Fuel System Mods for E85

[Pistol_91]

Confusing to hear tuners and my ESS guy saying I need a return system and other members and you folks saying I don’t. Wish I was smart enough to figure it all out.

Ideally I’d go to the flex pump and fill up like I was able to do with my NA tune. The tuning device was pretty consistently reading E70 at the three stations I was able to get it from. No testing or ordering personal fuel supplies to keep in my garage.

Sounds like I should be around 680-ish at the wheels now, wonder what kind of power E70 would give.

Pretty sure all pump gas "e85" stations are 54-83%. I tested the few around me for about 6 months straight. The highest I saw was 80%, lowest was 70%. I run an "e85" tune for everything over 70%. I've had no issues, for the last 5 years...
I did have a bad batch one time, last year, after the 2 hurricanes came through here and gas was scarce for a couple weeks. I never tested it, but my knock sensors didn't like what was in the tank. That's when I switched back to 93 for about a month. Either way, anything above 70% will be fine on a dedicated "e85" tune.
If your area constantly tests under that, I'd consider running a flex tune. You can buy a tester on Amazon for cheap.

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[Pistol_91]

Here's my issue with a BAP. The little control knob (if equipped).

That little can break, get brushed away, turned, etc. Heck someone at a car show could fuck with it if they wanted to.

Had the same thing happen a very long time ago on a Fox body, MSD timing knob and it basically got turned off and cost me a motor.

Some of the units seem to have a little dial in the BAP itself like a stereo amp gain knob. That seems better, less likely to be misadjusted.

Lol yeah... A knob seems dumb now days. Looks like some old technology. My JMS runs off throttle position. 50% it ramps on.

 

[mejohn50]

Confusing to hear tuners and my ESS guy saying I need a return system and other members and you folks saying I don’t. Wish I was smart enough to figure it all out.

It really is easy.

If your tuner says you need XYZ components, then that’s what you need.

Commercial tuners have an incentive to give you a product that will always work and make you happy. If that means they want you to have a $3k fuel system upgrade to run E85 on a supercharged car, then that’s what you need. It’s simply the state of the platform.

On one hand, it’s great. You can call up one of the major parts sellers, they’ll sell you everything you need, including a tune, with one phone call to make 650whp, 800whp, 1000whp or whatever you want all in one shot. The formulas are well defined, even if overkill in many instances. On the other hand, it’s kinda lame. You can’t move too far away from one of the trusted formulas or else you’re going to have a tough time finding someone to tune the car.

For those of us doing our own tuning, what is necessary to achieve various goals may not be the same as what a tuner dictates you have before they’ll tune your car. Reliably making 800whp on a supercharged gen 3 with E85 can be done with <$1000 in fuel system upgrades. DW400 ($300), 18v BAP ($350), and 2020 GT500 injectors ($300) is all that’s necessary to do it, but if no one will tune that setup, then you *need* to do whatever your tuner is making you do.

The bottom line is you NEED to do what your tuner is telling you to do, but there are other options that will work just as well if someone is willing to tune it.

 

[SheepDog]

Confusing to hear tuners and my ESS guy saying I need a return system and other members and you folks saying I don’t.

I think the real question is - what would a person be willing to pay, for a truly custom calibration? If you want Wengerd or Lund etc. to tune your car, you will need to run whatever fuel system they are comfortable/accustomed to tuning. Some of the tuning gurus in here probably would be willing to help people with calibrations for various bespoke fuel systems, but not for the $600 bucks or whatever the mainstream company's charge.


It just takes too much time, especially over days and weeks of emails back and forth. Maybe one stipulation to this would be that you have to schedule a remote session on a dyno so that they could get it dialed in, in a couple of hours provided the system was installed correctly, and behaving appropriately.

Sounds like Wengerd will tune the KPM systems, but again, to reach 700+ wheel on E85, you need their 1500 HP system at a minimum. In my opinion, people shouldn't even be running boost on these 12:1 motors with pump gas.

wonder what kind of power E70 would give.

All else being equal, 70-80 HP ish, but also the cooling and knock protection that gasoline will never provide, which includes race gas. 100 octane gasoline is great for suppressing knock, but it still doesn't have the cooling properties that alcohol does and costs 5x as much

 

[robvas]

Where do the ethanol benefits start to max out? E30? E50?

 

[engineermike]

Where do the ethanol benefits start to max out? E30? E50?

Banish spoke about this and mentioned 50-60% IIRC, which aligns well with this graph I found:

 

[cbrtrx]

Where do the ethanol benefits start to max out? E30? E50?

Full benefits at around E70, very good benefits at E50.

 

[The Watchman]

I had Fore Innovations lvl 2 kit with dual 274 pumps installed in November 24'. I shopped around and got a decent deal on the kit with install.

I believe the total cost was around $3600 everything including installation.

Be aware lots of other mods are done on the car including FIC 1000's.

The point being the car runs amazing. Never throws a code, not issues with the fuel baskets or fuel running low.

I always keep the fuel above 1/4 tank for sure, but again, no issues and the car runs far, far better than when it was stock.

Money well spent in my book...

 

[robvas]

Even with the stock pump and BAP I don't want to go WOT with under 1/4 tank

 

[cbrtrx]

On a gen 3 for example with port and direct injection the tuner can manipulate the injection timing and the split between them to try to extract as much power and efficiency out of the combo as well, many tuners don't even touch that. Just like some tuners will take the time to maximize cam timing where as others would simply just add more ignition timing to try to achieve gains. Some ways are much more beneficial then others.

 

[Pistol_91]

What is the largest fuel pump someone has fit in the stock bucket without major modifications?

 

[NGOT8R]

What is the largest fuel pump someone has fit in the stock bucket without major modifications?

Walbro 525 maybe? Still gonna have to clip the holder like with a DW400, or maybe have a new holder 3D printed.

 

[engineermike]

The dw810 fits like a glove in there with no mods to the bucket.

 

[SheepDog]

The DW 810 in the OEM bucket really is the ultimate solution. This pump outperforms 2 Hellcat pumps ( Walbro 295's, 274's etc) and can be ran from the factory power, ground, and FPC PWM circuit.

I have this pump in a Radium bucket, with a return setup, which is still lightyears better than any off the shelf return system could hope to be but having it in the OEM bucket, returnless, and utilizing the very effective venturi system that Ford designed, would be even better as long as the fuel filter in the bucket can handle the additional flow, and not choke the thing.


DW's current PWM controller wasn't really designed for the load and heat generated, which required that I installed a CPU cooling fan and heat sync to manage the heat. This solution does work very well, but it certainly isn't the "Plug and Play" design I ultimately want. DW is developing a PWM controller for the 810 pump, which will also omit the need for the pull up resistor I had to install as well. Sounds like it will be a year or so before they release it.

The second issue- is that of tuning. It took a lot of engineering, trial end error and troubleshooting (and honestly, me making the mistake of having the pump wired incorrectly initially due to bad info from DW) to make it work. For those not following this thread -

(https://www.mustang6g.com/forums/threads/brushless-fuel-pump-and-factory-fpdm-control.212608/)

Me, Mike, and others made it work but the tuning is well outside the realm of understanding and capabilities of any of the mainstream tuners, and waaaaay over my head.


I think everyone can agree that a brushless pump is better in every way, but I ask again - What would a consumer be willing to pay, for a truly custom calibration? The data that was developed to tune my car, is now established, so it certainly would not take the amount of revisions and growing pains to do this to subsequent cars.

Even KPM, with substantial resources, did not go down this road. I asked them a couple times why they didn't design a system like this, but never get a response.

 

[Mikepol2]

I asked them a couple times why they didn't design a system like this, but never get a response.

Quick soap box - apparently these days it’s acceptable human behavior to ignore a question if the answer is going to be uncomfortable. Wengerd did the same with me asking about returnless, people at work do it all the time, etc. Drives me INSANE. 30 years ago if someone asked you a question, you gave an answer. Now it’s cool to just let people twist in the wind. Of course, a LOT of stuff was better 30 years ago.

OK rant over. Back to wishing I could afford to run E85.

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