E85 Conversion with the Roush 2650 Blower?

[FunkyMuffler]

Hello all, so my car currently is on 93 with the roush 2650 blower, catless headers with a full borla s type exhaust on 670whp. I've been wanting to get an e85 conversion and want to know what to expect with this change, the car is my daily to and from work and want to know more about the reliability, power difference, pricing, and where and who to go to do complete this conversion!

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[engineermike]

E85 is the single most dramatic change you can make to a Roush car to improve performance, and the effects are amplified even more in the heat of summer.

What you actually need and what your tuner will allow are generally two very different things.

What you actually need is a BAP and a tune. Yes, that's it. The stock fuel pump and Roush supplied injectors will support E85 in a Roush SC setup as long as you don't increase the rpm range or boost any over "stock". PCMTec (or a user-defined parameter wizard in HPT) is needed to get there, though, and the vast majority of tuners would rather sell you a complete fuel system before doing this.

You can actually do a very good flex fuel setup as well with PCMTec, and get the same results. I'm actually running this setup in my Roush Nitemare F150. I'm running the Roush kit, 106 mm TB, and E85/Flex, stock 47# injectors, stock fuel pump, 18v bap, and even dropped to the 2.8 pulley, though I'm shifting at 7000 rpm. It works amazingly well.

 

[Perna00]

Hello all, so my car currently is on 93 with the roush 2650 blower, catless headers with a full borla s type exhaust on 670whp. I've been wanting to get an e85 conversion and want to know what to expect with this change, the car is my daily to and from work and want to know more about the reliability, power difference, pricing, and where and who to go to do complete this conversion!

it sounds like I am just a step behind you. I am going to go to a Roush blower here in a few months, but I’ve been working with my tune.

I currently have it set up for E85 but I also got another performance tune for 91/93 octane. I was thinking about creating a flex tune while I’m still N/A so that the car can identify what type of fueling it has and adjust accordingly as a base.

From what I’ve been researching, in order to make the flex tune work properly, you need PCM tech because there are a few parameters that HP Tuning lacks that need to be adjusted in order for it to “properly learn“ the fuel type. So now I have both software and tuning devices.

What I am going to try to accomplish next is taking the base of my 91/93 tune and enable flex fueling with the increased ethanol/spark modification tables from my E85 tune. And probably a couple other perimeters I’m going to have to change, but I have to start somewhere.

if I can get that working properly with stability and performance, I should be able to adjust it when I get the blower where I only have to deal with the volumes as the flex fuel will already be set up. I currently got an upgraded fuel pump (DW 400) and the kit will come with a BAP/ 1,000 cc’s so I should be able to support a decent amount of power without having any fueling issues.

 

[engineermike]

In order to get flex to work properly, there are two aspects. One is properly learning, and ther other is what it does with the learned values.

In order to get proper learning, you have to first confirm the fuel trims are around 0 on pump gas. It can be +/-5 or even +/- 10 as long as it's both + and -. If it's consistently +10 it will learn inaccurately. The logic essentially adjusts stoich afr to drive STFT to 0. It's locks LTFT at existing values while this happens. If you're convinced the fuel trims are good enough, you'd then switch on flex fuel and make sure the auF29291 (afr to % eth conversion) is populated, and make sure the fuel line volumes are correct (there are 9 of them). Log it on pump gas and make sure it learns 10% ethanol, give or take 5. If so, you're good to start on the next step.

The next step is telling the logic what to do when it learns the ethanol. In general, there are flex fuel tables and weighting tables. For instance, adding ethanol doesn't affect cold start much until % gets really high, so you'd weight the non-FF tables heavily until you get up closer to 70%. But for borderline knock, a little ethanol goes a long way so you can weight the ethanol borderline timing table heavily even down at 30%. Personally, I set mine up to "switch" the additional timing on and off at around 55% ethanol. Many of the ethanol tables can be copied from the F150. You can even adjusts WOT lambda, lots of cold start parameters, max load (boost), EGT, or even GDI pressure as a function of learned ethanol. By the way, for whatever reason the GDI pressure FFV table for the mustang is defauled to 725 psi so that definitely needs to be increased. In pcmtec you can search the parameter tree for FFV, FF, flex, ethanol, methanol, alcohol, enthanol, brazil mode, etc to see all what is there, and the F150 coyote tune is a great place to start. One other thing, there is a switch that expands the PFI max PW by about 2 ms that only available in PCMTec and will help increase the capability of marginal injectors.

If you have any questions about specific parameters, I'm glad to discuss.

 

[Jupiter Sean]

I tried posting 2 dyno run vids, something went wrong. Anyhow were similar - I'm a 2017 whipple, e85, catless headers with full corsa tuned by PBD. Went from 666 to 704. It was a crazy hot summer day in Florida and he was being easy on her.

I kept having issues with my fuel pump - kept blowing fuses. Changed out the BAP to a different pump and didn't help. Rarefab now RSA said that our fuel systems are just not enough, even with the boost a crap, and the only option to get it to stop popping fuses on i95 at the worst possible times and spots was to change the entire system to a double or triple pump return style. I didn't really care about more power as it's a street car and cant hold the 666 anyway, but I was over the fuse changes.

It's funny as first - years ago - PBD recommended the BAP(came as a package deal from them when I got the Whipple), and it kept popping the fuse on the pump under the back seat, then the same shop recommended the DW400, and it kept popping a different fuse under the hood, and then the same shop recommended the same boost a crap again! I told them how dumb and circular that would be and that's when they said the only real fix is to upgrade the entire system with a return style.

No more fuse changes, but my wallet was not happy

 

[engineermike]

@Jupiter Sean either you had the wrong fuse or something else was wrong with the car. Lots of folks running an 18v bap on a dw400 and some even running 22 volts on the dw400 (which will support over 850 rwhp on e85 btw). I have the amp draw data of the stock and dw400 up to 22 volts and the amp vs time curves for these fuses and they are waaaay more forgiving than you’d think.

 

[Perna00]

That’s some great data to reference. The E85 tune runs smoothly and without any issues. So the next step would be to get the tank as close to empty as possible and make sure my STFT are close to zero’ed out after running 91/93 for a few tanks… then I can proceed with the flex logic?

 

[robvas]

it sounds like I am just a step behind you. I am going to go to a Roush blower here in a few months

Do you already have the blower? If not why not go Edelbrock/Whipple?

 

[Jupiter Sean]

@Jupiter Sean either you had the wrong fuse or something else was wrong with the car. Lots of folks running an 18v bap on a dw400 and some even running 22 volts on the dw400 (which will support over 850 rwhp on e85 btw). I have the amp draw data of the stock and dw400 up to 22 volts and the amp vs time curves for these fuses and they are waaaay more forgiving than you’d think.

Definitely the right fuses - obviously...
Apparently the BAP DW400 combo works for some and not for others - that's what rarefab/rsa said at least. I'm the others. Very frustrating. However I haven't had an issue since the upgrade.

I've heard what you have said before, that the combo is good up to X - that just was not the case for me - and according to rarefab/rsa I'm not the only one.

I would not recommend the BAP combo band-aid fix as it may or may not work, but will definitely cost money and time trying.

 

[engineermike]

@Jupiter Sean FYI the gen2 IIRC has a 20 amp fuel pump fuse and gen 3 has a 30 amp. A DW400 on a 22volt bap draws 33 amps at the pump when commanded to 100% duty cycle, which draws 46 amps through the stock wiring and fuse. A 30 amp fuse can sustain that current for about a minute before it blows. I increased mine to 40 amps just to be sure, and verified the stock wiring can handle it. The stock pump is actually much more efficient and draws a lot less current than the DW400, and even less still at 18 volts.

@Perna00 yes if the fuel trims are around 0% then you can move to the next step. You just turn FFV on (auF21166), make sure the AFR to ethanol% is populated (auF29291), and the fuel line volumes are populated (auF61356 to auF61364), then do a good data log from the initial start. You can log alcohol source and status. It shouldn't mature for 5-10 minutes of driving and when it does it should show around 10% learned ethanol. I've seen some go as high as 30% before maturing on pump gas, which is not acceptable, so that's what you're looking for. I'd say 5-15% would be very good and time to move forward at that point.

 

[Perna00]

Do you already have the blower? If not why not go Edelbrock/Whipple?

I already got a fellow member here that is selling me his set up whenever he changes over.

 

[Perna00]

@Jupiter Sean FYI the gen2 IIRC has a 20 amp fuel pump fuse and gen 3 has a 30 amp. A DW400 on a 22volt bap draws 33 amps at the pump when commanded to 100% duty cycle, which draws 46 amps through the stock wiring and fuse. A 30 amp fuse can sustain that current for about a minute before it blows. I increased mine to 40 amps just to be sure, and verified the stock wiring can handle it. The stock pump is actually much more efficient and draws a lot less current than the DW400, and even less still at 18 volts.

@Perna00 yes if the fuel trims are around 0% then you can move to the next step. You just turn FFV on (auF21166), make sure the AFR to ethanol% is populated (auF29291), and the fuel line volumes are populated (auF61356 to auF61364), then do a good data log from the initial start. You can log alcohol source and status. It shouldn't mature for 5-10 minutes of driving and when it does it should show around 10% learned ethanol. I've seen some go as high as 30% before maturing on pump gas, which is not acceptable, so that's what you're looking for. I'd say 5-15% would be very good and time to move forward at that point.

perfect, I’ve got a full tank of the 85 I need to run out first and then I’ll start the process. I haven’t had much time to drive the car but will start on it ASAP.

 

[engineermike]

@Perna00 you'll need to run it empty, switch to a gasoline tune, put a few gallons of gas, run empty, and repeat a few times before you get all the ethanol out.

 

[engineermike]

Do you already have the blower? If not why not go Edelbrock/Whipple?

The kit he’s getting has already made 960 rwhp. Pretty awesome, really. A bigger tb, porting, and e85 makes the Roush kit as good as the others.

 

[Skydiver]

No boost a pump, you need a return style fuel system bigger injectors and a tune. I am currently on ID1300x injectors, dual pump return style fuel system and a custom tune. Stick car on E85 69mm upper 5% lower.

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