Hello all,

does anyone have any knowledge or familiarity with products like this and how well they work/don't work? I know that converting to all metal lines etc. would be required because e85 would deteriorate the factory lines on a lot of models. (including a crossfire lol, I am wanting to put this on a 55 NA engine swap fire) But before spending the 700 to order the kit I wanted to reach out and see if anyone had any exposure to converting to e85 and specifically using a kit like this to do so. Or if you converted by a different method feel free to comment that method below.

Thanks!
posted in MBWorld as well

​​​​​​​https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/mer...-vrp-speed-e85

 

How long would it take to recoup the $700 through saving the price difference in the two fuel costs and do you expect to keep the car that long. There is also the time and cost to install the new gear.
Can you expect any damage to the car that might be expensive to repair.
Flex fuel is for cars designed to use E85, what guarantees do they give?

 

Wait. E85 here is as high as 91 octane.

I think he's doing this for some other reason.....

 

Hard to see the benefit of E85 on a NA M112 or M113. The VRP kit merely adjusts the injector pulsewidth to accommodate the presence of ethanol. It cannot do anything to take advantage of it, the way actual tuning can do. Honestly, while it is functional, it is a solution in search of a problem. It is not going to net you any power increase, as you are not increasing timing, and there is no boost on an NA engine to increase, either. In short, a waste of money. As a very long time tuner (calibrator) of engine systems, I hate seeing products like this out there. They siphon money off of people, and that is about all.

 

Yes, as you gathered, I am doing this for other reasons. This is part of a show car/race build I am doing and I'm wanting to throw either a turbo and/or Nitrous at the engine before I pay Rudy to do the programming. I know I have to settle on an approach before he does the programming. I originally was going to put a super charger on it but Vivid Racing is wanting 10,000 for a supercharger for the NA engine and I was going to see if I could go with an E85 boosted approach cheaper than the 10K for the super charger approach. I'm already 15K in and doing it with my grandfather as our last project together (He's 74 and a painter so he will be doing the paint job/restore) so the answer to the question of trying to get the money back out of it is that I will never sell the car, I will continue to show it along side my grandfather's 1950 ford after he passes away.

 

If you are going to have someone tune the car, have them tune it for the fuel you are running. I have been calibrating engine control systems for almost 30 years. Without an ECU that accepts inputs directly from an ethanol sensor (or by other means, a la Chrysler sensorless FFV), then all you are doing is maintaining lambda for variances in the fuel quality. Without those methods, and the ME2.8/ME2.8.1 doesn't have either, you are stuck at a compromise. You can either tune for straight gasoline (smart), or you can tune to take advantage of E85 and tune for it. The problem is that if you switch fuels, you are not tuned for it. I have tuned a lot of cars for E85, and invariably the owner is contacting me for a new pump gas tune, because finding E85 gets difficult once you are 100% committed to needing it. E85 popularity is also declining, and it is slowly disappearing from gas stations.

As the owner of a M113K swapped car, I can tell you that there are major differences internally between the NA and forced induction versions of both the M113 and the M112. You are going to want to look into those differences, and what life expectancy associated with forced induction on the NA engine. Not trying to rain on your parade, but this is definitely a pay me now or pay me later situation. On the bright side, M113K engines that are missing the supercharger assembly are available often, and they seem to go for very reasonable numbers. If turbocharging is your game, then grabbing a M113K long block, and topping it with an intake manifold from a NA M113 should work out.

Bottom line will be this: talk to Rudy, or whoever you are going have do your tuning, before you buy a bunch of stuff. They will likely tell you that they will tune for your E85, and that you can save your $700, and not bother with this add on.

 

Awesome man! Thank you for that response!!! That is exactly what I needed to hear. I knew a tune had to be done to take advantage of e85, I just wasn't sure if this kit was needed from a mechanical perspective to make e85 "work" on a non e85 car. This car will be a show car not an actual race/track car so the performance mods are for dyno purposes and show mainly. The car will not be tracked/ran hard for several reasons but mainly after my grandfather and I spend several hundred hours doing a complete body restore the last thing I want to do is lose control and smack something and there goes a 20K paint job... LOL

I agree with you from what I found that if I could have gotten a hold of a m113k I would have for sure went that route. I got extremely lucky and found a wrecked 2002 CLK 55AMG NA car with only 45,000 miles on it for 2,000 cause the guy smacked a deer and was cutting his losses on the car. I was able to yank the engine/trans/rear end all out from it in perfect condition so it was hard to pass up the NA at that point and wait for a m113K.

From a forced air perspective, I may just add this kit because I've heard several people that own this kit say it's very safe(from an engine perspective) and call it done... I haven't decided yet but instead of trying to force a bunch of mods in to get a turbo installed on the car I may just do this Nitrous kit and let that be that. https://www.zex.com/efi-v8-universal...us-system.html