Does anyone here know about E85 fuel. If so do you run it.... I go to a tech school and we were talking about it the other day... From what we talked about this stuff would be the perfect fuel for high compression engines... Its the equivlent of 105 octane and is starting to be sold at gas stations across the country for street use. My teacher said it wouldnt be hard to make the engine run with it. what is needed is stainless steel valves, different injectors, and new fuel lines. I was just wondering if anyone here has played with it or thought of setting up an engine for use of it..

a different oil and etc.

Its corn juice, 85% alky in ma engine? no offica its nut drunk...

what about it? Till its easily available in cali, I wont play with it.

is this the same type of fuel that some cars can run now

my 03 ford explorer says that it is dual fuel
and i believe that e85 was the other kind it can use
but that the gas milage would suffer because there isnt as much energy in e85 as in the same quanity of gasoline
so it takes more to do the same amount of work

or am i thinking of some other fuel
i dont exactly have my owners manual over here

yes it is the flex fuel ford talks about.. It does require a bit more to have the same mixture... but i heard the cost of it should be will be less than gas... The biggest gain I can see is being able to run high compression like 11.5:1

i was just wondering. it sounds like a great idea but then after buying the explorer i realized that i couldnt find anywhere in san antonio that sold the stuff

From what I understand, all cars built from the 1995 model year are designed to be able to run e85 in addition to standard fuels.

E85 is what we use in our custom formula SAE car we build and race at college! Besides being 100+ ocatane it also burns slightly cooler the normal fuel it that matters at all to you.

vehicles designed to run on e85 are designed to change timing etc. because it burns slower. i do not recomend it unless you are driving a beetle and hug trees etc. theres more to fuel then octane ratings.

I was just lookin this up a while back:

e85 is designated 85% alchy but the truth of the matter is it varries from location to location depending on the local weather. colder climates have a lil more gasoline in the mixture and vice versa. To over come this problem there must be a special sensor installed in the fuel feed line wich can read the actual amount of alchohol in the mixture to adjust the fuel map accordingly. There are also special measure's that mut be taken to run alchohol of any sort. The first and foremost being the fuel system system. Most new flex fuel vehicals have either a special plastic or stainless steel gas tank becasue alchohol is very corrosive to most metals. It can strip the rust right of of the inside of your mild steel tank, wich would dump a shit ton of junk into your motor after you clogged up 2 dozen fuel filters. The injectors must be able to handle the tenatious properties of the alchohol. And being that most vehicals have aluminium cylinder heads, wich alchy pretty mush disolves over time, maufacturer's are starting to coat the insides of the intake port's/runners. As far as tuning, Ethanol containes about 45%-50% less energy than gaoline on average. Wich means that almost twice the normal amount of fuel could be required to achieve the desired AF/R, wich is also different than gasoline depending on what type of alchy your running. Now there's the exhaust. Typically most tuners can agree that a safe EGT on gasoline is somewhere in the ball park of 1600 degrees give or take a few. But ethanol and other types of alchohol burn at a much higher temp than most other fuels, sometimes exceeding 1800 degrees! I'd like to see the look on someones face when their $500 header melts down and is drooping to the ground after a good dyno pull or a long run on a highway. And while we're on the subject; all that extra heat in the motor needs to be rid of so the efficiency of the cooling sytem needs to be largely increased.
Ethanol, when sprayed into the intake stream has great cooling properties. The vaporizing of a fuel that has a great thermal conductivity means extreamely low intake temps wich means that you can add more boost or timing or both with out worrying about knock. Hence the comparitive to 105 octane gasoline statements that are made. Great! Right? But think about how much you are now taxing the integrity of your motor now compared to before. While doin my research I found that e85 is for the most part a thing of the midwest for now, mainly because of the fact that thats where all the corn is that is needed to produce it. This is just my oppinion, but if you want to run on alchy, you first need to build a track car. A strictly track only car. Methanol has been used for years and there's tons of research on it, and this could be very promising in a race only situation. As for e85, my oppinon is to leave it to the fuel mileage vehicals and manufacturers who want to advertise MPG's for the time being. The fuel itself is very new, and there still isn't a set in stone formula for brewin it up, so there are great varriances from producer to producer.

Everything above was collected on my own prior to even seeing this post through hours of online research. Most of the info I can thank the MSefi forum for, as there are numerous individuals trying new things with it every day, along with many other varoiuse websites and databases. If I stated anything incorrect I encurage someone to correct me on it as it would be for the better good of anybody that reads this in the future .

wow, old thread, I love how people don't read dates. Quicksilver is right with the exception of the energy available from E85, it's more like 25-30% less than straight gasoline.

most of the best research I've seen for using E85 as a performance adder suggests the use of a seperate fuel cell and injection system to take advantage of E85's knock prevention abilities in addition to regular fuel.

Also, after doing quite a bit of research we could make our vehicles able to run on E85 with help from the wonderful MSnS system, larger injectors and fuel pump. one would have to tune for multiple fuel maps and keep on top of switching between them for different fuels, but it could be done for ~$1000 plus tune time