hmmm, subscribing

 

E85 is the ****, Been running my car on it for two years now.

It would be really nice if you could post a before and efter timing table to look at.

 

I was at the track friday, I saw you guys there running. I was the quiet red C5

What were your results

JEFF

 

subscribing to this as well.

 

What does E85 do to the sound and smell of your vehicle? Sound worse, smell like popcorn?

 

Sadly, the only E85 stations in Georgia are inside military bases (private use only, no public access).

 

Looks like your car works pretty good on the track!
We only got two passes in on fri night, and they've only been to the track once this year. The White C5 w/ the 150 shot went ?11.40 @ 131 on his only pass, the 427 camaro went 11.5x @ ?127? on his 2nd pass. I don't recall the other times, but they may post them up. We got rained out the rest of the weekend. These were all on drag radials. It sucked because the track seemed pretty decent, but a guy needs more than a pass or two when you do it once a year!

As far as sound is concerned, it has no effect. Smell- it does have it's own scent, some like, some dislike. After running E85 for a while, you can stick your finger in the tailpipe and it will come out clean, no soot!!!

I will elaborate, but only somewhat. The GM PCM does a pretty good job of adapting to the fuel, and the fuel is also seems to create a wider tuning window (as far as timing is concerned.) By wider I mean it is not as sensative to a 1 deg advance/ retard of timing once you get it in the window as gas is.

 

I was running a 50 shot dry on an auto vette yank 3600 stall, 3.42 gears, cam, headers, pump gas, tune. Went 10.83@129 with a 1.506 60'

JEFF

 

I would really like to hear how it does not get 30% less mileage considering stioch is supposed to be about 12:1 and gasoline is 14.7:1. every source I've seen states the mileage decrease.

e85 is far from the 'end-all' or answer to oil importation. US agriculture can NOT produce even 10% of the E85 required to fuel the US. using corn based anyway, other crops can produce much more gal/acre, but still fall way short. but that is a whole nother nopic.

 

I can gaurantee you your LS1 will not lose 30 percent mileage with PROPER tuning. It has way more to do with it than stoich air-fuels and such. Its moreso related to maintaing peak volumeric efficiency with each individual engine. This applies to part throttle cruising.

I am in agreement as far as your concern with the oil importation issue. E85 can be made from switch grass and many other items. Brazil and many other countries have been using it for 20+ years, the US needs to do something to become less reliant on importation- I think we can all agree upon that. But from a hot rodders standpoint, it is an efficient alternative for race gas and it's available at the pump.

 

Are you going to disclose any of the tuning specifics for E85, or am I going to have to play with it myself?

 

*subscribing*

 

well that is very incouraging. will it also then compete with 'lean cruise' on with regular gas? ls1s have reported well into the 30mpg range using it. is there the same 'lean cruise' capability with E85?

 

What about us '98 guys w/ the steel fuel tanks? Would we have to swap out our tanks for the '99+ plastic tanks to use e85?

 

So if we wanted to run these in our LS1s what all needs to be done? Just a tune? If one was good at tuning can we tune based on what the car is telling us on the scan or would we need someone who knows E85 to tune?

 

*subscribing*

 

glad to see someone really making the effort with e85. damn the man though... if it weren't for fat bastard politicians we could convert to e85/bio diesel and solve a lot of problems. oh well.

if you all want to keep up on e85 and get active join the coalition! www.e85fuel.com

the issue with the 30% decrease in fuel mileage that everyone reports is b/c flex fuel vehicles are usually trucks/passenger vehicles. this means they not only have to be able to run the e85, they also run on **** water (regular 85)... if a motor was built to run exclusively on e85 with its much higher octane (hello high compression days of the 60s!) you would not notice nearly that severe of a decrease in fuel mileage.

its just like running your car on propane. just about any internal combustion engine can run on just about any fuel within certain constraints. as long as the fuel can be atomized and the stoichiometry can be maintained you are good to go. hell, if you look at the industrial application portion of gms web site you will see good ol' sbcs set up to run on propane or unleaded from the factory. but i digress.

gms flex fuel vehicles 'sense octane' and adjust accordingly. now whether this is done with an 'octane sensor' or just by paying very close attention to the o2 sensor i do not know.

however for those that are interested, you might ask HP Tuners if they have played with the octane sensing/adjustments on the flex fuel vehicles yet. if they have then with some work the 'tuning' will be done for you. dump in cheap gas for around town (just keep your foot out of it to help avoid detonation) run the fuel almost out of your car on the way to the track and stop at the e85 station on the way. By the time you get there your ECM has already changed your spark and fuel curves for you!

hooray electronics!

 

At this time I am not willing to disclose any specs or what other things specifically need to be done. We can do it for you at the shop, but I will not post this up on here. I have the utmost confidence in what we are doing, as my 427 C5 guys are easily seeing 26 MPG on corn (29-30 on gas, 530+ HP to the tires...). Heads/cam car gets 31 on gas and 27 on corn consistently... I know he drove 3000 miles this summer just to our events.

I have not had any problems with corrosion, and there are many people who will tell you that, although you have many tell you otherwise. I also have a '94 F150 I converted (one of the first I tried) that has had quite a few tanks through it (since april) and have zero problems as of yet (shop beater). You will need to change you fuel filter after the changeover because it does have somewhat of an initial cleaning effect. After that, no problems. I will try to get pics up of the tahoe that was ran on e85 for 100k miles and torn down. The customer that owns the tahoe builds ethanol plants and wanted to put 100k on his own vehicle only to have it torn down and inspected to see what all degraded. There was nothing. I will get those pics in digi format today hopefully and possibly post them up.

 

I saw this coming. Just a **** tease to build up business. We appreciate your time and efforts for your achievements with E85, but this is a tech forum, not a "pimp your business" forum. We want to gain knowledge from here, not spam. You don't need to withhold info from us to gain business, in fact you may do just the opposite as people will be less inclined to come by for your selfishness. There are so many more people on these boards that would rather take their cars to shops to get work done rather than do it themselves so the business is there and you do not have missed opportunity from unveiling the big E85 secrets. Just my $0.02.