Is it worth doing E85 kit

[galaxy]

Facts. That’s the crappy part. Especially when you have none available and your house is your only gas station option. Makes it challenging to enjoy it or make it worth while.

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[robvas]

Facts. That’s the crappy part. Especially when you have none available and your house is your only gas station option. Makes it challenging to enjoy it or make it worth while.

Even worse, the two stations in my town that have e85 pumps, only have one e85 pump, and it's always being taken by someone getting normal gas or just have their car parked there taking up space. Then you get to sit around for ten minutes while they are inside playing lottery tickets and shit

 

[Mjc1241]

Did anyone ever post what the ECU advances timing to when using the kit?

The Pro Flex kit does not advance timing. The ProFlex Commander works by digitally intercepting and augmenting the fuel injector signal from your vehicle's stock ECU. It modifies the injector pulse width to inject more fuel when E85 is detected, compensating for the fact that ethanol requires a richer air-fuel mixture than standard gasoline.
I've run the kit since 2018 as probably one of the few in the country at the time for GT350's after much discussion directly with Advanced Fuel Dynamics. I now run a Wengerd flex tune with the Pro flex commander which acts as a real time ethanol sensor directly at the injector pre combustion. All e85 and flex tunes infer the ethanol content based on the O2 sensor post combustion. I ran the kit for six years prior to putting any type of tune on my car.

 

[K4fxd]

I have an e85 tune for mine, I know not a gt 350, It does improve power everywhere but the loss in driving range made me put the 93 tune back in. Drops down to about 150 miles if I remember correctly. Seemed like I was hunting a fuel stop every other day.

 

[galaxy]

Even worse, the two stations in my town that have e85 pumps, only have one e85 pump, and it's always being taken by someone getting normal gas or just have their car parked there taking up space. Then you get to sit around for ten minutes while they are inside playing lottery tickets and shit

Even worse than that, the local pump I do have is not great and even that changes seasonal. I’ve tested the pump as low as 65ish. No go for me.

 

[engineermike]

Even worse than that, the local pump I do have is not great and even that changes seasonal. I’ve tested the pump as low as 65ish. No go for me.

it’s been well established that you don’t need that much ethanol to get the benefits. 65 is plenty, especially na. Before tuning was available, the supercharged s650 guys were able to hit mbt with only e40.

 

[galaxy]

it’s been well established that you don’t need that much ethanol to get the benefits. 65 is plenty, especially na. Before tuning was available, the supercharged s650 guys were able to hit mbt with only e40.

Except for the fact I have a 85R tune and was told by Wengerd to not run anything below 75, minimum. Yes, I asked for that; that’s on me. We set my tune up with 85R that tested at 90. Maybe 65 is plenty for me. Maybe not. Not going there either way.

 

[engineermike]

I believe oem calibrator Greg Banish, research publications on the matter, and my own personal experience over any popular coyote tuner. Unless you need over about 130 octane, which you don’t, e60 is plenty. But it’s your car and your decision. I just wanted you to know you’re unnecessarily missing out.

 

[wingnutt]

I have an e85 tune for mine, I know not a gt 350, It does improve power everywhere but the loss in driving range made me put the 93 tune back in. Drops down to about 150 miles if I remember correctly. Seemed like I was hunting a fuel stop every other day.

this…times eleventy. Had a Lund e85 tune for almost five years and used it exactly twice

 

[K4fxd]

Except for the fact I have a 85R tune

I have never seen an actual Wengerd tune so this may not apply;

If it will knock with with fuel below E70, the ign timing is over advanced.

There is a thing called MBT, too much timing and the engine fights itself.
If it will knock on E60 It is 99% over advanced, or the tuner (generic not Wengerd specific) wants you to think you have a special tune and sets the timing correctly.

 

[robvas]

I believe oem calibrator Greg Banish, research publications on the matter, and my own personal experience over any popular coyote tuner. Unless you need over about 130 octane, which you don’t, e60 is plenty. But it’s your car and your decision. I just wanted you to know you’re unnecessarily missing out.

The ethanol blends in the test were created using 100% ethanol mixed with government-certified high octane gasoline. Let's see what gas station "e85" does at different ratios. They also used an old GM EcoTec 4 cylinder.

I'd like to see some testing done on a Coyote engine, aftermarket supercharger, higher boost pressures, real-world fuel. Are the numbers different on a 16 or 20 psi boosted coyote? Get some real-world data.

Not that a 'street car' needs e85R, e100 or e98, but what's gas station e50 look like vs gas station e85?

From the paper:

 

[honeybadger]

I believe oem calibrator Greg Banish, research publications on the matter, and my own personal experience over any popular coyote tuner. Unless you need over about 130 octane, which you don’t, e60 is plenty. But it’s your car and your decision. I just wanted you to know you’re unnecessarily missing out.

This graph piqued my interest based on that 130 octane rating, so I went and dug into the engineering a bit with the help of Gemini (I'm just a scrub on the fundamentals). Super interesting piece of education - I always thought E85 topped out at 105 octane - learned quite a bit. Obviously I dont have the expertise to independently confirm, but sharing for others:

1. Supposedly port injection benefits little from the evaporative cooling effect (top line in the graph). Port does benefit from the shear volume of fuel going in at full throttle(22-30% more than regular 93), but the evaporative part is wasted in the intake runner on the valves...it enters during the intake stroke and is reheated, negating the effect of that "cool mist hitting hot compressed air inside the cylinder."

2. I also didn't realize that mixing gasoline + ethanol would improve octane more than pure ethanol. When mixed, ethanol chemically destroys the unstable free radicals that cause engine knock in normal gasoline. This gives E85 more knock-resistance than either gasoline or pure ethanol could ever have on their own.

3. Part of what intrigued about the graph is high octane rating at e45 - the online calculators I've always seen used don't show the same octane rating at E45 vs E85. Apparently they're also using a basic averaging formula and they don't account for the benefits outline in point #2. they're just taking averaging the octane of the gasoline and octane of the E85 based on how many gallons of each.

Today I learned. thanks for sharing

Edit: oh, for those wondering why pump e85 is usually 105 octane and this graph is showing it as 115, it's because pump ratings are based off on averaging RON + MON octane ratings. The graph above is just using RON(which is the higher number).

 

[wingnutt]

Used to be common knowledge…in the turbo 4cylinder world we would run e30 on race nights, it was so good that we had charts taped inside the fuel door to get the right mix. But couldn’t run anything more that that on the stock fuel systems back then

 

[Ahung12]

Alert: Stupid questions incoming.
1. Would running E85 with a plug-and-play module void my Ford warranty?
2. Is the cooling impact enough that I'd need to seriously worry about being able to get oil temps up to the 185'ish zone in cool/cold weather driving?

 

[Bob Lob Law]

yes
no

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