Thread: anyone running e85? here are my experiences

I'm running E85 in my Evo as well as 75% of the Evo owners here in Colorado. It makes for some sick power.

-E

I plan to use this but not sure yet.....how's it going Erich???

E85 has a different stoichometric air fuel ratio than gasoline's 14.7. The stoich AFR for E85 (at 85% Ethanol) is 9.76. The stoich value represents an ideal perfect burn of the fuel usually used at part throttle conditions. Full throttle conditions require a richer mixture than stoich to prevent the dreaded detonation, or pinging.

However most AFR gauges you can purchase to display a numerical value of the AFR, are showing you values for gasoline. This is where it can get tricky, and it's important to understand how this ratio works on both gasoline and ethanol-based fuel.

All AFR's regardless of fuel type work off of a common number called Lambda. A value of 1.0 in Lambda represents the stoich for any fuel. Gasoline is Lambda 1.0 at stoich. E85 is Lambda 1.0 at stoich.

If you already have a standard gasoline AFR meter hooked to a wideband O2 sensor, you can still use the displayed gasoline AFRs in determining your engine's true AFR. For example, if your gasoline meter is showing 14.7, then we know this is Lamda of 1.0. The equivelent on the E85 side is around 9.7. Therefore you can conclude that the 14.7 you see on the gauge is a true AFR of 9.7. This allows you to effectively use existing gasoline AFR components or software to tune an E85 Mustang without buying special equipment. Simply use the same target AFRs on your gasoline gauge that you normally targeted for gasolline.

is this true?

well he is now running 880cc injectors so a fuel pressure regulator is not needed. on top of this, he is still running the standard 180sx fuel lines.....therefore running more pressure is probably something we dont want to do until these are changed.

Actually there would be no real harm in running higher pressure as its only in the rail, and we will at some stage, but it was a matter of working against a dead line to get the car ready for a drift comp, and just wanted to gett it running half decent and quick, so didnt have time to wait for a fpr

i will most probably run this fuel on mine, will be running a set of sard 850cc's and might go 4 bar as well to be safe.

what regulators do you boys normally use? and roughly how much?

The reason i ask is that people on this site seem to be cheap.......and if they have found a cheap option that works..well yeah let me hear it. if they are proven i will buy two. Otherwise it will be a nismo or sard item most likely

Not true.

This is true.



When tuning with E85 you can treat A/F ratios the same as you did with gasoline as long as you're using an oxygen sensor to do the readings.

Reread the first statement... It IS true.

Not 100% sure on value but stoich is NOT the same as unleaded pump gas.

Yah, I see what you mean. I was confused when reading it.
The part about gasoline stoich at 14.7:1 is true. The part about E85 stoic at 9.76:1 is true. From the wording it seemed to be a typo, and when the gauge reads 14.7 A/F you'll really be at lambda 9.7 for E85, which is not true.
Sorry for the confusion. =/