I read recently that E85 has more horsepower per volume than regular gasoline at an octane rating of 105. The problem is, in order to achieve 105 octane and peak power requires an E85 only engine, not a flex fuel vehicle. Does anyone know of any E85 or E100 only production vehicles?
[QUOTE=SerpaDesigns;1753]I read recently that E85 has more horsepower per volume than regular gasoline at an octane rating of 105. The problem is, in order to achieve 105 octane and peak power requires an E85 only engine, not a flex fuel vehicle. Does anyone know of any E85 or E100 only production vehicles?[/QUOTE]
unless they are custom built specifically for E85, you are more than likely NOT going to see any production vehicles SPECIFICALLY tailored to E85 since its still not all that heavily used… (hard to find in alot of locations as well) Insanediego said there was only 1 or 2 locations in his area he can get it (both out of his way) and thats in a big city area. car companys wont limit them selfs to hard to find gas, thus the fact they wont do that for some time (till more gas stations take that as an alternate like deisle and what not.
Yes I agree, we need more stations, I did a search ( afdcmap2.nrel.gov ) in my area (Bay Area) and there are only 2, Berkeley and Livermore, both private… sad really. There’s plenty of electric charging stations though…
The high octane helps a lot on turbo cars. I switched my Evo to E85 and run a lot more boost.
Besides just having higher octane it also makes more power per unit of air the engine can inhale which is more important than the number of BTUs per gallon (if you care about performance more than gas mileage), since the amount of air you can shove into the engine is a bigger bottleneck than the amount of fuel you can supply. On top of THAT alcohol has much better cooling properties than gasoline, so the air charge temperature is lower - letting you push it with more compression/boost/timing before running into knock.
It makes power very similar to 117 octane C16 race gas - but is about $10 less per gallon and is available all over at regular gas stations in the midwest. Thats at the cost of having to have a beefier fuel system to run the AFRs ethanol requires
Can you tell me more about your evo? How much MORE boost are you running on e85? Did you go from 15 to 20psi? 20 to 25? more? How much more timing did you add? 2deg? 8deg? I have a turbo Miata running the AEM EMS. I can program the car for e85 if I had to.
I run 23psi on 92 pump gas and 28psi on E85. It’s a smaller turbo (mitsu 16G) and both tunes fall to 22psi at redline, turbo just can’t flow enough. I run the same timing at peak torque and 8* more up top on E85.
It made 370whp/370wtq on a mustang dyno on E85, I haven’t dynod pump gas but I think it will make about 360whp/320wtq. There’s a lot of E85 discussion on one of the evo forums, http://forums.evolutionm.net/forumdisplay.php?f=225
It’s all about BTU content… Check out the BTU’s in a gallon of pure gasoline and that of Ethanol… Add a few BTUs for the 15% gasoline content of E85 and you’re still well short of the BTUs of Gasoline.
Now - Considering that E85 has between 110 and 115 Octane (depending on who blended it and what the humidity was the day it was blended and tested) - You could support a lot more compression both Static and Dynamic…
For a given engine and load you will require more E85 to go the same distance as Gasoline.