Anybody using E85 in a 'normal' car?

Blitzkrieger

I've been looking into getting a Full Flex Gold fitted to my car so I can run on E85. I reckon if I get one from the US it will pay for itself after 46 fill-ups. Has anyone here converted their car to run on E85 and had good/bad experiences?

For anyone wondering, E85 is a mixture of 15% petrol and 85% bioethanol. AFAIK it's about 30 cents a litre cheaper than petrol. The other upshots are you get more power from your engine, lower emissions and better fuel economy. It seems too good to be true but I've been looking at a couple of different American websites where individuals seem to verify the claims. They mentioned some cold-start problems but I don't know if it would get cold enough here to be a problem, and there's a simple solution of just adding more petrol to the mix.

The unit itself seems to act as a sort of piggy-back ECU. It monitors information from the ECU to determine what sort of fuel you're using and adjusts the fuel injectors accordingly. Because of this, if you can't find E85 you can use regular unleaded.

46 fill-ups for me is about a year's worth of driving but it's a bit of a fuzzy number too. Because the E85 is cheaper, fill-ups would cost me less so that might stretch out a bit due to getting more fuel for my bobs. The increased fuel economy is an unknown as well so that might bring the number of fill-ups down a bit. I also expect the price of petrol to go up faster than the cost of E85 so you might start making savings sooner.

nialler

I'm in the states at the moment and as far as I'm concerned from what I have read and from what I have seen over here you get less fuel efficiency from E85 and lower power output I've been in Lincolns & most of the GM range at a show and all the flexi fuel cars have a fair bit less fuel efficiency than standard petrol.

I may have been reading it incorrectly but I would check into it before hand.

Stephen

With the BioPower Saabs you get more power but less fuel economy on E85, but even with the reduced economy it is still cheaper than running on petrol.

.Longshanks.

I was always under the impression that a mixture of petrol and bioethanol increased performance but consumption got worse. The other upshot was that the emmissions were reduced.....
I'll stand corrected if somebody else knows better.

Blitzkrieger

The first article I read about E85 concerned a Lotus Exige concept car. They were getting silly power out of the thing but terrible fuel economy. Because of the lower fuel economy their emissions were bad too. They reckoned saving money-wise would come from it being so much cheaper than petrol that the extra fuel burnt wouldn't matter, and the gain on C02 was coming from crops planted to produce the biofuel rather than from the car itself. You can see why I'm skeptical about the claims being made of FFG users in the states.

maidhc

Blitzkrieger wrote:

They reckoned saving money-wise would come from it being so much cheaper than petrol that the extra fuel burnt wouldn't matter, and the gain on C02 was coming from crops planted to produce the biofuel rather than from the car itself.

I would think security of supply is the important thing in the US though. Of course California cares about climate change (so would I if we had california's climate...), but as you rightly mention ethanol can be distilled from crops.

The E85 sold in Ireland is from cows though. Who produce their own c02 emissions

SouperComputer

The kilo-calorific value of E85 is lower than that of Petrol, so most cars over here end up filling more regularly as the volume comsumed is greater. The main reason to use it is for environmental reasons, you wont save a lot of money on it. At least at current prices over here anyway.

On the other hand, its has a very high octane equivilant, so you can use high compression ratios and produce very decent peformance, at the further sacrifice of economy of course! The Saab mentioned above is a good example, running E85 helps it run higher boost.

Stephen

Yeah, my neighbour has a 2.0t 9-5 biopower, apparently it gets 30bhp more on the E85.

Blitzkrieger

That's pretty much what strangers with no credibility were saying on wikipedia. They were quoting up to 25% less fuel economy for a normally aspirated engine but only about a 10% loss for a turbo charged engine with a 5% increase in power. If the conversion was close to cost-neutral I'd probably go for it for the power gain. TBH I think I'd be gambling that the price difference between petrol and E85 is going to get bigger. I doubt if our 'green' goverment will let that happen though - they'll probably heap more taxes on the E85 as the price of oil goes up.

mike65

Juts looking at prices, in UK you pay twice what the yanks do, God only knows what you'd pay here if there is a distibutor.

Mike.

maidhc

mike65 wrote:

Juts looking at prices, in UK you pay twice what the yanks do, God only knows what you'd pay here if there is a distibutor.

Mike.

http://www.maxol.ie/E85/index.html

I'd love to get my Capri set up to run on E85 at some point. It shouldn't be too hard to do if there is still someone in the world who can tune cars that are not amenable to having a laptop plugged into them.

rowanh

The government needs people to start using e85 over the next few years, with the carbon tax. I emailed fianna fail and the green party asking them how they are planning on doing this, promoting its use etc neither have given me any info yet. They really should get the price low enough that there is a good reason to switch, at the moment the lower miles per tank you get make it possibly slightly more expensive than petrol.

Depending on your car i dont think you will get a power difference inless your car is mapped for the higher octane fuel. I was thinking of converting to it as my car is mapped to 100RON petrol and a remap will work out at around 1k after buying a programmable ecu, then though i was told by a firned of mine who is sort of a mechanic/engineer that there could be lots of problems and hte eninge will blow up. Thats only for my car though should be fine for most engines.

R.O.R

As far as I'm aware the VAT rebate on alternative fuels is only until December 2007. Whether or not something else is introduced to replace the VAT rebate I'm not sure.

With only the Maxol selling E85 currently there is no point changing over at the moment unless you live near one.

Del2005

AFAIK the EU is going the other way and trying to make all petrol E10. All cars will run on this and you'll get a bigger hit as more cars will be using less fossil fuels.

Also don't forget that the rush to use biofuels is leading to a lot of environmental damage in some 3rd world countries and also will push up the price of Beer!!

Edit/ Forgot to add, that with E85 giving ~30% reduction in MPG, you have to make sure that the E85 is more the 30% cheaper then ordinary petrol to save any money.

rowanh

Del2005 wrote:

Also don't forget that the rush to use biofuels is leading to a lot of environmental damage in some 3rd world countries and also will push up the price of Beer!!

I think thats really only brazil, they have a lot of cars running on it, i think its more down to bad planning and people looking for profit that is causing it rather than necessity. Though someone did say to me before on a forum if the whole of ireland was running cars on ethanol it would take the entire worlds crops to run it. Not sure if thats true though.

Gerry

Lets try to concentrate on how to run it in normal cars. ( ie, non flex-fuel cars ).
Blitzkrieger, theres a load of witchcraft on the internet about e85. From scaremongering about it ruining your engine, fuel lines etc, to people parrotting figures about the increased fuel consumption.
The only sensible findings I've seen on the internet regarding its usage in ordinary cars is as follows:
Cars after about 1986 have fuel lines rated for E10. So, you can push this margin to E20 - E30 without risking too much.

E85 has an octane rating of 104, so its far less vulnerable to detonation.
To take advantage of this, you need either:

A higher compression naturally aspirated engine
OR a turbo charged engine.

The problem with naturally aspirated flex fuel cars is that most of them retain the standard compression ratio, so you can run them on 100% petrol, without detonation.
This means they don't make any extra power on e85, and because of the reduced efficiency, the fuel consumption suffers more than it needs to.

Turbo cars are better, hence the saab biopower shows a power increase.
Because its still flex fuel, the compression ratio has been left alone. So, I look forward to a version where the compression is increased to that of a standard n/a car.

Anyway..
You need more E85 to get a proper stoichometric mixture. On pure petrol, its 1 part petrol to 14.7 parts air. On e85, its more like 12:1.
If your fuel injection system is closed loop ( ie with o2 sensor and cat ), it will try to automatically adapt to get the correct mixture.
If it runs out of fuel injection capacity ( ie if it is injecting fuel 100% of the time, and still cannot achieve proper mixture ), or it may not be able to adapt outside of a particular preset range. it may throw a check engine light. Or it may not.
This will apply to most cars after 1991.

If it doesn't have a closed loop system ( ie, if it cannot monitor the exhaust to correct the mixture ) you will need to adjust it yourself.

So, most cars will have the o2 sensor, and an engine management system that can adapt somewhat. The only place to go from there is to run it yourself.

I've tried running it in my car, a 91 saab 900 turbo. Its a turbocharged petrol engine, with about 30% overhead left in the fuel injection system, and has a relatively modern fuel injection system. So I decided I'd try and reap some of the benefits. I've tried running various amounts of it.

Normally on a turbo car, the ignition is retarded on boost to avoid detonation. I advanced the timing 5 degrees and..
With 20-40% ethanol, I notice that I still get full boost. It also seems to make boost easier, without being influenced as much by the outside temperature.
I think that this is due to one of the other advantages of e85, there is more fuel, and this cools the mixture a bit.
The boost on my car is being limited by some other unknown factor, the boost controller is seeing knock and is pulling back the boost, so I don't see any extra boost. Hopefully, eventually I'll sort this.

With 50% ethanol, there doesn't seem to be any improvement. I don't see any check engine light, but I don't want to push it any further.
I did try about 65% ethanol once, and that resulted in less boost, I think at that stage it was starting to run lean.

Maidhc - I'm considering, at some stage, starting a business to convert older cars to modern engine management, and running them on e85 ( or e100 when that is available ) The suitability varies between cars, but I think it should be possible to replace fuel system components with materials resistant to ethanol, and get the head skimmed for more compression, valve seats hardened, etc.

Sorry for the long post, hopefully someone finds it useful

rowanh

Interesting post gerry,

With the full flex fuel converter do you see me having a problme running an imprexa wrx mapped to 100 ron fuel on it? You seem to have a fairly good idea of how it worked in your car. Where you running it in your car with no modification at all? I am finding the info on the internet vauge and contrdictory to the point that i had kind of given up on it.

Gerry

I was running it with no mods at all, I advanced the timing to take advantage of it somewhat, but this is easy on my car since its just got an old fashioned distributor. But I wasn't running it at more than half strength, and my car isn't worth that much either

In a lot of ways, the impreza is a good machine to run e85 in. Your ignition timing is already able to take advantage of it, given that is mapped for 100 ron, e85 being 104 ron. The fact that e85 has more octane than what your car expects means that you should have a bit of room to run more boost than standard, if you wanted to.

The fullflex gold system is pretty simple. Unfortunately their page and manuals are very skimpy on detail, perhaps this is to obscure how simple the system is, maybe they are afraid of competition.
It works by going between the ecu and the injectors. It modifies the signal to make them stay open for longer, more fuel goes in, and the engine is happy.

Here are the factors that will determine if it works:

The basic one is: are the connectors the right ones for your fuel injectors?
Their page lists a connector type for a 6 cylinder subaru, you could check if a 4 cylinder uses the same connector.
Or, you could see if your car uses the same connectors as another car on that page, its quite likely.

The really important one is, does your fuel injection system have enough spare capacity? Full flex are presuming that this is the case.
Their system has 2 switches, allowing 4 different "maps" to be used. They say in their manual "Full flex is supplied with a standard operation map for each vehicle". I'm not sure if they mean that its the same one in each case, or a different one for each car. I suspect its the same basic map, and you flick those switches to adjust it to suit.
So, lets say it tries to make the injectors open for 25% longer. Well, this will work so long as your injectors aren't open for more than 80% of the time to begin with. This may only be happening on full throttle, at full boost, at fairly
high rpm, but thats the exact time you don't want to be running short of fuel
So, lets say currently, that at full throttle, full boost at 5500 rpm, the injectors are open 80% of the time, it will just about work, the full flex will make them open 100% of the time, and it will all be ok, just about. But its not ideal.
Hopefully they have a bit more spare capacity than that. You should enquire on some reputable subaru forums to see if thats the case.
If they haven't enough spare capacity, its not the end of the world, you could turn up the fuel pressure with a rising rate fuel pressure regulator, or get bigger injectors, but thats a little bit more hassle and expense
Remember I've only used 25% as an example here..

Hopefully that make sense.

Blitzkrieger

maidhc wrote:

I'd love to get my Capri set up to run on E85 at some point. It shouldn't be too hard to do if there is still someone in the world who can tune cars that are not amenable to having a laptop plugged into them.

On the face of it, you wouldn't think it would be that difficult to find someone to tune the car for you. It might just need new camshafts to allow the inlet ports to open longer. There's so many tuned Capris out there you might be able to buy those off the shelf. The problem is the corrosive properties of the ethanol. You'd probably have to replace the fuel tank, pump, lines, etc. It's probably not going to be worth your while.

rowanh wrote:

i was told by a firned of mine who is sort of a mechanic/engineer that there could be lots of problems and hte eninge will blow up

How many drugs does you friend take? It burns hotter but you're unlikely to do any damage unless your water temp sensor, intercooler and radiator all go first. Most people don't bother remapping Jap imports from 100RON either. The ECU will bring back the timing to compensate for engine knocking anyway.

Gerry wrote:

I was running it with no mods at all,

I was thinking of doing the same. My engine is turbocharged as well and modern engines are over-engineered to deal with E10 anyway. I'd like some definite proof rather than the anecdotal (at best) evidence I've found so far.

rowanh

I am now running my car on 75% petrol 25% e85 and half a bottle of lucas octane boost. Seems to be running better than it ever has and passed the emmissions part of hte nct on tuesday.

This link below has a lot of info on running an impreza on e85, info would apply to many cars though, there really is a lot of info in it from many people.

http://e85forum.com/about409.html


Im not sure why my friend thought it would be bad now, he knows a lot about engines though but not much about ethanol. Id say he might have just not wanted me to wreck my car.

Blitzkrieger

Bigger injectors and a better fuel pump are easy to source but cost dosh, as does tuning the ECU. Depending on what figures you use, he's reporting a fuel economy drop of 15-20%. I'd have to have a cast iron guarantee that I'd lose no more than 10% or it just wouldn't pay me to convert.

rowanh

I dont think its in anyway worth doing to save money. What type of car do you have? If its non turbo i think chances are you will lose more than 15%

Blitzkrieger

It is turbo charged. Strangers with no credibility quoted a loss of only 5% during highway driving for turbo charged cars but I think I'll wait for a more concrete source.

Gerry

rowanh - why did you throw in the octane booster? E85 boosts the octane anyway.
Thanks for posting that thread, its exactly what I was looking for, someone who is actually running it in their car.

Blitzkrieger - without a remap, you are not going to see much in the way of fuel economy gains. Its going to burn a higher volume of fuel in any case, so saving money with e85 depends on it being somewhat lower in price.

Anyway, an update on my own car, I tried running 50/50 e85 and petrol, it didn't really like that Stutters and stumbles on boost, max boost a bit lower. I've added 10 litres of petrol back in, still not back to normal.
I'll hopefully be fitting an adjustable fuel pressure regulator over the weekend, will try upping the flow by 15% as that guy suggests in the subaru forum. So I'll go from 3 bar to 3.45 bar.

rowanh

Yea seems 20-30% with no mods is what a lot of cars run ok on. I put in the octane boost for a couple reasons

i dont know what octane the fuel is with 25% 104 ron 75 percent 95ron, if they are even that.

I had my nct and wanted to drive the car fairly hard for the emmissions bit, people seem to think this helps.

Also i have it so might aswell use it, i assume it wont do any harm, maybe i shoudlnt?

Blitzkrieger

Gerry wrote:

Blitzkrieger - without a remap, you are not going to see much in the way of fuel economy gains.

The stock ECU should alter the fuel flow a bit based on the octane of the petrol. The guy in that thread about the scooby did get his 'flashed' and I would probably do the same if I was going to do the swap. At the moment I don't think the price of E85 would make it worth my while. I might look at it again after the budget. I might be able to do it on the cheap if I can find a crashed Supra - I hear the injectors and fuel pump would just slot right in.

rowanh

Anyone have any idea if these maths are right

80%petrol *95Ron = 7600
20%e85 *104Ron= 2080
= 9680
/100 = 96.8Ron

70%petrol *Ron= 6650
30%e85 *Ron= 3120
= 9770
/100 =97.7Ron


Maybe it doesnt work like that?

monnigblower

Hi,
Saw the post and decided to reply. I bought my Flex-Fuel Gold from their Irish distributor (http://www.go-on-green.com/) two weeks ago and all seems fine. I haven't noticed my consumption go up that much but I suppose time will tell. TBH I only fill up once every two weeks.
-M.

buddyboy

To add to this, im running my Altezza on E85 with the Full flex gold kit. Only 2 problems i notice with the car:
1. harder to cold start the car, takes an extra few seconds for the car to start when running on 100% E85.
2. Fuel economy does drop. I was getting approx 450km to a full tank, now i get approx 400km, its cheaper, so i think you do save overall. Car runs better on it and is more responsive and more pokey!

All running on a fairly stock n/a car. plan to get an apexi ecu into it soon which should unlock a few more bhp. hopefully full flex kit will still work with the aftermarket ecu

rowanh

I have been using about a 25/75 mix now for a couple months i guess. Recently when driving to leitrum and then again over the weekend driving to urlinford i filled up on regular petrol with no octane boost and i could really tell the difference. A lot of hesitancy especially in higher revs. On the one hand this should happen as my car is mapped to 100 RON fuel but having the petrol/e85 mix with no octane boost seems fine. Also in terms of fuel consumption im not noticing any difference, i was getting about 250-300kms from 50L of petrol now i think its more like 240-280kms.

Aveo owner

I have converting using an FFI kit from change285.com. It is in a Chevy Aveo. My car did run on E85 without the kit, but engine check light came on one time in 5 tanks indicating a lean burn condition. Since I installed the FFI kit, everything runs find.