Well today i decided i wanted to try out some E85. So headed my *** up to nearest Sheetz and tossed in 6.5 gallons of E85 i had about 10 gallons of 93 in the tank. So i headed out on highway after that. Now my truck is only on 9psi after driving around for alittle bit i tried some pulls. First thing i noticed is truck was much ****pier off boost. Before motor was little doggy but now its responsive without boost. Now my experience with boost and E85. I swear it spools turbo faster and harder. The turbo hits HARD!!! On 9psi i broke them loose in 3rd rolling into it heavily at 60mph. To give SOTP this truck on 9psi feels as it used to on 13psi. Now im about 60/40 mix and my tune is un-touched. I made no changes to my tune or anything, i was simply trying e85 as a higher octane. From what i gatherd E85 is about 106 octane and mixed with 93 i was probably around 100octane. Now lets get to some driving manors, i used tobe able to load 6th gear but it seems as with E85 mix the truck goes to lean at 6th gear at 30mph. Also noticed truck idles so much smoother it picked up 2" of vaccum at idle. Also you get such a sweet smell inside the truck, now stepping out side truck and smelling the exhaust as messed up as that sounds the truck smells like french fries. Visually my exhaust pipe now has a slight tan color to it instead of a dark carbon. With the miles i put on the truck today i had noticed about 10* cooler running temp. Now on a cold start up my truck is pig rich at first then it goes lean, so i will say truck would need to have its tune played with on start up.

Overall im simply impressed with the gains i seen today from a fuel that is only 2.29 a gallon here. Truck is a totally different animal. downfall as you know is i went thru more fuel then i normally do. I recomend this to any boosted vehicle to toss in a coupe gallons and try it for yourself

 

imagine if you added couple degrees timing lol

 

I run 26* from about 4800 thru 6700. I was at 28* but only picked up 3 hp.

 

higher gains are shown with turbo set ups.

 

my timing ranges from high 40s to 18.

 

I just started reading this thread due to my interest in E85 w/ turbo's.

My wife has an 05' Avalanche w/ flex fuel. With a cold air intake it would get about 15.6 mpg. When I ran a tank of E85 through it it got 11.3mpg. Around here E85 is only a few cents cheaper than regular.

In that situation it wasn't worth it to run E85.

 

But it is alot cheaper than $6 race gas. In an unmoddified truck not really worth it. I will say regardless of the price I use it in my truck. F!&K OPEC.

 

exactly. and, how long do you thing the gas price will stay under $2? not long Im sure. my fingers are crossed, but Im not holding my breath.

 

for those running e85 and using hptuners...could you post your set up? i went off runn's suggestion and changed my AFR Stoich to 9.799 and change my Boost PE to reach 8.5 but at idle i'm at 10.8 or so and the car likes this. when i add in fuel to get it to 9.8 the idle drops and the car then sounds lopey.

 

I found this on another forum. It's helped me get full understanding to finish my e85 tune.
"Understanding Air/Fuel ratios
This article assumes you already understand the concept of the air/fuel ratio (AFR), but if not, familiarize yourself by visiting this Wikipedia link. You may have already read that 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. "

 

I made the changes to reflect what I posted in my previous post.
I put in my 60lb injectors and having trouble getting it to idle to 14.7. I'm 15% rich.
Once driving all it good (14.2 to 15.2 range)
What parameters are you guys using to work yours to 14.7 or within 5% range?

 

You can lower the small pulse width adder and minimum pulse width as well as the voltage offset table. This is typically how it's done, but I never had much success with it. I ended up selling the 60's for 42's. Log your injector pulse width to see how much you can oull out. If you need less than 1.6-1.8 ms you are a$$ out. It was my expience that once the injector pulse width gets below this threshold the injectors wont fully open and you get a real unstable idle.

 

How´s the converting going?

 

I got idle now in 14.7 range. I have redo some of my VE upper tables but all seems good.

 

Wow great write up thanks.

 

thanks.

 

http://www.garaget.org/video/p1cdk2gnod50 click the link to see my car rev a little on e85

 

Sounds good. Is that smoke coming out the back or just cold air?

Bill

 

No its mostly watervapour, e85 produces alot and it shows well in a cold start a cold morning (around 0 celcius)

my car has been running on E85 for over five years now and without problems :-)

 

I dont konow if this has been answered in this thread (21 pages is getting too long to read in full, sorry):
There are some "boxes" on the market that claims that when connected you can run anything from straight E85 to straight gasoline.
As I understand, what these boxes do is to richen the overall fuel delivery and relying on the fuel trims to be able to compensate.

My question is this: On a stock LQ4 engine would it be enough to richen the VE table by say 10% ?? I was thinking it is no need to buy a $450 box if I can do the same with my HP Tuner.

Here in Norway it is not practical to tune for straight E85 since there is only a few gas stations that carry E85 unlike in Sweden where it is all over the place......