I've been putting E85 in my trucks for a few years now. Not at every fill up, or even close, but every time I get a chance to use it, I do. The closest place I can get it is over an hour away. The price is usually about $.70 or so cheaper than 87. My trucks are not designed to use it, but they both run great on it. One is a 99 silverado NBS, the other a 99 tahoe OBS. I don't have any numbers to drop, but from "seat of the pants" testing, I can "feel" more power when running on E85. I also read some studies and one in particular that showed a 98 suburban that went 106,xxx miles on nothing but E85. They tore the engine down and it was clean as a whistle w/ minimal wear. It too was not flex fuel compatible. Fuel mileage does suffer a bit but it's worth it to me. I can tell you that my old 95 s-10 w/ 4 banger didn't like E85 as well. It would run ok on it, but not an improvement like I saw on the v-8's. I've also been running it in my lawn mower all summer w/ no probs.

So I'm a semi-believer! I've done a decent amount of research on this stuff. It's 106 or 108 octane (can't remember now), it's super clean, your engine WILL RUN COOLER, and it's not corrosive like methanol. That's where most folks got confused... ethanol vs. methanol. The problem is the amount of usable power you get from E85. It is +-20% LESS efficient than gasoline. I also like the fact that by using E85 it's kind of my own way of telling the saudi's and other crazy arabs to kiss my ass! I'll do whatever it takes, & use whatever I have to use to keep from putting more money into the hands of the f*ckers that want us dead.

So back to the 20% less efficiency... Here's where I need advice.
To be able to use E85 in the buggy, the obvious answer is to increase your jet sizes by 20%, right? Well I'm not so sure, is it really that simple??? Do you increase all the jets by 20%, or just mains, or idles, or what? I plan to do alot more research this week whenever I have free time here at work. I will continue to add whatever info I can find. I'd also like some feedback from anyone who's looked into this before, or anyone thinking of trying it too. I guess the right thing to do is change jet sizes, run it, check the plugs and see what happens. I look forward to hearing what others have to say...

Thanks!

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Sounds like your gonna be the expert on this one. Get a jet reamer & gauge kit and go to work! I'd sure like to know how it works. The 112 I run went up again! It was 8.60 a gallon when I bought 10 gal. last Monday. The 114 was 9.40/gal, and the 116 was 10.20/gal!!! I blend the 112 at 60/40 with 93 pump gas for mine and 50/50 for Dakotah's buggy. Maybe with the higher octane of the E85, I could blend a lower amount of race fuel. Then again if you burn more of it, it might not really save any $$$ ????

Larry

This is true you might end up burning more of it, actually you WILL burn more of it. I filled up the tahoe yesterday in Madisonville @ $3.05/ gal. for E85. Regular 87 was $3.68 at the same station.

112 + 93 / 2 = 102.5 average octane in your 50/50 mix.

Let's say you burn straight E85 @ 106ish octane. You only use about 20% more E85 over Gasoline due to bigger jets, etc... So instead of using lets say 10 gal of gas in a weekend, you'll use around 12 gal of E85.
With the prices you gave of 112 @ $8.60 + 93 @ $3.90 (close enough).
That's $43 + $19.50 = $62.50 for a 10 gallon mix of 102.5 octane.

12 gal of E85 @ $3.05/ gal = $36.60

That's the $$$ side of things, it's not even getting started on how much better E85 is for the environment, it is MUCH better! It also causes your engine to run much cooler, it's cleaner burning, and most importantly to me, it doesn't feed the crazy foreign leaders who'd rather see us Americans dead.

There are a lot of mysteries and myths about E85. I'm hoping to prove these things wrong with research and trial & error. Just remember... it's Ethanol, not Methanol.

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That sounds pretty good, but I was told you cant just average the two octane ratings from the 112 race fuel and 93 pump gas to get the 102.5 octane rating out of a 50/50 blend, at least thats what the man who owns the roundy round race shop where I buy my race fuel says. I asked him the same thing before, and he says the octane rating is not the only factor in preventing predetonation, and its not that simple to figure a 50/50 blend will give 102.5, or a 60/40 blend will give 104.4 by averaging, because (he says) its kind of an exponential thing. According to him, you get liquid oxygen from the pump gas, which you do NOT get from staight race fuel, which also helps make more power. His theory is you can jet up to get all the fuel in you can stand, but you are mechanically limited by intake system as to how much air will flow into a given induction setup and heads. This didnt really make sense to me, because the more O2, the quicker the burn, and the point of higher octane is to slow the burn.

I aint sayin' you are wrong, for all I know he is off his rocker and you are right. Just sayin what he told me.

I also wonder about the lack of upper cylinder/ valve lubrication from the E85, that you do get from the race fuel. Aint true race gas leaded? Maybe not, you tell me.

I hope I am wrong. I' d love to cut my fuel bill in half, now that we got 3 buggies goin to the woods all the time!!

Larry

Hey again,
Wow, I really don't have a clue about averaging the octane ratings. It seems like it makes sense, so that's what I went with. This is just a big learning experience for me. That is something I will definitely look more into.
You touched on something interesting though... 02... E85 is an oxygen rich fuel. Think of gasoline fortified with ethanol, like E10. They call it "oxygenated fuel". It's supposed to be better for the environment, right? The upside to being rich in oxygen is a more complete burn, virtually no carbon build up, and much fewer toxic gasses coming out the tailpipe. As far as quicker burn, I'd say you're probably right, but the high octane rating raises the flashpoint at which the fuel ignites, not really slowing the burn down just keeping it from predetonating.

After freshening up yesterday on my reading, it seems that E85 is normally in the 105-106 octane range. Not the 106-108 like I had said before. I agree that you are mechanically limited on your incoming air which in turn affects the amount of fuel you can use too. If your fuel is oxygen rich, it makes sense to think that while you can only intake a certain amount of air, you also get the liquid oxygen contained in the fuel. Thus resulting in better burn rates. Now I don't know these things to be fact, it's just what I'm putting together in my head while trying to figure this stuff out.

There are several good things to read about v8 drag racers using E85. Every well known carb company now makes E85 carbs. You can also retrofit gasoline carbs with E85 metering blocks, jets, etc... Fuel injection is even easier. It's interesting that these guys aren't reporting any real gains in performance. Once they get their engine tuned correctly for E85, they post the same numbers(or very similar) as when using race gas.

So there's no real performance gains to speak of... That's a bummer, but there are still plenty of benefits to using E85. I know you asked about upper end lubrication. Some guys report using about 2oz. of Marvel Mystery oil per 5 gallons of E85. That may be a good idea, but the E85 experts claim that it's not needed. Going from some studies that others have done, They claim that an engine running only E85 looks much much better when tore down. There is no carbon build-up anywhere. The pistons, cylinders, combustion chambers, valves, everything is clean. One study, (the suburban w/ 106k of E85 miles) showed cross hatching on the cylinder walls still intact after 106k miles. That's pretty impressive, and kinda dismisses the lubrication questions. Again though, I can't state these examples as fact. I know it's shocking, but you can't always trust what you see on the internet.

Then there's the cost benefit, the need to be less dependant on foreign oil, the cleaner burning and less poluting, and the pride of buying and helping the american economy. For every gallon of E85 I buy, I know that at least 85% of it came from an american farmer. That alone is worth it to me.

Ok man, good stuff! I'll continue to study on this. Anyone else have any experience with the stuff?

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A motorist, filling up and comparing the prices of regular gas and E85, might see the price advantage of E85 (in our case 33 cents or 9.7 percent less) as a bargain. However, since fuel economy is significantly reduced, the net effect is that a person choosing to run their flex-fuel vehicle on E85 on a trip like ours will spend 22.8 percent more to drive the same distance. For us, the E85 trip was about $30 more expensive — about 22.9 cents per mile on E85 versus 18.7 cents per mile with gasoline.

The Final Score Card — Performance
We were also interested to see if there was a clear difference in performance. Here, the news was better for the renewable fuel. While the test times were generally slower for E85, the difference was small enough to go unnoticed by most drivers. Despite E85's higher octane rating (103 here) the flex-fuel nature of the Tahoe's 5.3-liter V8 engine prevents it from taking full advantage.

i would not run that in my air cooled motor ,,,,,,,,,85% ethanol,15% gas,that stuff probaly would not even run in my turbo new beetle,they say its 103 octane they are gonna have to prove it to me

i havent read up on it awhole lot but keep noticing that ppl mention they mix it with reg 87... is there any ill effects from that?

there was a guy on another forum said he keep puuting it in his dd work truck lil bit at a time upping the % each time and then went full e85, he says he hasnt seen any signs of it hurting it nor has seen lower mpg like others state.... i kno its the interweb so who knos if he is truthful but wondering if anyone else has seen or heard of it


thought bout mixing it in the buggy and dd say 10 gal of reg gas and 1 gal e85 and see what happens then maybe 9 to 2 and so on ... bad idea? any input....

I read that study too.
Keep in mind that's a comparison between E85 and Regular gas, not race fuel or a mixture of it. There are other studies out there that claim a much lower loss in mileage with E85. It's no secret that you will use more E85 vs/ gas. A small price to pay if you ask me. Unless of course you want to continue to support the different terrorist organizations of the world. My goal is to find out if you can run it in place of race gas with the correct jetting, timing, etc... So far, I believe you can and I hope to prove it sometime soon.

I wouldn't run it in your new beetle either, especially if it's not a flex fuel. My trucks are almost 10 years old and they run better on it than on gas. Since E85 is highly oxygenated, it can and in some cases will mess with the O2 sensors in newer ECM's. My tahoe throws an error code every once in a while. P0430 or O2 sensor/ pass side aft. It did that on occasion even before I started using E85. I have changed O2 sensors, I believe it to be a catalytic converter on it's way out. Those O2 codes are informational only and don't affect the engines performance.
As far as octane... Why would you doubt that it's really 105 octane? (that 103 you read and copied I think is from a study done in california) I'm sure there's a govmnt agency somewhere that wouldn't allow them to post octane ratings that aren't true. I can tell you that my silverado doesn't like 87 octane ever since I put the Hypertech programmer in it. I even set it for 87, but later found out that some engines really need 89 or higher when you use the programmer, even if set for 87. If I run 87, I can sometimes hear the valves chatter when pulling a hill or under load. If I use 89 or higher octane it quiets down. When I use E85, it's quiet and I never hear a thing. That tells me it's at least a higher octane than 87. And the silverado has never thrown an error code. It's probably had 12 to 15 tanks of E85 through it.

Why be scared to put it in an aircooled engine? Engines using E85 run much cooler. That alone is a big benefit especially for an aircooled. With the correct jets and slight timing advancement I wouldn't be afraid to run it at all.
Now you can't just dump it in and expect it to run good. Not in a carbed engine anyway. You'll be running waaaay to lean and you can expect problems.

Geeez, is the glass is half empty or half full???

Depending on where you live and buy gas, it probably has up to 10% ethanol in it already. They add it to gas to raise the octane (like lead used to) and also to lower the toxic gasses from the exhaust. If your DD is fuel injected, I doubt you'll have any problems with an E85/ gas mix. Your system will adjust for variances in fuel even though it may not be flex fuel compatible. On the other hand, you may notice a problem. I can't say yay or nay on that. All I can say is that I've never had a prob with running it straight or mixed in my trucks and neither has anyone else I know that has tried it. My 4 cyl S-10 didn't like it, but it didn't hurt it either.

I wouldn't run it in your buggy, or any carb'd engine without first increasing your jet sizes by about 20%. It'll need to be fine tuned from there. Some sources I found say 20%, some say up to 30%. They also say 2 to 3 degrees advance in timing helps to take advantage of the E85... Don't know for sure about that either. If you wanted to run a mix of 10-15% ethanol, you probably wouldn't even notice it.

-peace and monkey grease

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One more thing...
They say you will need to change your fuel filter soon after you start using E85. The reason is because it actually cleans everything it comes in contact with. This in turn could cause whatever is gumming up in your tank and lines to get stuck in the filter, choking the fuel flow. I personally haven't had any problems with this and if you do somewhat regular maintenance on your vehicle you probably don't have to worry about it. It is something to keep in mind though. I wouldn't consider it a problem. I mean hell, it's cleaning your engine out... How can that be bad? People pay good money for sea-foam and other additives to do the same thing.

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Very cool info....I heard that some people are trying to run straight moonshine in their vehicles and claiming 20% more mileage than regular pump 87 gas for a very good fraction of the cost, they claim that it cost around $1.10 per gallon to make. I think it is a bunch of B.S. but you never know today with these technologies that we have now.

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"Loud pipes saves lives"

You must've been payin too close attention to Charlie last time you went to Darrell's!
Thats got his name written all over it!!

But you are right, you never know unless you try it!



Keep us up on how it works out, Steve. Sounds REAL interesting to me.

Larry

You bet, I will keep you informed. It may take me a little while to actually have some results of my own. This is something I've been thinking about, in one form or another, for a few years now. My buggy is undergoing several changes as we speak so the E85 thing just gets put on the list of things to do. I still need more research but I feel like I'm at a point now that I can start experimenting on my own. We'll see how it works out...

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I talked to a couple of our most knowledgable techs, both of whom keep up well with new technlogies and go to schools all the time. They said you were correct in wanting to increase the jets by twenty percent. But, heres the bad news.... E85 will asolutely destroy your carb gaskets and standard fuel lines on your buggy, and can eat away at some materials that are used to make floats. It may happen with one straight tank of it, or may take several tmes, but they said it will happen. First signs will be black junk in your jets. Thats the fuel line breaking down. Then your carbs will develop leaks, fuel pump will fail, etc,etc. It will also destroy o rings on FI equipped vehicles not set up for E85 over time. They also said true E85 equipped vehicles run higher fuel pressures. One of them has a drag boat, and the other a nice street rod, and they said there is no way they'd run it without using an alcohol carb and fuel system.

It will work, just takes more than re-tuning and dumpin it in.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but these guys do know their stuff.

Larry

Hey Larry,
You know, I've heard all that stuff before. There just might be something to it. Luckily, in todays cars and trucks, the fuel systems are built to handle ethanol because most gasoline has SOME ethanol added to it to boost octane, etc. It could be from 10 to 15% ethanol and you never even know it, although I think it's posted on the fuel pumps.

Now as for older engines... I'm taking your tech's advice with a grain of salt. It's proven to be very difficult to distinguish what's true, and what's false. We have to remember that we're talking about ethanol, not methanol. Methanol is the stuff used in alcohol burning funny cars and other racing applications. Methanol is very corrosive and will eat rubber, aluminum, gasket material, etc...
Ethanol on the other hand, is not corrosive (compared to methanol) and doesn't eat everything in sight. I'm not totally convinced that it won't destroy some materials over time. I would say that it's very possible and might completely ruin everything in a year. I simply do not know, but I honestly don't believe it's as big of a deal as it's often made out to be.
I plan to soak different materials in straight E85 for several weeks or longer. That should give some clues as to what it will or will not eat. Like I said, I have heard the terrible news about ethanol before. On that note, I have also read studies that proved that to be wrong. It's mostly the result of people confusing ethanol with methanol. I could be wrong, I hope I'm not, but I plan on doing my own testing to find out. Believe you me, I don't want to waste a bunch of good parts and money by not knowing what's going to happen. I can't afford to!

Also, I have inspected the fuel lines on my mower. It's been running E85 in different mixes all summer. They seem to be holding up just fine, as is the plastic gas tank. I ran E85 in my weed-eaters too. They won't run very good unless you close the choke half way (too lean), but the fragile little fuel line still looks good. And the primer bulb, you know the little rubber-ish bulb that's usually the first thing to rot away in time, still looks and works good. I expected that bulb to be eaten away pretty quik if anything was.

You brought up some valid points, but I'm still not convinced...

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thats good enough for me,i would never put it in my vw motor,weber carbs are gettin expensive

So, half empty I take it...?

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The questions I asked them were some of the same that came up when they had to go to school at Ford, because supposedly all '09 F150's are gonna be E85 compatible. These were the engineers and chemists who designed these systems who were present at the classes to answer tech questions. They ARE known to be very conservative , just like anything to do with OEM engineers. They dont want to push luck at all. Thats why almost every vehicle out there will run better with just an aftermarket programmer. It aint that factory guys dont know how to program performance, but they dont want to, so their products will last longer, at least thru the warranty period! Same way these guys might tell the techs at the school this stuff about the E85, so they wouldnt be trying it, or advising others to do so.

Sounds like you got a good plan for testing what it will do to the stuff we use. Maybe as you soak those carb gaskets and fuel lines, (a piece of a carb body if you got one) etc, it would be good to change the fuel they are sitting in every few days, so its always "potent". And soak another set in regular fuel, see if there is a difference. Hell, its your experiment, I'll shut up ! I'm sure you done thought of all this.

I'm lookin forward to what you find out!

I think I could get a hold of an old junk Weber body to see what happens to it, too. Let me know if you want one and I'll look around.

Larry

Sounds good. I think I have an old carb laying around somewhere. It won't be a weber, probably an old mikuni or something, but it should work fine for the testing. I also have a pile of partial weber rebuild kits. I'm hoping to start soaking this stuff this weekend. I plan to do it just like you said... I'll have a glass container of E85 and a container of gasoline. I plan to shake or stir up both containers at least once a day and also add more fuel to each one as needed. Hopefully we won't see any difference after a month, then again in 2 months. I will try to post pics of the progress, although it will probably be as exciting as watching paint dry...

Smile, It's friday and it's raining!! finally!

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Interesting information. Keep up the testing. I would be curious to know if the E85 will be safe to use in my VW Buggy EFI Turbo motor. Right now I'm using a 50/50 mix of 110 leaded and 93 unleaded. Its not cheap.

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Water cooled Dry Sumped Subaru Powered Turbo Charged Fuel Injected 2500CC Tank. Oh Rah! He who dies with the most Toys not only wins, He also wears them out!

Man you got that right!

Well I started my testing this weekend. I have a glass container of E85 with an assortment of parts soaking in it. I also have one of gasoline with the same parts soaking in it to use as a control. I included things like different gasket materials, rubber o-rings, accelerator pump diaphram (sp), 1/4 & 5/16 Goodyear fuel line, needle & seat, and just various other parts. So far after a few days everything looks good. I have noticed that the cork gasket material was floating for the first couple of days. Now it has sank a little... kinda suspended. I'm not sure if the E85 has affected the cork in any way, or if maybe the cork has absorbed it. We should know more in time. I will post pics soon. I'm having trouble opening woodsbuggy.com from my house. I'm not sure what the problem is. Other websites seem to work fine...

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Cool, Keep us posted. The cork has probably absorbed the fuel and has become a little heavyer than the proportional displacement.

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Water cooled Dry Sumped Subaru Powered Turbo Charged Fuel Injected 2500CC Tank. Oh Rah! He who dies with the most Toys not only wins, He also wears them out!

That's what I'm thinking. We expect cork to always float, never sink. This is true in water, but ethanol is much different chemically than water. I suspect the ethanol molecules are smaller than water molecules which has allowed the cork to slowly absorb it. Visual inspection shows no signs of deterioration so far and the other parts in the container also seem to be holding up fine.
I will post pics (really exciting looking at a jar of junk) but I still can't open woodsbuggy.com from home and keep forgetting to bring pics to work. I use firefox but IE won't open it either. I have tried reinstalling firefox, deleted all history and cookies, next I will try to update Java and see if that cures it...

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Ok, here's what I've got so far...
These parts have been soaking in e85 for a week now. I started this test on 9/6/08. As you can see, everything still looks good and is entirely intact. The strip of cork gasket has completely sank to the bottom, but shows no signs of deterioration. The e85 has become slightly discolored. It started as almost clear like water but now has a golden tint to it. I'm sure this is due to some of the parts being dirty and used when I put them in. It looks to have basically just cleaned them up. This concludes week 1, looking forward to week 2...

Still no luck with woodsbuggy.com from home. I updated Java last night with no luck. Are there any IT gurus out there?

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Looks promising! Did you change the E85 yet? The parts will get a continuous fresh, potent supply when on a running engine. PM Curt about your log-on problems. He's pretty slick on these gadgets!

Larry