E85 and older cars

For a car not designed for that lethal mix, E85 will irreparably ruin your engine. Ethanol is a) less energy efficient than gasoline and b) corrosive to the fuel system.

Try it once and plan to get a new engine.

Chuck Fiedler Nothing but Volvo since 1974

On the contrary, the B230 engines adapt quite well to E85, particularly the turbo versions which can run higher boost due to the higher octane. Many people on the Megasquirt forum are running E85 using mostly stock fuel components and have not reported any issues so far. One would probably have to find a remapped chip in order to use the stock Regina ECU, but ruin the engine? No way, that's just false.

I've heard it corrodes aluminum, and some synthetic hoses, though that is old info, and I don't know any details.

There's some retrofit kits, or one I saw, for making cars flexi-fuel, but you can't trust the claims of niche manufacturers like that. Can't trust manufacturers in general, but for a subject/product that is not mainstream, its even dicier.

Dunno about the synthetic hoses, but aluminum corrosion is methanol's evil trick. It's a diabolical triphase process. Methanol attacks the oxide that normally protects aluminum, converting it to methoxide. Methoxide is soluble in methanol, so bare aluminum is exposed. Methanol is enough of an oxidizer to re-oxidize the surface of the aluminum, and the process continues. See

Mike

Um, E85 uses *ethanol*, not methanol. As far as I know, ethanol is not corrosive, it's already present in much smaller percentages in most gasoline.

Ethanol is corrosive, just not as corrosive as methanol (substantially less corrosive than methanol). 10% - 15% ethanol (present in gas right now) is much less corrosive than 85% ethanol (E85).

With ethanol I wouldn't worry about rubber hoses and the such, or an red-block or white-block engine. Just make sure that fuel line / gas tank is okay.

AC

Vehicles that are E85 capable have some kind of ethanol sensor in the fuel line, and the higher the ethanol percentage, the more fuel by volume needs to be used. A fuel system not designed for E85 would have a mixture so lean that it wouldn't even run. If you adjusted it (say with higher flow injectors) then it would be way too rich for normal gasoline.

Flex fuel vehicles capable of running any mixture of E85 and gasoline have the sensor, plenty of people have converted Volvos to run straight E85 though, I personally have spoken with two of them but there's more. Have a look on the turbobricks forum, it's really pretty easy to do and the cars seem to respond well to it.

Yes, but my point is what's going to happen if you can't find E85 when you need to fill up? If you stay local, and there's a good supply of stations around, then you'll have no problem, but you lose the flexibility to use gasoline.

In my area, it's a moot point - there's no E85 sold within hundreds of miles from here. (Even though flex fuel Malibus are made only 75 km away!)

I don't think you understood the line from the previous post. Its not one or the other.

I must have misunderstood, too. It sounded like the flex-fuel designed cars could do either by virtue of having the sensor, but the converted cars were single fuel. That would make sense because of the difficulty of adding the sensor and associated stuff. It would also mean the converted cars couldn't be driven out of range of E85 distribution regions, unlike the flex-fuel cars.

Mike

I have an older version of the device that allows you to convert a car to use E-85. There is a switch on the device that allows you to select E-85 (or anything above about 40% alcohol) or regular gas (anything below 40 % alcohol). The exact percentage depends on the car's make, model, calibration of fuel injection system, age of car and injectors, etc. The newer versions have a control that you can mount in the passenger compartment so you don't have to open the hood to flip the switch. In my case, the Bosch Jetronic system had enough range to provide the correct air/fuel mixture when the switch was set properly. If you have the switch set improperly, the Check Engine light comes on. This still gives you enough time to pull over and set the switch correctly.

Result: even with the aftermarket conversion kits, your car is truly a Flexible Fuel Vehicle and can run on both regular gasoline, E-85 and any mix. Don't forget to change the fuel filter after the second tankfull of E-85. And start pricing new fuel pumps if your car is more than 10 years old. (Don't ask me how I know this.) I also noticed that the gas mileage reported by my trip computer showed double the gas mileage I usually get. When I switched back to gasoline, gas mileage went up about 5% from what I was getting before I started using E-85 - likely my fuel injectors were dirty and the E-85 cleaned them.

On another note, newer factory implementations of FFV cars don't use a separate sensor to detect E-85 fuel. Everything is now done by the Lambda Sensor (Oxygen Sensor) to provide the information for the proper air/fuel mixture. The engine management system just needs to know that the higher oxygen content of E-85 isn't an invalid condition that will cause it to ignore the sensors and turn on the Check Engine light. (Obviously that is an oversimplified explanation, and other changes are required, but that conveys the idea behind the newer designs).

Walt Kienzle

Thanks for the update. Can you tell us a source for the conversion equipment?

Mike

Mike,

I bought mine on e-bay, but here are some manufacturer's links:

(I have the older version of this model. It has the old-style Bosch (EV1) fuel injector connectors.)And if you want to find E-85 fuel pumps: Walt