Meth or Corn, the debate continues....
 

Basically I need some more opinions to help me decide. After days of searching I have weighed the pros and cons of each, but still am on the fence.

I like the safety of the corn. But, with a top quality meth kit there are fail safes. Neither is truly idiot proof, but.......that topic weights/favors more with the corn.

My fuel system planned won't change, I guess technically I could call my V Flex-Fuel at that point. However the meth will be an additional cost.

With the corn road trips become an issue, but.....when that procharger is mounted I don't think I will be driving much further then about 5 hours (any where worth going in Texas from DFW). Meth doesn't support long heavy footed road trips either unless you have a large tank or carry extra.

Corn sucks down more too. And while I have increased my tank size from 17-18 that doesn't quite make up the difference of 20-25% more corn. Projected tank distance @ 18 gallons will be 216 miles :cry: 288 with meth. These are all medium weight foot best guess calculations.

I do still plan on taking the car to some HDPE events with the procharger on there so.....to my knowledge this would favor the corn no?

Anyway with out blabbing on and on, I just wanted to post in here to hear some of your opinions, knowledge, 1st had experiences (with either) and cover anything I may have missed etc. etc.

Thanks in advance!

methanol is a good cover up to make sure you don't have any random burst knock, but the E85 is going to be vastly superior for making power with it. you have to spray a balls ton of meth for it to be really effective and then you're probably just bogging down the engine with it at that point.

granted i ran meth on a different car, but it always felt stronger when it was off.

Going with Meth or E85 is both good way to make more power both will lets u to boost more and set timming higher.

if i could get e85 easily around here id run it but its hard to find so i run 100% meth inj.

I had meth injection on my previous daily driver, for nearly 8 years (4 banger turbo Subaru). I drove that car in the dead of winter, road tripped in hot summers, tracked it, and sat in bumper to bumper city traffic on a daily basis. The systems are not idiot proof, nothing other than stock is, IMO, but are completely manageable and not that hard to maintain and repair.

I chose to run conventional -20*F blue washer fluid, and drew from my OEM tank. I preferred the easy access, portability, and price vs. the marginal loss in power from a more concentrated specialty mix. Completely different platform, but I saw +35awhp and +45awtq on a conservative tune. The curve was fatter from start to finish, IAT's were lower, pistons were steamed clean, and never suffered from heat soak at the track.

I used about a gallon per 20min session at the track which was essentially WOT 92% of the time. That same gallon would last me 3-4 tanks of gas under normal aggressive city driving. I would gladly use a similar system if I ever fall into another forced induction platform that was pushed beyond its stock designs.

With that said, the several corn installs I've seen local are making ridiculous amounts of power with the same basic power adders that have been available for years with only minor modifications, all with the ability to switch maps and fuel sources on the fly. The results are appealing.

Yeah, I'm def leaning toward the corn..... any indication how it does with carbon deposits? I know Meth cleans it up amazingly well, never read into if corn has a problem with deposits though.....

So far the main negatives to corn being having it available doesn't apply to me really, got plenty of stations all around.

The higher fuel consumption is just a pipe dream anyway. Not sure why 800hp and fuel mileage ever enter the same room with one another let alone the conversation together. :eyes:

The main plus for the corn for me though is the extra $$ I don't have to spend on a meth kit. Easily 1K. Plus Meth is what 9$ a gallon....Averaged out with corn being approx 2.15$ Compared to 1.65 and 18 gallons it equals out. So....yeah that

Lastly, What Fweasel just said, HDPE events and burning 1 gallon in a 20 minute session has turned me I think completely off to using meth. That just seems like a big problem to me in the event it runs out in the middle of a straight away or just as well to how it performs in high G turns possibly starving the pump early.

Unless someone can argue some awesome point as to why go with meth then I think it is corn for me.

Nik why not a true flex fuel setup with the corn. Dave Steck with DSX tuing had a sensor setup that automatically detected the alcohol content and switched the AFR accordingly. I am sure there are some gotchas but it seemed to make corn use MUCH more feasible as you can switch back to gas automatically if you need to make longer trips with the car. I am sure there are a few quirks with tuning but it seems many liked the approach. He was marketing primarily at the vette/camaro crowd but it should work on the V as well.

Here is a link to the Camaro5 board that has some discussion:
http://www.camaro5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=300037

i'd use a gallon and a half over the course of about a month. i was running this on a blown grand prix. and yes, 100% meth is expensive, but i'd never tell anyone run run anything less than 100%.

I like that flex fuel idea. You could run pump on the street and then fill up with corn when you get near the track. Makes it even more idiot proof.

I don't know that my experience at the track concerning consumption is truly apples to apples as pump size, nozzle size, injection rate and set points are are so widely different. It just so happened, I could pull into the pits at my home track with my driving style, pour in another gallon, and be good to go for the next session. If I ran out, I would have switched to a bigger tank.

What I know about corn is limited. Some friend's of mine who also own Nissan Z's have recently begun converting over with amazing results. The drawbacks aside from the normal power adder upgrades are converting to an ethanol safe fuel system and increasing fuel flow and pressure. I was always under the impression that not being able to refuel with e85 on a roadtrip would be a huge ordeal, but that's what map switching and the fuel mixture sensor was for. The main issue with running e85 this far up north in a daily driver is cold start temps. That's why it tends to be for the weekend only summer toys around here.

I've ran ethanol for nine years in my four banger. The only semi annoying issue that I've ever had was black goo build up on the injectors, I still don't know what sometimes caused it, but it can be easily remedied by running a tank of pure gas or taking the injectors off to clean them in solvent. Not too big a deal when running almost 100k miles and boost pressures north of 30psi consistent. I think the starting issues can be an issue if you don't have a tuner that is experienced in tuning for those temps. If you tune yourself, it only involves fine dialing in the cold start enrichment. Fuel mileage can actually be surprisingly good if you take the time to fine tune in the fueling and timing. I tend to run aggressively lean on cruise. I think the only other annoying issue was running out of fuel pump. At certain horsepower levels sending fuel can become troublesome if you want to keep stockish fueling setups. I bit the bullet and ended up running an external magnafuel pump.

I'm very excited to enable flexfuel for my CTS-V.

The flex fuel I don't believe is an option in my case. Reason being is if I did that id need the meth regardless. Or some how conjure up the patience to never get into boost while driving on gas. Nope. Now way. I can for see soooo many potential Mexico runs and gopro footage lost if I did that. Or some epic footage of my car eating the motor. Could be done but I feel you'd need to run a meth kit as well. Would be a trick setup for sure! Would get heaps data to have some real constructive feedback for threads like this though. Of course with such a system I'm sure costs go way up!

With what I have invested already in this fuel system I don't think it needs to be any more complicated. Or expensive :bang: the fuel system is starting to rival what I paid for the used procharger kit!!!

The fact is that corn is the safer bet. And if you have it readily available then why not? I can burn a lot of corn before coming close to the added costs of the meth kit.

As for the "fuel system" compatability that's easy. Most aftermarket fuel systems do both. So my lines, pump, regulator etc all are compatible. Injectors I'd need to change, but I have to change those anyway.

Why are you saying no to flex fuel? Is it not having boost control?

As far as putting it together, leanpocket went flex fuel on his, and it was pretty reasonable. Tho his is N/A.

I guess you have to base tune and set boost for pump gas, then adjust timing for ethanol %....how much extra you can get from that, I don't know.

Because my power goals it doesn't make much sense. I would require meth at the power and boost levels I'm aiming for. If I didn't need it then there would be no topic. I'd just run pump gas. The problem is detonation. I have 10.2:1 compression on 12psi (goal) or what ever it take s for 750+ at the wheels is unlikely I can get there with just pump gas. Savvy?

with felx fuel you just set your timing to a safe level for gas and and big boy power for e85. the computer figures out what the mis in the tank is and were it can put the timing at for you
for a frame of reference my car made 800rwhp on just 92 pump and 900rwhp on pump/meth.i probably could have gone further on just pump but really no point.
im sure the #s would be about the same with e85/gas

if your not going to be happy on 800ish pump your in for a long road

ps my motor is/was like 10.8-1 compression so you should be just fine on 10.2-1
if your that worryed about it toss 5 gallons of c16 (116oct) in with the pump to give you a little buffer

Ok that makes sense and all. But are our ecu's capable of that? I'm more curious now what it would take to run a flex fuel setup then. And my high end goal is only 800 whp Which I thought meth would be required for? But I guess now maybe not? All new to me, my C5 made it to 600 whp and I never went further.

Of course I went with the RST and not RXT in thought that I wouldn't be at these power levels for another two years SMH. So I will have a basically brand new RST for sale in the future too.

im not 100% sure if our OS supports flext fuel but i know the pcm can. you might have to run a van,truck or yukon OS on your pcm.

you have to splice in the OS from another vehicle to make it work, but you can do it. our specific OS on the ECU does not have the flex fuel tables.

Yeah, Maybe one day I will dive into that. But for now, I will be running corn.

From what I understand the only differences in the RST and RXT are friction material. You may be able to get them to sell you the clutch/friction disk separately. If so, give me a shout as I would love to get away from the RXT. IMO - Too grabby in a daily.