1G High Horsepower with Low Octane Availability in Montana. Blueprinting Help Please!

[Dashnizzle]

In my area, I am currently probably the FURTHEST away from any E85 and 93 octane in the country. Yay me.

This puts a damper on my blueprinting process for the car I am building, and I am seeking help and assurance that my goals are within realistic expectations.

See below from the https://afdc.energy.gov/ e85 locator .

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Aaaaaaand 93 octane locator:

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Research:

https://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/tuned-for-93-octane-but-moving-to-91-only-area.476228/

oh and heres a very reassuring thread:

https://www.dsmtuners.com/threads/knock-on-91-tune-with-110-octane.507680/

Across the board i am seeing 'turn down boost, and 'I'm seeing knock'
This is not what I intend to bend my knee to, I'm too stubborn.

My 500HP dreams are just that after seeing this. Dreams.

With that being said, I WILL be using Methanol injection to help some of that octane rating along with the other benefits it provides.
This is not a daily driver, just the weekend and fun car, ya know? This grants me options to source fuel or additive potentially, but doesn't appeal to me in case I want to take a road trip and need to rely on the 91 nectar.

Basically I need to achieve high power with good drivability/spool to make any of this worth the investment.

Turbo choice as of now would be FP Green with 57 lb/min and of course they say rated for upwards of 540 HP but I must take that with a grain of salt because of my fuel availability. I also prefer to not have to wait until 4500RPM to build max boost, If I went with something larger. On 91 octane, I'm really stuck here too.

My 6 Bolt engine will be rebuilt (pistons, rods, cams, everything), all supporting mods etc. etc. I just bought ECMlink yesterday, I am performing maintenance on the mostly stock car getting it ready for the future plans. I'm putting a lot of time and money into this is what I'm trying to get at here.

My questions:
In my shoes, what would you do to your build to compensate for the octane deficiency and still achieve an extremely fun to drive and powerful ~~500hp car? Slow spoolers are out of the question for me.

Would some variant of a stroker help with extra displacement?
Should I ditch planning around 91 and find a way to get e85 magically or bust?

Thanks in advance guys.
Dash


1991 Galant VR-4 #88/2000

 

[nathan_spindler55]

There is a guy on base that gets e98 and sells it. My buddy got some and we just blended it down to e85.

 

[Dashnizzle]

There is a guy on base that gets e98 and sells it. My buddy got some and we just blended it down to e85.

Thanks for the tip! I am Interested in this and would like to know more as I am in Great Falls also. Is this the guy that gets a few barrels at a time? The shipping must be outrageous, no?
I am more or less interested in other solutions as well since I know base connections for these types of things come and go… at some point we have to accept that our area just doesn’t support these fuel types on an infrastructure scale so that will effect my decisions on what this car will get outfitted with.

 

[We're on Boost]

It sounds like you would be a prime candidate for flex fuel, which you could do with ECMlink.
That way if your ethanol supply comes and goes, you'd be sort of ok.
And if you were getting E98 from somewhere you could just throw it straight in the tank with whatever gas is in there and it would be fine.

Do you know how you would buy your methanol and how much it would cost?

 

[dustyboner]

increasing displacement would definitely help.


possibly:
-get your combustion chambers reworked and polished
- ceramic coated piston crowns

or you could run a gas/ Xylene mix


i found this old post on the wayback machine but it only has the first page.

DSMtalk Forums - 503whp AGP 50trim PUMP GAS!

Forums dedicated to the DSM line of vehicles, such as the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon and Plymouth Laser.

web.archive.org

i couldn't find the rest of it. But if the guy was making 503hp on 93 almost 20 years ago, i think you should be able to get pretty close on 91

 

[Vegas Smith]

I think you’re going to have to run a pretty large turbo to make 500. You need efficiency, large turbine housing etc. I don’t think you’re making 500 with something that spools faster than a green. Check out the evo8-9 dyno sub forum on evonm and see what people are making. There are literally hundreds of pump gas build and what power they made. You can get an idea of what to expect.

 

[1990TSIAWDTALON]

Keep static compression low and turn up the boost.

 

[NOSLO2PT0]

There is a guy on base that gets e98 and sells it. My buddy got some and we just blended it down to e85.

My guy get e98 as well. But at $11/gal, it’s not very cost effective

 

[Dashnizzle]

It sounds like you would be a prime candidate for flex fuel, which you could do with ECMlink.
That way if your ethanol supply comes and goes, you'd be sort of ok.
And if you were getting E98 from somewhere you could just throw it straight in the tank with whatever gas is in there and it would be fine.

Do you know how you would buy your methanol and how much it would cost?

That's an interesting thought, to be honest I didn't know this was an option for our 30 year old cars. I will definitely check that out. Does this require a speed density type setup as well?

As far as the methanol goes you can pretty easily order gallons of meth/water mixed and have on hand. Just have a few extra gallons in the trunk for the road. Boost Juice would be a candidate. Jafromobile did a great failsafe setup on his Hyundai elantra when his tank goes empty in case anyone is curious - (

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)

increasing displacement would definitely help.


possibly:
-get your combustion chambers reworked and polished
- ceramic coated piston crowns

or you could run a gas/ Xylene mix


i found this old post on the wayback machine but it only has the first page.

DSMtalk Forums - 503whp AGP 50trim PUMP GAS!

Forums dedicated to the DSM line of vehicles, such as the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon and Plymouth Laser.

web.archive.org

i couldn't find the rest of it. But if the guy was making 503hp on 93 almost 20 years ago, i think you should be able to get pretty close on 91

Im curious if the xylene is compatible with the flex fuel system. Ill have to do some research on that. Its pretty expensive but if flexfuel can work out the tuning math on-the-go if you add a little that would be an interesting wild card.

Keep static compression low and turn up the boost.

Aside from reworking the combustion chambers like dusty said, I'm assuming camshaft selection could be an important component in getting static compression lower, correct? As I'm thinking about this, it would be a careful dance as you want the cams to help open up turbo response while leaving compression low. Any suggestions here?

So here is the potential options I am seeing:

• Stick with the green for best spool times for this HP goal.
• Use flex fuel to run ethanol if its available (+xylene maybe)
• Use a stroker variant for more displacement and keep static compression low while turning boost up

Great Info guys! I now have 50 more tech writeups to read into on this.

 

[dustyboner]

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[Widgmaster]

Darn it all.... I got the need for speed, but I just got my licence back after 25 year of walking everywhere. I wonder if Devin Schultz would give me a ride ?

What is the debait on using octain boost ?

 

[Dashnizzle]

What is the debait on using octain boost ?

I’m not opposed to it if it’s a reliable remedy and doesn’t interfere with tuning.

 

[DSMPT]

camshaft selection could be an important component in getting static compression lower, correct?

I think you are confused. Cams wouldn't affect static compression. Dynamic compression, yes.

Where I live has zero access to any ethanol base fuel, race gas is possible but very difficult to find and really expensive, but methanol and nitrous is easy to get and cheap. Since 91 gas is only choice for me and here is super hot, the water methanol injection is always a must for me and nitrous is safer than boosting in some case.

 

[We're on Boost]

That's an interesting thought, to be honest I didn't know this was an option for our 30 year old cars. I will definitely check that out. Does this require a speed density type setup as well?

Im curious if the xylene is compatible with the flex fuel system. Ill have to do some research on that. Its pretty expensive but if flexfuel can work out the tuning math on-the-go if you add a little that would be an interesting wild card.

I don't know if the flex fuel option actually requires speed density but pretty much everybody does it that way. I do.
Here's the ECMtuning wiki page for flex fuel setup:
http://www.ecmtuning.com/wiki/ethanolsupport?s[]=wiring&s[]=ethanol&s[]=sensor

Xylene with flex fuel - again I don't really know and I've never used xylene.
But, as far as I know, the way a flex fuel sensor works, what it actually does, is it measures the dielectric constant of the fuel. I've had trouble trying to verify this for sure, but I think the info in this post is correct:
http://nefariousmotorsports.com/forum/index.php?topic=2955.20;wap2

So here are some approximate dielectric constants:

Octane 1.95
Heptane 1.92
gasoline 2.0
Xylene 2.57
ethanol 25
methanol 33
Water 80

The output of an ethanol sensor is a variable frequency rather than a variable voltage.
When the dielectric constant of the fuel is higher, the output frequency is higher.
In an OEM flex fuel setup, if the frequency goes too high, above a certain level, the car takes it to mean that there is water in the fuel and it gives a warning or something. You can see why if you look at the dielectric constant of water. It's really high.
You can also see how easy it is for a dielectric sensor to tell the difference between ethanol and gas - since their dielectric constants are much different. Even more so between methanol and gas.

But Xylene is very close to gasoline. It would look almost like gasoline to an ethanol sensor. I think.

Here's an interesting thing. Methanol is only a little higher than ethanol. I haven't tried this but I think you might be able to run up to about 60% or 70% methanol in your fuel tank before the "ethanol" sensor would run off scale. You would have to figure out how to scale the tuning though, because I don't know anybody who has done this. I haven't. But I've thought of it because E85 stations are few and far between around here too (Seattle area), and when I was having my engine project done the stations we did have were disappearing fast.

 

[We're on Boost]

Where I live has zero access to any ethanol base fuel, race gas is possible but very difficult to find and really expensive, but methanol and nitrous is easy to get and cheap. Since 91 gas is only choice for me and here is super hot, the water methanol injection is always a must for me and nitrous is safer than boosting in some case.

Hiroshi, when you buy methanol there, how do you buy it and what kind of a place do you buy it from? And how much does it cost? Do you buy it in bulk, or in buckets, or what?

 

[Dashnizzle]

I think you are confused. Cams wouldn't affect static compression. Dynamic compression, yes.

Where I live has zero access to any ethanol base fuel, race gas is possible but very difficult to find and really expensive, but methanol and nitrous is easy to get and cheap. Since 91 gas is only choice for me and here is super hot, the water methanol injection is always a must for me and nitrous is safer than boosting in some case.

Yes you are right, static compression is a newer concept to me.
What would a good target static compression ratio be in relation to this topic?

 

[Dashnizzle]

I don't know if the flex fuel option actually requires speed density but pretty much everybody does it that way. I do.
Here's the ECMtuning wiki page for flex fuel setup:
http://www.ecmtuning.com/wiki/ethanolsupport?s[]=wiring&s[]=ethanol&s[]=sensor

Xylene with flex fuel - again I don't really know and I've never used xylene.
But, as far as I know, the way a flex fuel sensor works, what it actually does, is it measures the dielectric constant of the fuel. I've had trouble trying to verify this for sure, but I think the info in this post is correct:
http://nefariousmotorsports.com/forum/index.php?topic=2955.20;wap2

So here are some approximate dielectric constants:

Octane 1.95
Heptane 1.92
gasoline 2.0
Xylene 2.57
ethanol 25
methanol 33
Water 80

The output of an ethanol sensor is a variable frequency rather than a variable voltage.
When the dielectric constant of the fuel is higher, the output frequency is higher.
In an OEM flex fuel setup, if the frequency goes too high, above a certain level, the car takes it to mean that there is water in the fuel and it gives a warning or something. You can see why if you look at the dielectric constant of water. It's really high.
You can also see how easy it is for a dielectric sensor to tell the difference between ethanol and gas - since their dielectric constants are much different. Even more so between methanol and gas.

But Xylene is very close to gasoline. It would look almost like gasoline to an ethanol sensor. I think.

Here's an interesting thing. Methanol is only a little higher than ethanol. I haven't tried this but I think you might be able to run up to about 60% or 70% methanol in your fuel tank before the "ethanol" sensor would run off scale. You would have to figure out how to scale the tuning though, because I don't know anybody who has done this. I haven't. But I've thought of it because E85 stations are few and far between around here too (Seattle area), and when I was having my engine project done the stations we did have were disappearing fast.

Yes I just read a few wikis on the subject a little bit ago. Basically the ethanol sensor uses the MAF ECU pin so that’s a major reason a lot of people use speed density with the ethanol sensor.
I did also see that the frequency in hz is sent to your ecu which represents ethanol content.

what we need is some sort of octane sensor or something like that? Dump in your cocktail of whatever into the gas tank and let ECMlink bounce between your low and high maps to figure it out!!

 

[Dashnizzle]

Hiroshi, when you buy methanol there, how do you buy it and what kind of a place do you buy it from? And how much does it cost? Do you buy it in bulk, or in buckets, or what?

Snow Performance SNO-40008 Boost Juice (Case of 4 Gallons), 1 Pack

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$50 for 4 gallons on Amazon of 50/50 water meth

 

[nathan_spindler55]

Thanks for the tip! I am Interested in this and would like to know more as I am in Great Falls also. Is this the guy that gets a few barrels at a time? The shipping must be outrageous, no?
I am more or less interested in other solutions as well since I know base connections for these types of things come and go… at some point we have to accept that our area just doesn’t support these fuel types on an infrastructure scale so that will effect my decisions on what this car will get outfitted with.

Ya he usually keeps some on hand because he has a very high horsepower evo. And he has been around for awhile. Last time my buddy got some he was charged around 6 dollars per gallon I believe. Not horrible price.

 

[Dashnizzle]

Ya he usually keeps some on hand because he has a very high horsepower evo. And he has been around for awhile. Last time my buddy got some he was charged around 6 dollars per gallon I believe. Not horrible price.

Not bad at all

 

[We're on Boost]

what we need is some sort of octane sensor or something like that? Dump in your cocktail of whatever into the gas tank and let ECMlink bounce between your low and high maps to figure it out!!

No you don't need an octane sensor. Just need the ethanol sensor. I'm not expert at all with ECMlink but my understanding of why high and low octane maps are used for this in ECMlink is because those maps were there already many years ago, and when the flex fuel update to ECMlink was added just a few years ago those maps were sort of re-purposed for ethanol flex use. Sort of high and low ethanol.
But yes as far as ECMlink figuring out what to do with it. It's a linear interpolation as far as I know, on the injector duty cycle. It's a straight line between the 2 endpoints, where one endpoint is the "Low" map and the other endpoint is the "High" map. Depending on the ethanol % in your fuel, you could be anywhere on that line.
Then if you change the ethanol % in your tank you'll be at a different spot on that line.
If you make a radical change in the ethanol % and you want the system to adjust to it before you even start the engine, you can temporarily check the box that says something like "run fuel pump" and the fuel pump will run and you can watch in a live log how the sensed ethanol % goes up or down to a different reading. It's pretty cool.

 

[DSMPT]

Hiroshi, when you buy methanol there, how do you buy it and what kind of a place do you buy it from? And how much does it cost? Do you buy it in bulk, or in buckets, or what?

I buy it with a local store that sells industrial chemicals. I can buy per liter by bringing my own pail or 20L pail, 50L or 200L drum. It costs $1.0~1.3USD per liter.

Snow Performance SNO-40008 Boost Juice (Case of 4 Gallons), 1 Pack
$50 for 4 gallons on Amazon of 50/50 water meth

That's prepared, good but kinda expensive. If you can source pure methanol locally, it would be much cheaper.

 

[We're on Boost]

Last time my buddy got some he was charged around 6 dollars per gallon I believe. Not horrible price.

Yeah $6 per gallon is good for E98. That's what English Racing sells it for, if you bring your own tanks to fill up.
They use E98 like water almost. I don't think they even have E85 at all there. Because when I asked Lucas to fill up my tank with E85 he came back later and said he filled it up with E98. Which brought my overall mix in my tank up to about 60%.

 

[We're on Boost]

I buy it with a local store that sells industrial chemicals. I can buy per liter by bringing my own pail or 20L pail, 50L or 200L drum. It costs $1.0~1.3USD per liter.

That's prepared, good but kinda expensive. If you can source pure methanol locally, it would be much cheaper.

That's about $4 per gallon then. That is really cheap. Our ordinary pump gas here lately is about $4 per gallon.

 

[1990TSIAWDTALON]

Snow Performance SNO-40008 Boost Juice (Case of 4 Gallons), 1 Pack

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$50 for 4 gallons on Amazon of 50/50 water meth

I'll chime in for a second then jump back out.
When I was running my 20g setup on my 10:1 motor, the Boost Juice "helped" but was not the cure all to what kind of monster I had built. It allowed me a few more degrees of timing from 5 to maybe 9 but when I went up to the Holset frame turbo setup along with E85, the whole thing LOVED it. It is really a super fast and fun car. I think the increase was totally from the ethanol and even more timing (15-17*) for getting the most out of my motors. If you have 91 like we do here in Kansas, the water/meth injection will help, just know you have more if you can go flex fuel as has been mentioned. My car is setup for it and I just pull up and fill up and the maps all adjust for less octane and they lower timing and adjust fuel a little. Its a really nice option and my cars have the "Flex Fuel" emblems on the back of them. In our cars, thats means "watch out" .
Marty
Note: Current E85 price here is $2.75/gallon and thats highway robbery!!!

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