Because I work on cars that run it and it screws them all up.

No ****, I just put it in lamens terms so everybody would understand.
poor a cup of e-85, and a cup 05 83 octane on a cement floor, and watch the combustion of both you will understand.
If a fuel is only 70% as effecient as 83oct. what is being said that it only produces 70% ammount of BTU's as 83oct, thes producing lees power, poor fuel economy, and then it retards your timing so you don't have detonation and spark knock. Again the preceding statement also covers "why is it worse for forced induction engines"
IF he is getting 105 oct from e-85, he has to be mixing it with something.
I will argue with you more after my night out, gauntlet thrown.

 

That sucks! Well at least I'm not the only one who got screwed out of some 1/4 mile fun by the weather tonight. So are you going Sunday?

 

From what I understand Brazil didn't go particularly high tech on vehicle conversions when they went ethanol, and cars of all makes and types survived. Like with boats, ethanol in fuel will absorb water. It's been said. But if you use the car regularly it's not going to be an issue. If you leave it sit for a while, you need to use an additive to disperse the water but it's just as easy to run down the tank and then fill with gasoline. It's also pretty well settled that all boosted engines can run a hotter tune, higher boost and compression on E85 than pump gas, provided that the fuel system (and ECU) can handle the additional volume. I'm glad to see someone experimenting with it on the SRT, becuase the way things are looking there's going to be a whole lot more E50 and E85 in the next few years, even outside the corn belt. There's a lot of dollars being invested in next gen ethanol (i.e., bio-conversion of stalks and stems). There's even a company with some patents on bio-converting old tires.

 

So what octane is E-85?

This is accounted for by increasing the fuel pressure or by swapping to larger injectors and using a remapped ECU.

 

a lot of the honda and suburu guys have been running this stuff for the past two years with great success and no problems. They just put in bigger injectors/fuel pump and tune. Found a before and after of a supercharged prelude. Looks like it picked up about 20-25whp across the band.
http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1701028

 

Update, Bike Cop (my son) is on his way to us 41 now. They called him to say they have changed their mind and opened the track for some TNT time. Should be very intresting . Track conditions are about the same as whenhe run his 12.4 et higher humidity but temp close.

 

Saaaaweeeet! Please post results later tonight.

 

With the kit bikecop has, you can switch back and forth from E-100, to unleaded gasoline at any time, the controller automatically adjusts.However if you run pure ethanol, you must add a lubricant to the fuel. Thats why E-85 is the most common form of ethanol as a fuel. Hope this helps.

 

MORE POWER...............I could care less what my MPG are if I can tune 20-30 more RWHP out of the car. People have been running E-85 for years and some of the fastest cars out here in vegas are running E-85. Is it gonna save the environment? NO. Do I care? NO Everybody's comparing E-85 to regular gas and its cost when they should be comparing it to 100 octane pump gas which is $5.99/gallon here in vegas.

E-85= 105 octane for $3.00/gallon
100 octane pump= $5.99/gallon

 

I actually had this conversation with a friend thats from Brazil. He says they have a Nickel coating on their components to keep them from wearing so harshly.

Like I said before, I hope he makes out with this, but I'm not seeing where he gets his #'s

 

National Unleaded Average
http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/ <~~~~table that compares daily prices of fuel to e85 and addjusted price per gallon factoring the loss of "power"

^Yes, we do.

http://www.e85fuel.com/e85101/faqs/priceofe85.php



The “E85 MPG/BTU adjusted price” represents the adjusted E85 cost to regular unleaded gasoline. According to the Energy Information Agency, the average E85 is 94,190 BTU assuming a year-round ethanol content of 74% and regular gasoline averages 124,000 BTU. The adjusted E85 MPG/BTU price reflects how much a consumer would have to pay for E85 gas to receive the same fuel efficiency as regular unleaded gas
http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/method.asp

The sites where the info came from is listed below the info.
I will also state that I have found myself to be partially wrong in one aspect, from the first source I did find this,....

Ethanol has less energy content than gasoline. However, E85 also has a much higher octane (ranging from 96 to 105) than gasoline. FFVs are not optimized to E85, so they experience a 10-15% drop in fuel economy. This will vary based on the way one drives, the air pressure in the tires, and additional driving conditions.

 

My social View -

Tuning food into automotive fuel -- "WTF"??

My economic View -

Gasoline and water just don't mix - Ethanol and water mix very well.

The nation’s gasoline supply is delivered via thousands of miles of pipelines and huge tank farm feed stocks that are prone to water contamination - we can separate water and gasoline at the jobber efficiently to produce a superior product for the end user.

Ethanol mixed with water irreversibly dilutes the final product - thus ethanol must be delivered via sealed trucks to the consumer.

I can just imagine what will happen to ethanol fuel prices when a big storm or big freeze destroys the crops in America - oh yea - and what prices will do at the grocery store.

Plus it takes huge amounts of electricity to brew Ethanol – yet refineries amazingly use very little electricity… There is always a trade off – there always must be…

“Refineries have a combined heat and power plant that generally supplies all their own power requirements. The combination of generating power and steam gives these plants a considerably higher yield than is possible using conventional power generation systems. In addition, heat loss at every stage of the production process is minimized”

 

Back from the track and of course everyone was having traction problems. My car was no quicker with the present tune ran several 12.46, 12.47' with 1.83 60ft. However it was faster trapping at 112.43 to the fastest of 112.79. So I will have to play around with the tune and hope for some better track conditions next week.

Thanks for all the imput from everyone(Good and Bad) And monkey boy from FL. can relax I did not destroy my forced induction engine even after almost 200 miles round trip and over 15 runs at well over 115 before letting up. The car is still running perfect

 

God job on your new mods and those are great traps speeds, especially considering you are running stock pullys! I do not know why everyone on this site flips out and gets all paranoid every time someone tries something different or a new mod is offered such as a supercharger pulley.

 

Just to add to what you are saying - supposedly fractional distillation of ethanol can never result in a 100% pure product - meaning that water will always be in ethanol.

The ethanol "solution" is not completely well thought out yet, that's for sure.

HOWEVER

From an engineering viewpoint, Ethanol is what it is, to quote Dilbert. It has its strengths and it has its weaknesses, but on forced induction engines, it has a definite use due to its knock resistance.

It's the same deal with adding Toluene into your gas. It has advantages and disadvantages, but when you're on the dragstrip, it does exactly what it's supposed to.

 

I"m glad you didn't lose any time, and i'm not trying to knock you for what you're doing, it's just the fact that I have personally seen the damages that CAN be done. Again I hope everything works out for you. The first person to try something out of the box is always called crazy, but that's how we get further in technology.
Please do me a favor though, get a GLASS ethanol tester kit, and test it before you put it in your tank, because that stuff is no good when it starts to ferment.
Shawn

 

Time for a supercharger pulley upgrade, maybe?

 

Good track feedback on it. In NY you'd be hard pressed to find the stuff even if you went looking for it and it would cost you wel more than 93 octane pump if you did. But like it or not, and with whatever its pluses and minuses may be, the economics and availability will be forcing most everyone to use higher ethanol content blends. Whether the next step up is something like E25 ot E50 remains to be seen, but it's good to see that the SRT6 can handle it with only light modification.

 

I know it was stated that the use of e85 here isn't for money savings, but I just had to post this:

I checked, and in Western PA there are only 5 e85 pumps available to the public. I could only find out the price on one of them, and it was $2.99/gal. Premium (93 octane) at the same station was $3.59/gal.

The e85 folks say that e85 only produces 75% of the power/gallon that 93 octane produces.

Doing the math:
My SRT-6 gets 19mpg on 93 octane fuel. So if I spend $50 on 93 octane fuel, I would get 265 miles out of it.

Using e85 (at 75% of the mpg) that same $50 would only get me 238 miles.
To go the same 265 miles that you'd get on the 93 octane (for $50) it would cost you $55.60 in e85 fuel.

So this "green" fuel source doesn't sound so great to me. In the end, you spend money converting your car, increase the potential for problems, make it more inconvenient to fill up, AND the fuel costs more (per mile driven, not gallon purchased).

Where's the benefit Al? (Al Gore that is)

OK, I'm done ranting. Back to e85 performance talk...

 

I am getting 17.1 mpg, but I dont care about gas mileage. I did it for the tuning capibilites of e85 at 105 oct. I still have the fastest SRT-6 without a pulley in the country and I have not even started to have Inmotion tune the car to utilize the 105 oct. But that will all change by the end of the week, with two new tunes coming. I will post results as I am able to get them. But remember guys and gals of this forum, I am not telling anyone of you to convert your vehicles. I am just sharing what I am doing. Thanks Eric