacing an O-ring solved that problem after several attempts, but I realized that by myself I could not even have checked for that.

Moral: If your car is old, expect the unexpected.

Anyway it is done, the car runs smoothly with the converter in place still running E29, and I am happy. When I refill my tank, it will be with E85, and I will report.

Ben

Reply to
Uncle Ben

I had the same engine in a 2001 OBW. Without a few gems of information, even the plugs were a pain.

I admire your drive and appreciate the posts.

Reply to
Valued Corporate #120,345 Empl

In his May 14th Frank reply to me, he cited an article that mentioned possible smog problems with ethanol. I have located the source of this concern in an article by one Mark Z. Jacobson, "Environmental Science and Technology", April 18, 2007, which does indeed project smog problems in 2020 in the Los Angeles are when it is supposed that all vehicles burn E85. (Versus reduction in smog in Atlanta.) The cause of increased smog, according to the computer simulation, was a decrease -- that's right, a decrease -- in NOx tailpipe emissions; it seems that when smog is high, NOx tends to break up ozone molecules, if I understand correctly, and thus reduce smog to a lower equilibrium level. A "hair-of-the-dog" cure.

A critique of Jacobson's study --

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Reply to
Uncle Ben

Hi,

Both my high school chem and physics classes were right after lunch. So I managed a fair amount of "nap time" in there.

However, I did stay awake long enough to learn this little thing that seems to be forgotten in too many of these discussions, and certainly in legislative chambers, something called The Law of Conservation of Matter. As I recall, it states "Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes form."

Now, much to the dismay of my father the physicist, I went no further in either of these two disciplines, so maybe I missed something truly important, but until someone educates me better, I'm going w/ the question my high school teacher posed:

"You add one pound of liquid fuel to 15 pounds of air. Burn them. How much matter, in pounds comes out of the tailpipe?"

Back in the days before calculators, 1 + 15 was 16. No matter how we sing and dance around the issue, we can't change that. All we can hope to do is change the form of that 16 lbs of "stuff" into more manageable, or less harmful, new forms of "stuff." In other words, we change "brown" smog into "green" smog. It's still smog...

Rick

Reply to
Rick Courtright

I doubt unplugging the battery would reset an ECU. Normally data like this once calculated is stored in non-volatile memory and is not erased from battery disconnect. Especially engine info as you can get battery disconnect like behavior during cold crank.

CL

Reply to
dnoyeB

I doubt they detect Ethanol at all. More likely they monitor the engines performance and adjust fuel/oxygen ratio to keep it within some performance parameters. I bet they can tell the octane by engine output and temperature, etc. Of course, this means the ECU designer must have some logic that says E85 is not the engine malfunctioning...

CL

Reply to
dnoyeB

As usually defined, "smog" is smoke + fog. Ain't much smoke from burning alcohol in the right mixture. Your 15 pounds of air is about

12 pounds of nitrogen, most of which comes out just as it went in -- a little warmer. If that's "green" smog, bring it on.

Ben

Ben

Reply to
Uncle Ben

Actually, some vehicles DO have a fuel analyzer on board. Generally some sort of optical refractometer or transmittance device that can determine the composition of the fuel to within 13% or something like that. GM early flex fuel vehicles used this.

The new flex-fuel Impalla calculates the fuel composition every time the fuel cap is removed by running an algarithm on the O2 sensor data.

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clare at snyder dot ontario do

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