E85 Conversion and Tuning Thread

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driftin_sr20det
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Hey would anybody have any knowledge on how much boost can be ran with 370cc's? I'm finishing up my build and going to break it in on the 270cc with a gas/e85 blend, and have a set of 370's to throw in when I go straight e85. I have a t04b .60/.58, 255lph pump, and a 5lb wastegate spring. Won't have a wideband right away, is the only reason that I ask what my safe limit is. Figured 5-7psi range.


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nelson8708
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actually 370cc are good for N/A on e85 but, no boost. Some people are swapping them in and throw e85 in the tank. No tuning since e85 needs that much more fuel.

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driftin_sr20det
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Is it really any different then running a stock KA on boost? A few pounds is allowable but not too much, I figured it would be the same with the e85 if not a little better considering its love of compression. I guess I should break down and buy a wideband just to give myself peace of mind.

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nelson8708
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you dont see to many stock ka's with no fuel control what so ever last very long even if its on low boost. If your going to get injectors i would just get bigger ones. You could go with 370cc and a 10 or 12:1 FMU on top of that but, it seems like a waste of time a money to me.

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GTR PrYdE
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driftin_sr20det wrote:Is it really any different then running a stock KA on boost? A few pounds is allowable but not too much, I figured it would be the same with the e85 if not a little better considering its love of compression. I guess I should break down and buy a wideband just to give myself peace of mind.
Running E85 and 370cc's = 93oct and stock 270cc's

How much power can you make on stock injectors? 160-170whp?

So... run like 1-2psi...? Not a good idea. Do it right and save your engine

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driftin_sr20det
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Ahh, thanks for smashing my dreams. It's alright. I'm just going to have to work that out. Thanks for the info.

undesiredshoe
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Hey guys, I thought Id share my experiences with e85. I have a stock block ka24e thats been running e85 for the past 7 months. The car is currently boosted with a turbonetics t3/t4, 460cc injectors, n60 maf, and other stuff. I was able to run a 9.5 in the 1/8 at 8-9 psi with really retarded timing. The timing is probably low enough to run 20+ psi .

Come spring, ill be ordering some bigger injectors and maybe an n62 maf and push the stock sohc to the limits. HP figures will be posted if all goes well.

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Get that timing bumped up man. The whole point of the E85 is that you DON'T have to retard the timing back, as it won't detonate at the power levels you're at. I was running my CA18DET at 8psi and 30° total timing. It could only handle about 15° total timing on 91 octane. (It's a high compression motor)

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nelson8708
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Its the first time in a while i have been excited to work on my car but, i have big plans next year along with a friendly competition ...I got my 1000cc injectors in the mail the other day and just to make sure i didnt get screwed i went and had them flow tested. The company i bought them from (Advanced Fuel Injection) said they were balanced with in 1% but, i want to make sure that just wasnt a lie to help sell them. They are with in 1% of each other which is pretty impressive for 4 1000cc injectors to be with in 10cc of each other (mine are with in 5cc ). Over winter my plans are:

-Re-do IC pipes to clean up the engine bay-Buy pig tail for my z32 mafs (and install new injectors)-Finish installing e85 friendly fuel lines (engine bay lines done already)-Recirc Dump tube (tired of being loud)-Put a flex section in my exhaust (all solid pipe at the moment )-Tune for e85 and have some fun this year (only made it out maybe 6 times this whole season with the car.)

E85 is a 1.60 @ gallon by my house right now

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Sweeet dude...keep us updated on the tuning. I'll be using E85 as a subinjection. Meth is just to friggin expensive these days.

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480sx
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Your Text »
nelson8708 wrote: E85 is a 1.60 @ gallon by my house right now


Damn dude, that makes me want to run E real bad. I would LOVE to see that kind of dollar-gallon ratio when im filling up at the pump.. Nostalgic or something lol.

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nelson8708
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480sx wrote:Your Text »

Damn dude, that makes me want to run E real bad. I would LOVE to see that kind of dollar-gallon ratio when im filling up at the pump.. Nostalgic or something lol.
I'm sure it wont be like that very long. I just hope when gas goes back up there will be enough e85 plants to keep the prices down a little more than it did this past summer. Everything in colorado seems to run on the stuff so there is a growing market for it. Defintally keep you guys updated on the progress though.

1.60 is nice but, when gas is 2.10 its not as big of a deal. Still nice to see that 1 dollar sign though.

How's that leasing job treating you WD?

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nelson8708
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Bump to help clear up some timing Questions people might have when switching to e85. Quote is from a e85 tuning forum i'm on:

[quote=""hotrod""]Quote »4. When you say e85 burns faster than gas at power mixtures are you comparing it to 105 or 93 octane gas? I was under the impression that e85 burned slower than gas (93 pump).[/quote]That is a common belief but is not supported by a couple lines of evidence. E85 will allow the use of very large ignition advance numbers but that does not mean it needs lots of ignition advance.

In tests University of Michigan did some tests on small engines where they adjusted them for MBT timing (minimum best torque timing) while running the engines on E85. At low loads the engines wanted exactly the same ignition timing that they did on gasoline. They showed a very slight tendency to use less timing under high load.

To find MBT timing, near torque peak advance timing until you hit your max number, then start backing off the timing until you can just detect about a 1% drop in torque. That is you MBT timing. Because of ethanol's high detonation resistance it will allow you to advance the timing way beyond that number but you gain very little other that causing huge increases in cylinder pressures and stress on bearings and head gaskets.

On a 400 hp engine you would be giving up only 4 hp to gain huge increases in safety on the tune, and protection against things like unplanned lean outs etc. It is a tuning principle that has been in use for over a hundred years by professions (you know like the guys that designed supercharged WWII fighter plane engines, where maximum performance was a matter of life and death).

Quote »Under light loads does e85 burn slower? I was told you should add alittle timing in that area to help get some mpg's back.[/quote]It burns about the same speed as gasoline under light load. Lots of folks do that and it is harmless as at light load you can't hurt the engine with extra timing (within reason). What you are actually doing it creating an artificially high compression ratio under light load by starting the burn early and raising cylinder pressures, and cylinder temperatures for a cleaner burn. Some engines like it others don't care, I think it depends on cylinder head design and quench and the mixture motion in that particular engine.

Ethanol's burn speed changes much more drastically than gasoline does as fuel air mixture changes. At rich max power mixtures it burns faster, when too rich or too lean it burns at the same speed as gasoline. If you change your fuel air mixture by any significant amount you need to revisit timing at that load setting too, because you have changed the mixtures burn rate.

Larry[/quote][quote=""hotrod""]Quote » The way it was orginally explained to me is that since e85 is a higher octane fuel it burns slower and needs the extra timing.....consider that erased from the memory banks[/quote]Yes that phrase should read higher octane fuel will allow more ignition advance, but it may not need more ignition advance.

Where people go wrong is many engines cannot run ideal ignition timing for the fuel due to its low octane. When they put high octane fuel in it then for the first time, they can run proper timing which in their case is more timing than is possible on low octane fuel. They are mixing up the cause and the effect. The ideal ignition timing is determined by the mechanical design of the engine. How much mixture motion it has, how the cam and valve timing events are timed, cylinder head design, squish in the combustion chamber, etc. and is largely a fixed number. You then try to find a fuel that will allow you to run enough timing to get to that ideal timing to put max cylinder pressure in the area of 12-14 degrees after top dead center. They also forget burn speed changes with fuel air mixture. A rich max power mixture burns quite a bit faster than a lean idle fuel air mixture, so the ideal timing changes with fuel mixture too.

That is why entire engine families have very similar ignition timing. You talk to two small block Chevy builders that live 3000 miles apart and I bet their ignition timing recommendations for similar engine builds is within about 2 degrees of timing, frequently in the low mid 30 degree range. The new fast burn heads will be on the low end of that range and the classic muscle car era heads will want in the mid 30 degree range. The old Chrysler Hemi's had less mixture motion due to the hemispherical cylinder head and obstruction of the flame front by high dome pistons, and some of them wanted 40 degrees of advance to make big power. It was not the fuel it was the engine design.

Larry[/quote]I have also finished up my winter modifications and even got a set of coilovers last week. Once i run the tank empty of this old gas from last season the e85 or should i say e70 will be going in with the 1000cc injectors. I already have made a base map for it.


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nelson8708 wrote:
How's that leasing job treating you WD?
Wow...guess I missed that one aye...

I actually got laid off 2 months ago. No worries though, I'm doing the Mr Mom thing and I'm getting ready to open up my own business. Turbo's and Subinjection stuff FTMFW

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GTR PrYdE
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Good Luck!

Have the New Bosch 1000cc's been mentioned in this thread yet?

A must have for E85... considering they're the best of both worlds with tuning and flowing up to 1500cc's worth of fuel

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They'll flow 1500cc of fuel at 100psi base pressure. Most fuel pumps won't be producing a lot of volume at that pressure.

Regardless, the new Bosch 1000cc injectors are VERY awesome from what I hear and I hope to be running them on my CA18 this year.

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GTR PrYdE
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float_6969 wrote:They'll flow 1500cc of fuel at 100psi base pressure. Most fuel pumps won't be producing a lot of volume at that pressure.

Regardless, the new Bosch 1000cc injectors are VERY awesome from what I hear and I hope to be running them on my CA18 this year.
Yup! 100 base fp is alot, but with the lack of 240 fuel systems, I would suspect a dual walbro (intank and inline) or aftermarket external fuel pump (weldon) would be necessary.

I'd do a fuel cell, external fuel pump for E85 when the time comes

CrazyInteg
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Make sure you change the fuel filter after running a tank of E85. That's no joke!

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nelson8708
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rule of thumb is 500 miles....its a good idea to have a new fuel filter in your car and the tools you need to change it for the first tank or two incase it clogs up before you change it.

Dimebag-s13
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ive also been looking into this for my s13 and with the research i have gathered and what not i think once i get enough money to afford to switch over i will also be switching to e85 =D i can see a lot of positive results in thin and hopefully within the next year or 2 vgt aftermarket turbos might be an option

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nelson8708 wrote:I dont know if any of you watch mad money on the today show but, i caught a little bit of it this evening and the guy was a moron when he came to a question about e85. He said it takes 30% of the corn crop to produce enough e85 to cancel out 3% of the gas we use. I guess he doesnt know that most e85 now it produced from switch blade grass and paper based waste products. On top of that i think he was being paid by some of the gas companies for some of the other things he said. He said to ease the pain of paying for gas would be to buy shares of gas companies and use the dividends to ease the pain. He does have a point, but the dividends would be so small unless you purchased a crap load of shares. He even said that we should be paying around 6$ a gallon instead of 4.00-4.50$ a gallon. It seemed that since he was talking trash about e85 and said to invest in gas companies that he might have been paid to help give the gas companies a good name.

"If i see him i want to kick him square in the nuts!" (cartman voice)
Wise man, ahead of the times. Jon Stewart went ahead and kicked him in the nuts for us. That puke!

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nelson8708
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Yeah, i saw that and loved every minute of it. I am running e85 now and i would say that i love it but, am having trouble tuning it. For some reason it goes super rich if i lay into it for more than a second. I started with 30's for the fuel cell values and now and down to 5's with the same result still. I'm going to make a boost leak tester to see if i have a leak some where. I doubt it though because it ran fine on gas and i didn't change anything when i made the switch to e85. I hope to have it figured out and running good soon.

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Zriuz
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I tune lot of hondas and have various cars including my personal N/A B18C 14.7:1 on E85, i always use staged injectors when ever i can to help out with driveability. E85 is not that abundant on my area, so i always use it as a cheap alternative to vp fuel. add a couple of oz of 2 stroke oil so you don't corrode stuff down the lines. E85 burns slower as oppose to what i read here, that why if you look at timing maps from a 91oct vs E85, E85 will have as much as 8* more timing advance.

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nelson8708
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boost leak FTW ....She runs good and pulls like crazy for 9psi. Anyone think 12.5:1 is too lean on e85? Once i get my nsvrm board i will throw the 96lb injectors in and she what i can make on 1 bar.

The only thing i need to figure out now is why my egt's are so high. After just cruising on the interstate and not even hitting boost i pop my hood and the turbine / part of the manifold are red. You can only see it when its pitch black outside and there are no lights. Cruising afr is 14.5:1-15:1 and my cam timing is correct along with my ign timing. I'm using stock timing values on the light load portion of the timing map. When i had my t25 / fmu setup part of the manifold would glow red but, the turbine would not and that was with a completely stock ecu. I'm going to drive it later this week / weekend and bump the timing at the dizzy 3 degrees both ways to see if that helps. As long as the turbine is not red......... i'll that that

Any ideas

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The glowing manifold typically happens from too much timing retard. Whats happening is that it's still burning as it's going into the manifold bumping up the temperature. That's likely the cause of your high EGT's as well. Add some timing and see if it doesn't go away. Hope that helps.

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nelson8708
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At this point i'm just going to let it ride. After thinking about how my t25 (stock ecu and timing) setup the transition from the log to the turbo was always red as well. However on this manifold the turbo flange is right on the log vs having about 2" of square tubing. So i think the exhaust gases are trying to figure out which way to go causing that part of the manifold to be red. Only the flange on the manifold is red and about 2" on to the turbine....not the whole thing. I played with the timing last night by pulling 3 degrees and it was still red and i dont think its retarded because the car would have a lot less power. I might play with advancing the timing later this week but, for the most part I just think its the nature of the beast (log manifold).

^that is the only part that is redMeijer needs to cut their grass

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nelson8708
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the limit of the stock ecu + resistors is 1000cc injectors ...my idle is around 11:1 but, cruising is 14.7:1. Now that i have the injectors to back up my desired boost level its going to 14psi. I'm wanting to trap 110 at the strip on street tires with open diff

Hopefully she will last this season on that boost level....also hoping for around 280-300whp with a little more than that in torque @ 14psi

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sorrowfulkiller
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nelson8708 wrote:the limit of the stock ecu + resistors is 1000cc injectors ...my idle is around 11:1 but, cruising is 14.7:1. Now that i have the injectors to back up my desired boost level its going to 14psi. I'm wanting to trap 110 at the strip on street tires with open diff

Hopefully she will last this season on that boost level....also hoping for around 280-300whp with a little more than that in torque @ 14psi
It would be a good idea depending on your location to keep afr near idle lower, for cold starts.

As you said before that you're running 12.5 AFR at WOT. As long as you are not knocking then don't worry about it, you may want to richen it to 12:1 though to keep your manifold from glowing (warping flanges sucks a**)

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nelson8708
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i'm around 12.2:1 now under boost. The difference between 12.5 and 12.0 is not going to affect my egt's that much. It glows at idle and i think the log manifold is at fault (timing is dead on). I gave up tuning the 1000's since all i have is a chip burner at the moment and put the 460cc injectors back in. It took a couple hours to get it to idle making trip back and forth to the chip burner but, i got my idle up to 13:1..(with the 1000cc boys)...11:1 was washing down my cylinder walls. I need to put a new clutch in and install the new turbo manifold i picked up this weekend and once i get all that done and get some real time tuning stuff the boost will go back up.

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sorrowfulkiller
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it could very well be just the manifold, but I'm going to bet that your timing is a bit off though like someone else said.

E85 Generally runs 200 degrees cooler egt's, and if your manifold is red, something is wrong.

then again, if you are getting a new manifold, swap the manifolds without changing the tune and see if that does stop the glowing mani.

There's a reason I don't like cast manifolds. Bad flow and absolutely have to replace them if they crack.


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