Turbo and fuel question for guru's (highrev and blueroadster better be in here)

[icewildabeast]

Time to state some obvious facts with some conclusions and problems with possible projects to undertake.
OK, so we all know that knocking and detonation are not our friends.
We have knock sensors in our SI's, but if you run a turbo kit, you increase the risk knocking, and the sensor(s) might not keep up with the knocking and cause detonation. Since we run high compression engines (11:1 compression) we are required to use 91 octane fuel (or better)

"Safely" we can run about 8-9lbs of boost on our stock motors. That's all fine and dandy, but when boosting, knock and ping happens. So when on the track, you want race fuel 99 octane, 101 octane, etc. This stuff is expensive. Like $5 or $6 bucks per gallon.

There IS however an alternative and I cant believe nobody has mentioned this before: E85 fuel. For those that dont know, E85 fuel is a fuel with much higher concentrations of ethanol and made from corn. It is also MUUCH cheaper. about 25%-40% cheaper than regular gasoline. E85 also has an octane rating of 100-105. (WOW?) There are some drawbacks, unless your car is "flexfuel" certified or "e85 certified" you have to replace some items on your car to make it compatible. Read the following article to see what I'm talking about.

Taken from wiki article

E-85 ethanol is used in engines modified to accept higher concentrations of ethanol. Such flexible-fuel engines are designed to run on any mixture of gasoline or ethanol with up to 85% ethanol by volume. The primary differences from non-FFVs is the elimination of bare magnesium, aluminum, and rubber parts in the fuel system, the use of fuel pumps capable of operating with electrically conductive (ethanol) instead of non-conducting dielectric (gasoline) fuel, specially-coated wear-resistant engine parts, fuel injection control systems having a wider range of pulse widths (for injecting approximately 40% more fuel), the selection of stainless steel fuel lines (sometimes lined with plastic), the selection of stainless steel fuel tanks in place of terne fuel tanks, and, in some cases, the use of acid-neutralizing motor oil. For vehicles with fuel-tank mounted fuel pumps, additional differences to prevent arcing, as well as flame arrestors positioned in the tank's fill pipe, are also sometimes used.

So my questions are: is it possible to get e85 fuel w/o spending thousands of dollars modifying. If it is, what would need to actually be replaced? maybe we just need a couple parts replaced and viola.

Anybody willing to partner up or undertake the project with me or on their own?

[Highrev1]

There are pro's and COn's to E85 and this will be debated for a long time IMO...

You have to flow 2-2.5 times as much fuel for a start. Think 1000cc injectors.

Ethanol is corrosive to aluminum, and deteriorates elastomers (rubbers) anodized aluminum parts are a good preventative and teflon coated fuel lines... any elastomers it comes in contact with should be checked frequently of course.

Gasoline's stoich is 14.7. E85 stoich is around 9ish if I remember. Boosting AF should be like 7:1 which is alot of fuel...

Also, one thing everyone doesn't know is that e85 is an alternative fuel, but not a cleaner fuel. It is supposed to be equal to or more damaging than fossil fuels to the environment.

It can be done and a bunch of the supercharged RSX guys I know use it, but without tuning its not somthing we should be concerned with right now

I am sure BLue can help more than me...

[icewildabeast]

gah... back to the K-PRO *cough cough* I mean ***-BLOW solutions eh? *sigh* that's irritating.

[blueroadster]

It would cost too much to convert everything. If you need to up the octane rating and don't want to buy race gas all of the time, then go with a water/methanol injection system. I'll be using an Aquamist system and 07CivicMD will be using a Snow system.

[Highrev1]

No converting from what I remeber Blue...Not sure though...I know the K-pro guys just switch maps and there set to go. That is on just big injectors and stock fuel systems..

[sheek360]

e85 eats up ur rubber fuel injector seals and it dont go well with aluminum, its a bit corosive. even cheaper then that e85 conversion is good ol meth injection! even a 50 50 mix isnt all that corrosive!

[vtecmike1]

don't we have all aluminum engines with rubber fuel lines and seals? lol and you said e85 was bad for both? i don't like the sound of that.

[soxfan143]

E85 is rediculous. First of all, doesn't your fuel mileage drop drastically? And doesn't it actually create more greenhouse gasses to produce it than gasoline even creates while it" being burnt? I was told this by one of the teachers at my training facility for my work. I work in the automotive industry.

[07CivicMD]

Knock is bad but once tuned you should have a good idea where your A/F ratios are at most times. I will have both a street and race tune once the car is finished. The street tune will be optimized for boosting and modified for vacuum for DD (MPG). The Haltech has the ability to hold 2 seperate maps and I will be housing all my maps on my laptop.

The water/Meth is great to help reduce knock and since Meth is a fuel it add more power over alcohol which cools the intake charge to increase boost.

Once the K-Pro is release I believe it will have knock control and the abilty to control the timing accordingly. You can always spend the extra money and get an aftermarket knock sensor if your really worried about knock.

[2RotorMotor]

e85 is pretty sick.. you need alot of fuel but beats the price of race gas. eitherway all our lines are teflon, so we dont have a problem..

[blueroadster]

Originally Posted by 2RotorMotor

e85 is pretty sick.. you need alot of fuel but beats the price of race gas. eitherway all our lines are teflon, so we dont have a problem..

You sure about that?

[Tigre]

E85 is pure sickness for the bang/buck profile kinda guy but its takes a ton more fuelo which is the sucky part. for 3.20/gal locally its can make a bunch of power but the majority of the cars i used already max 1000cc injectors and would be forced to go with 1600cc instead for a track only built motors its nice but for a daily driver not a good idea fellas. and the aluminum can be coated to prevent corrosion from E85 and nylon lines i hear work great and are pretty inexpensive

[Highrev1]

Our stock lines are nylon right? ..I know some are, but all of them?

[2RotorMotor]

Originally Posted by blueroadster

You sure about that?

not really.. I know they're plastic which is all that matters.. what are they?

[RedShiftChris]

I've been doing alot of research on E85 recently and we'll be running it in our STX (yes STX...not STS) Civic this year. Starting in 88, most manufacturers started to do a better job making the car's hardware more ethanol compatible. And starting in 1996, they are even more compatible. The new civic's probably do need a little bit of modification to run E85, but it's probably not a big deal.

Stoich on E85 is around 9:1 but best torque is around 0.8 lambda rather than 0.9 lambda with gasoline (it likes to be relatively richer on E85 than gasoline at WOT). In the end, you need to be able to run around 60% more fuel at WOT and 50% more fuel at cruise..... or something like that.

We are definitely planning to do more with E85 in the future because it's good octane makes it ripe for performance builds. And if all you have to do is change some seals and lines and maybe upgrade/improve/coat a gastank, then there isn't much to deter us.

Chris

[icewildabeast]

nice, well at least there is good potential and I'm not the only one to see it. May not be a DD, but hey, I figured it's worth investigating.