rustrider73

first time I used e85 in my 92 tbi 305, the tank still had 2 gallons of 87 reg gas and I added 5 gallons e85, ran fine just a little rough before it warmed up.

second time I used e85, ran that tank down to about 1 gallon and filled the tank with 14 gallons of e85, the car was warm - hot when I filled it up and it ran fine 10 miles home.
next day and the last 3 days the car runs like crap and wants to stall at red lights and stop signs when cold, it runs decent when it warms up but still hesitates a little when I move the throttle.

I know if I want to keep running e85 I should burn a new chip, but I am going to try to get by right now by cranking up the fuel pressure and or using a 350 throttle body and injectors.
has anyone worked out a chip to run e85 yet or figured anything else out.
what do you guys think

BluFBdy

iTrader: (1)

uhm youre gonna need to redo your fuel system and make it e85 compatible, a chip wont solve your problems, can i ask whyyyyy youre running e85 in a thirdgen?

InfernalVortex

iTrader: (4)

Fuel systems were designed to handle ethanol for a long time. Ethanol isnt corrosive the way methanol is. There is ethanol in most gas now anyway.

That said Im not sure it's a great idea to just start pumping ethanol through it. You'll definitely need a serious retune - ethanol has a different stoich ratio than gasoline. You'll also make less power with ethanol.

rustrider73

I'm not worried about any damage ,I have enough parts to fix anything that may get messed up and the 305 is only popping corn in 7 cylinders.
I'm just trying to see if the stock tbi can be setup to run e85 before I drop my new 350 in.
I am aware of the fact that it needs more fuel and maybe more timing and will lack power,again thats only until I drop the high compression 350 in.
The question is (has anyone burned a chip to run e85 on a stock setup or should I crank up the fuel pressure or put in bigger injectors or both for now)

this is an experiment to gain knowledge
thanks for any help guys

BluFBdy

iTrader: (1)

yeah thats what i meant by reworking the system, its gotta be tuned right because like mentioned above its got different stoichiometric characteristics, if you got a good tune down it would be awesome, that stuff is cheaper isnt it? i havent kept up on it since it came around but technically you could have a ozone friendly thirdgen... i guess lol doesnt it combust at a lower temp than gas? and i dont know how well it compresses either, itd be cool to learn tho im subscribing to this thread, if you get this down thats definitely an accomplishment

good luck!

rustrider73

In stock tune the power was definitely down from 87gas,it ran like crap when it was cold,ok when hot but still surged a little from being lean, and milage was down from 14-15mpg on gas(many fillups) to 12-13mpg on e85(two full tanks). The e85 must have cleaned the injectors and I'm guessing the plugs too because now back on 87 gas(second fillup) I'm getting 16-17 mpg.
I do not have data logging or chip burning tools yet so I will be cranking up the fuel pressure and installing 350 injectors to see how that works with a couple more tanks of e85. This is my daily driver(w/120k mile 305) so I burn a tank a week.

ASE doc

If it helps at all, the PCM in flex fuel vehicles monitors fuel trims to recognize when E85 is being used. As you already know the engine will go lean, forcing fuel trims high. The PCM then either increases injector pulsewidth or fuel pressure, along with ignition advance to compensate, depending on the particular system. Flex fuel vehicles run just as well on E85 as on gasoline.

It seems to me that a wide band fuel management system and an MSD with dash mounted timing adjustment would work just fine. A crafty software designer could write the code to command an ECM to adjust itself according to certain changes in fuel trim. What a cool set up that would be. You would want to patent it because people would definitely buy it.

rustrider73

Whats up Doc? I am aware of the fuel identifier in late model cars an trucks and the fact that the ecm switches calibrations, but as you know in this car I'm the fuel identifier and once I setup a chip to work with the e85 I can swap chips for e85 or 87gas
what ecm are you using in your hot rod.

ASE doc

Hey rustrider73, I run ACCEl DFI gen 6. When I built this car in 99 it was the only user programmable ECM around and it has served me well. Fortunately it was made back before Accel was taken over by Mr Gasket. Its just a simple Motorolla ECM with an EEPROM.

Gumby

run more regular gas, never gonna run right on straight e85 but know plenty of guys with no mods who run it but stay around a 45/55 mix

45% reg gas

ASE doc

Just did more checking. Like I thought, Ford did away with the fuel identifier module in 2000 and just uses the O2 sensor and fuel trims to identify alcohol content in fuel. I still think it wouldnt be that hard to program a wide band ECM to do the same thing the factory system does. One thing though is that factory flex fuel vehicles use poly fuel system components to prevent corrosion. Ethanol and methanol are both hydrascopic and you may get rust in your tank.

rustrider73

Gumby, mixing the fuel is cool but not what I'm looking to do, eventualy I will swap motors and the new setup is going to be high compression, I will need the 105 octane of straight e85
Doc if I get rid of the stock ecm I'll def make use of the wideband o2, I dont think it'll work with the stock 92tbi ecm

Gumby

propane can give you the same high octane rating and is even cheaper then E85

rustrider73

I think the propain is closer to 110 octane, and the tank takes up any storage that you might have in the rear.
And I dont know how much propain is near you but here in deer park it's $25.00 to fill a bbq tank,and from what I understand a bbq tank is equal to or close to 5 gallons of gas.

ASE doc

No, wide band wont work with the 92 ECM. I think I see your point a little more clearly now though. You want to know if its possible to program the changes into a prom because you're eventually going with a motor that will built for the high octane. At that point the adaptability will be a non issue because the high compression motor wont run on 87 or even 92 octane. I think that programming the needed changes into a prom would be no problem. I would also consider coating the tank inside with POR 15 and stainless or braided stainless fuel lines.

rustrider73

I'm gonna let the tank and lines ride to see what happens, I have plenty of spare parts.
Right now I'm trying to see if I can get it to run decent by just changing injectors,fuel pressure, and timing.
I had to go back to reg87 gas untill I could get the 350 throttle body, and adjustable fpr, now I just need to finish running the tank down empty for some straight e85.
Once I drop the new motor in I'll be looking to burn some new chips.

ChainHartMachin

How is it going with running e85? Any fuel pump / lines / tank failures? I'm interested because if all I need to do to run full e85 is re-tune the ECM and not worry about stock fuel lines / injectors / pump, then that would be great.

I have a 91 RS w/ TBI and I've been running 30% Ethanol (according to the calculator on e85prices.com) for about a month and haven't had any issues yet. I'll have to try working up to 55% like Gumby indicated.

Perhaps TBI is a better choice than TPI (in the context running high ethanol content in factory stock motors) since the ethanol has a better chance to vaporize due to intake heat?

rustrider73

So far I have changed the 305 injectors out for 350 injectors and put a 180 thermostat in place of not having one at all, other than that everthing is the way it was when I was running on 87 gasoline.

Long before I started working with e85, I removed the cat(straight pipe) and the air pump solenoids and valves and the heater valve and hoses(the mess over the passenger valve cover),and had no problems with the way it ran except popping a check engine soon light for the EGR system. I still get the light every now and then but don't think it has anything to do with what I removed or the e85.

I'm getting about 13 MPG on e85 and the engine runs smoother than it ever did on gas,but lacks some power. I was getting about 15-16 MPG on 87 gas.

The biggest issue running e85, is getting the engine to warm up first start of the day or after it sits while I'm at work, when it's cold the engine runs rough and almost wants to stall the first few red lights or stop signs.
Once it warms up it runs great.

I need to datalog it to see whats going on in the ecm and get a wideband o2 setup on it then maybe I'll get someone to burn me some chips to try to get the setup closer to correct.

Fast355

iTrader: (2)

Yea after some work on the chip you will wonder why you didn't go to E85 sooner. My 06 Ram got me started with flex fuel. I ran E85 on the bone stock flex fuel 4.7 in the truck and it always ran and performed better. 2-3 tenths quicker in an 1/8 mile and about 3 mph more. When I swapped the Hemi using the stock 4.7 PCM and some programming I experienced the same gains.

About two years ago I wrote a chip to run in my 7730 TPI ecm in my 1983 G20 Van running my Vortec head 350 TPI. I used the BLM (long term fuel trims) to adjust the injector timing for the fuel in use. Pretty simple, just enabled a setting that allowed it to store the BLMs, changed the BLM min/max at key on settings, among a few other things. I think I remember setting the commanded stoichiometric A/F ratio half way between pure gasoline and E85 to allow for an adequate selfrf adjustment. Popped the chip in it, filled the tank with E-85 and drove it. Ran a little weak for the first 5-10 miles and then everything was back to normal. I will also mention this and others may or may not want to attempt it, I turned on the low octane, long term knock retard feature in the 7730 and increased the timing on E-85 about 4-6* across the board. On straight gasoline the Knock sensor activity would force "low octane retard"

rustrider73

Fast355 were you able to keep the stock size 350 injectors and adjust the chip or did you stepup the injectors?
I have TBI on a 305 now and plan on keeping it once I swap in the vortec 350 but have thought about using a SD TPI.

ChainHartMachin sorry so far(3 months&12or13 tankfulls) no problems with tank,pump,lines or anything else. Havent even lifted the hood except to check coolant,oil,trans fluid.

89redliningRS

I've had E85 in mine for about 2 years now. Even had it sitting in it for about 6 months while I was away from home. No problems anywhere in the fuel system. I'm not running TBI anymore, but the general rule on E85 is that you'll need to compinsate about 20%-30% more fuel to run it. I switched over to a carb before I did E85, but my jet sizes went from 60-80 in the front and 64-84 in the rear. Plus bigger squirters.

Do some research on E85, there is a lot of myths out there about it. five7kid on here has done a ton of work with e85. He's very helpfull. I've been able to gain in 1/4 mile time with it. Plus how else can you get 107 octane for just over 2 bucks a gallon.

ChainHartMachin

I've been running as much as 50% ethanol for a couple months now. No problems with it so far. I have noticed that throttle response is not as good when the engine is cold. The engine also takes longer to warm up with 50% ethanol.

I went as far as searching for SAE papers on the subject of alcohol fuels and engine wear. The paper I found (and purchased) covered upper cylinder and ring wear with alcohol fuels (methanol and ethanol). It was primarily trying to explain through experimentation why prior testing showed accelerated upper cylinder and ring wear with alcohol based fuels (I.E. the exact chemistry of the wear agents). However, the paper starts out with a graph of Iron Wear Concentration vs. oil temperature for different fuels (which itself is a citation to the results of prior technical papers).

What the graph showed was that even 100% pure ethanol caused no more wear than gasoline. What did cause more wear than gasoline was ethanol with 10% water content, pure methanol and methanol with 10% water content. The accelerated wear only occurred when engine oil and coolant temperature was low. The wear curves decreased sharply with increasing oil and coolant temperature, eventually tracking with the results of gasoline.

Here is the citation for the information in the previous two paragraphs (I can't post the paper itself).
"Naegeli, D. (1989, August). Combustion Associated Wear in Alcohol Fueled Spark Ignition Engines (SAE Technical Paper #891641)"

rustrider73

I'm still running straight e85 right out of the pump.
Now that the weather is getting colder the warm ups take a little longer but it still runs real good once it's warm, not too bad when it's cold.
Still getting 13-14 mpg 50/50 around town/highway.
No problems at all running straight e85, but I think I'm going to put a 190 thermostat in it to see if it improves the cold starts, and see how far I can advance the timing to try to get some more pop out of the 305.
It definately lacks a little power compared to running 87 octane gas.
I'm thinking about dropping the tank to change the TBI fuel pump to a TPI unit so I can put some nitrous on the wimp. If I do I'll post some pics of how everything looks in there.

BluFBdy

iTrader: (1)

I dunno the m/pg loss seems like enough to say screw it and run 87 lol I get really good mileage with my 305 and no problems out of the ordinary for a 21 yr old car lol

rustrider73

like I said in the beginning of this post, this is for knowledge, glad to hear gas works fine for you caveman.
I dont care about the milege just keeping track because some people say it would be alot worse.
The next engine that will be in the car will need high octane gas that costs $15/gallon
compared to 105 octane e85 for $2.50/gallon.
This is an EXPERIMENT

84CraZ28

iTrader: (1)

a motor meant to run on regular 87 does not have the right compression ratio to burn e-85 correctly. i understand flex fuel cars run on both but there computer and motor is built specifically for that. they work together to make the changes to run correctly. they are set up for that's why for example you only see a small amount of chevy's with the flex fuel sticker. you could take the the computer from a flex fuel car and stick it in the same non flex fuel car and it still wouldn't be able to operate correctly unless u also make the same changes to the motor as the flex fuel car. hell if you wanted to mix diesel in with your gas you could, and the car would still run it would just run crappy to. if you really want to run e85in that new 350 i know there are a few kits out there that would come with the right pistons and parts to run it correctly in your small block. remember do it right the first time cause you may not get a second