Using lower percentages of ethanol... (E20,E30,E50)

[Calan]

Being a tech head, I'd love to wire an ethanol sensor up to ECMLink...but it just isn't cost effective or practical for me. And to be honest, I never have any problem with different blends; I just plug the gallons of each into my spreadsheet along with the ethanol % in the gas and E85, adjust global fuel, and get on down the road; no problem. Now, goo on the other hand...

As for testing, I have -AN lines and everything is super easy to get to, so I just pull the line off the rail outlet and drain a bit into a jar every now and then. I also collect a bit from the pump at the station once in a while and test it, just to keep them honest.

One thing I think a lot of people don't consider is ethanol's affinity for water and it's shelf life. With any ethanol-blended fuel, octane drops significantly with water absorption and phase separation, and this can happen very rapidly. Depending on the humidity and other factors, a tank of E85 may lose 3-5 octane points in as little as a couple of weeks due to this...so it needs to be cycled and replaced at very short intervals.

BTW - Thanks for the link to that other tester.

 

[forcefed86]

Being a tech head, I'd love to wire an ethanol sensor up to ECMLink...but it just isn't cost effective or practical for me. And to be honest, I never have any problem with different blends; I just plug the gallons of each into my calculator along with the ethanol % in the gas and E85, adjust global fuel, and get on down the road. Now goo on the other hand...

As for testing, I have -AN lines and everything is super easy to get to, so I just pull the line off the rail outlet and drain a bit into a jar every now and then. I also collect a bit from the pump and test it once in a while just to keep them honest.

One thing I think a lot of people don't consider is ethanol's affinity for water and it's shelf life. With any ethanol-blended fuel, octane drops significantly with water absorption and phase separation, and this can happen very rapidly. Depending on the humidity and other factors, a tank of E85 may lose 3-5 octane points in as little as a couple of weeks due to this...so it needs to be cycled and replaced at very short intervals.

BTW - Thanks for the link to that other tester.

I can see a vial working great for guys that run e85. It is what I have been doing as well. But if your mixing and matching going for 40-50-60% blends and using different gas stations all the time I’d want an onboard display of some sort. Just personal preference I suppose. I’m using SD and Jakal to tune at the moment so I don’t have the luxury of additional 5v inputs.

Water is a bummer. My car has been on jack stands for a 3 months. I’ll be filling up immediately w/ 91 octane and running a tank through. I work in aircraft and it is typical to drain the water from the fuel sumps before each flight. Installing a sump fitting similar to this on the bottom of the tank for us E85 guys may be beneficial. And also cheap…

49F9798-52, BJ1000ASI, Antique Aircraft Quick Fuel Drain Valve DFWairparts.com

 

[T is for TURBO]

Holy information bomb. Thanks again Craig. It looks like I have some research ahead of me.

I skimmed through your ECMLink write up and it really had me thinking about what I will actually be buying from the pump. For me, since I don't have a problem with mixing my own gas, as my car isn't a DD, testing the fuel I get for ethanol content shouldn't a problem. I'll just get the E85, test it, and mix in "pure" 93 or 91 (what ever I can get) to get an optimal octane and ethanol/petrol ratio.

And maybe if I get REAL ambitious, I'll test the SG of the "pure" gas at a couple of stations for an even more optimal mixture.

I can see a vial working great for guys that run e85. It is what I have been doing as well. But if your mixing and matching going for 40-50-60% blends and using different gas stations all the time I’d want an onboard display of some sort.

I agree. I personally wouldn't trust one stations e85 to anothers, same for petrol. So if your mixing and matching from one station to the next, the margine of dissimilarity could be rather extensive. If you had a concervative tune, it would probably be fine with out something like that, but if you were really pushing your tune to the edge, one bad fill-up could cost your engine

By the way Craig, ever since you strolled into this thread with your nerd glasses on, I've been finding myself deeper and deeper in this subject. To the point of me starting to researching how to make my own ethanol.

 

[forcefed86]

Holy information bomb. Thanks again Craig. It looks like I have some research ahead of me.

I skimmed through your ECMLink write up and it really had me thinking about what I will actually be buying from the pump. For me, since I don't have a problem with mixing my own gas, as my car isn't a DD, testing the fuel I get for ethanol content shouldn't a problem. I'll just get the E85, test it, and mix in "pure" 93 or 91 (what ever I can get) to get an optimal octane and ethanol/petrol ratio.

And maybe if I get REAL ambitious, I'll test the SG of the "pure" gas at a couple of stations for an even more optimal mixture.

If convenience isn't big issue, you can grab some gas cans and head to a boat marina. Boaters seem to hate ethanol and most filling stations advertise "NO ETHANOL". At least they do in KS and back in FL. (usually had 93oct as well) Just be prepared to pay 10-25cents more a gallon for it.

 

[Calan]

By the way Craig, ever since you strolled into this thread with your nerd glasses on, I've been finding myself deeper and deeper in this subject. To the point of me starting to researching how to make my own ethanol.

Yeah.... that sounds like me.

Shawn... since you are running ECMLink, it's really not that big of a deal to switch between different blends, even if you have some
unknown mix left in the tank. Just enter the quantity and % estimates of gas and E85 into the spreadsheet I linked to, and plug the resulting stoich value into Link's global fuel calculator to get close... then watch your fuel trims at a steady 3k RPM cruise for a few miles and adjust global fuel until they are back to zero. That should put you very close to where you were with the other fuel.

The only caveat to this is when you have injectors that behave quite a bit differently with different types of fuels. In that case, it takes a little longer to get things back to normal, because you may have to make minor adjustments to injector dead times or even the airflow/SD tables to compensate for a different injector response curve.

After just a few times of going through this process, you'll probably have a set of log templates that you can just load up, or at least a very good idea of what to enter for global fuel. It usually only takes me about 5-10 minutes to get dialed right back in after I switch to a different blend percentage, whether intentional or not.

 

[T is for TURBO]

If convenience isn't big issue, you can grab some gas cans and head to a boat marina. Boaters seem to hate ethanol and most filling stations advertise “NO ETHANOL”. At least they do in KS and back in FL. (usually had 93oct as well) Just be prepared to pay 10-25cents more a gallon for it.

Good to know! Luckily, last time I was at a station that had 93 around here, it said "No Ethanol Added" hopefully thats still the case!

 

[Calan]

...I've been finding myself deeper and deeper in this subject.

Then you should love this little bit of reading: Changes In Gasoline IV

Although I'm a bit skeptical on a couple of comments they make, it is a great resource for about anything you'd want to know about fuels.


(I meant to post this earlier, but forgot about it).

 

[T is for TURBO]

Thanks! Looks like that should keep me busy for a while!

 

[forcefed86]

For what it's worth I was able to run 28-29 psi on the evo8 timing map with e30. This map is pretty insane though. It feels horrible until boost gets to 15-20psi, then it does pull like a freight train.

here is the Evo 8 timing map.

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To my amazement a new blender station just appeared less than a mile from my house this week. They have e50! So I hope to tweak the evo timing map quite a bit and give the e50 a go.

Woot!

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[DSMReviver]

forcefed86 thats as good news for you man. I wish there were e50 optiona in my area.

Coming back to the goo/tar issues, the higher gasoline content will certainly control goo/tar and even make it all disappeared all together. And face it, non of our car is going to see 500+ hp on our dd's. why not just use minimal ethanol content much as possible to still control knock. What we want is still to use plenty of gasoline for its good cleaning properties and not have to worry about goo/tar. I would be sick to have to clean my fuel system and check for tar every few thousand miles. That will become annoying very quickly. Plus E50 should have high enough octane to run more boost. If thats not enough go with higher E content.

what should the fuel/air ratio be set for E50 in our car? i always wounder that because we know where to set it at for E85 but the same can't be applied to lower Ethanol content gasoline. Anybody know of any air/fuel calculator for E50 content that they would like to share?

 

[Calan]

And face it, non of our car is going to see 500+ hp on our dd's.

Ehhh... why not?

FWIW - I've been running E85 pretty much non-stop, adding just a bit of Seafoam to the tank every now and then. So far, no goo or other issues at all.

 

[DSMReviver]

Ehhh... why not?

FWIW - I've been running E85 pretty much non-stop, adding just a bit of Seafoam to the tank every now and then. So far, no goo or other issues at all.

Gas prices soaring up nobody can afford to

Calan, did you fix for E85 goo problem? Awhile back you were having issues. I am glad things are going in the right direction for ya Seafoam did the trick?

 

[Calan]

No more issues at all since the goo from hell episode.

 

[DSMReviver]

No more issues at all since the goo from hell episode.

That is strange it come and gone like the Flu season. I don't know if the winter blend E85 might have to do with something (different formulation). Of course im just speculating but when i finally switch to E something ill be keeping seafoam by my side.

 

[forcefed86]

I just run a half tank full of regular fuel each month. I have another map I load to do this. Although when in a bind I dropped my base fuel press to 23psi or so and this seemed to get the car lean enough to run the mostly pump mix. I'd be interested to see if a few drops of sea foam work as well as straight petrol on the goo, but thats a diff topic.

If the Wb02 is setup on a gas scale, your AFR readings will not change with the change in fuel. You will as always shoot for the 10-12.5 range depending on personal preference. The less alcohol you use the smaller the peak power AFR window will be. To be on the safe side I usually run it a bit rich. I tuned 11.8 on e85. I dropped to 10.8 on e30. Prob shoot for around 11.0 on e50. Each combo/tuners goes his own way there though.

 

[T is for TURBO]

I was just thinking about this thread the other day. The local ethenal station is no longer an ethanol station. Evidently the ethanol supplier went bankrupt. So it looks like I either have to stick with 93 Pump, or find another Ethanol supplier. My friend (a chemist) and I have talked about making a still.

 

[forcefed86]

I was just thinking about this thread the other day. The local ethenal station is no longer an ethanol station. Evidently the ethanol supplier went bankrupt. So it looks like I either have to stick with 93 Pump, or find another Ethanol supplier. My friend (a chemist) and I have talked about making a still.

Raw materials are to expensive. Go with a good meth inj kit and callit a day...

 

[T is for TURBO]

Raw materials are to expensive. Go with a good meth inj kit and callit a day...

I'm aware, . It was a pipe dream from the beginning

 

[forcefed86]

FWIW I've been running e50 for a few months now. Getting 3-5 more MPG is seems with no negative effects. Also I've been able to push up to 32psi on my 1000cc delphis with 1 TT supra pump on the factory fuel lines.

Trapped 124.5 in the 1/4 last weekend at 30-32psi. (creeps slightly). Not record breaking numbers for an hx40 at those boost levels, but I'm happy with it. Timing at roughly 16* after peak torque.

 

[Calan]

I'm seriously thinking about trying some E100.