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  #16  
Old 08-28-2006, 06:11 PM
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Beav,

I have the upmost respect for your mechanical abilities and long, long experiece as a mechanic. Not to detract from them at all, I think there in may lie your vehement initial reaction to the idea of putting e85 into an svx. It's very normal for those who are most versed in one way of doing things to be the most difficult to sway into something new.

It is true that when water tainted ethanol is combusted it forms formic acid which causes wear to engine parts. It is also true that over time humidity will work it's way into fuel. These are not the only drawbacks of E85 as compared to gasoline either. Ethanol isn't as lubricating as gasoline either and it is more conductive. That does not mean that every vehicle not specifically designed as a flex fuel vehicle will instantly disintegrate if e85 touches it.

The reality is somewhere in the middle. E85 is better than unleaded gasoline in some ways and has drawbacks in other ways. It certainly offers an opportunity for increased performance and there are those in the SVX community who want to explore that opportunity. There are also those who would rather use E85 because it's a domestic product and there are those who will want to use E85 if it turns out to give more miles per $. To all of these people for all of those reasons it's time to overcome the drawbacks in order to reap the benefits.

Exactly for that reason businesses are producing the solutions to overcome the drawbacks. Hoses and gaskets are now designed for use with ethanol. Additives and motor oils are being produced to nuetralize formic acid which may be produced from the combustion of ethanol with water. We are producing engine management for the SVX.

As I said earlier we are not producing an E85 conversion kit. All I am giving you is the engine management. With the many companies now engaged in providing products geared to overcome the drawbacks of using E85 I think you may find solutions not so hard to find.
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  #17  
Old 08-28-2006, 06:40 PM
dynomatt dynomatt is offline
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This is interesting. You guys have a fuel that's 85% Ethanol? How does it go?

We've just gone to a Shell product that has about 10% Ethanol and has 100 octane. I ran that in my rally car and it was really good...good power, and no pinging.

Reading the www.e85fuel.com there's only a few engines that run it.
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  #18  
Old 08-28-2006, 06:50 PM
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E85 is an 85% ethanol 15% gasoline blend that is being sold in the US. Right now it is readily available in the corn growing states here in the US and hard to find everywhere else. There are however a couple of huge ethanol plants coming online this year and E85 will be increasingly available everywhere in the US. It's one of our country's largest attempts to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. With nationalistic, environemental, and big oil interests all in the mix it's a hot botton topic.



Quote:
Originally Posted by dynomatt
This is interesting. You guys have a fuel that's 85% Ethanol? How does it go?

We've just gone to a Shell product that has about 10% Ethanol and has 100 octane. I ran that in my rally car and it was really good...good power, and no pinging.

Reading the www.e85fuel.com there's only a few engines that run it.
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  #19  
Old 08-28-2006, 06:53 PM
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welcome to Jersey Y'all

Jersey has been using Ethanol for years. Not in an 85% concentration that you speak of but the direct opposite, a 15% ethanol with 85% gasoline. Now this is not all stations in Jersey but many to say the least. With that said, I have been running all of my SVXi on Jersey pump gas since day one with no fuel related issues involving the use of Ethanol... SO with a higher concentration it will be more volitile but at the same time, I do not forsee it doing any real damage to your fuel systems. A suggestion that should be heard is that before you start just using Ethanol, throughly clean your fuel system and have your inkectors clean professionally, this will eliminate the possibility that any elements left in your system that "could" react with the E85 will more or less be gone and not a risk. Mike knows what he is doing and is not just guessing, give a listen before you are so quick to disagree. Like so many have said and will continue to say, this is my opinion and only an opinion

Tom
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  #20  
Old 08-28-2006, 07:14 PM
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I'll definitely be picking this up in the not too distant future.
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  #21  
Old 08-28-2006, 07:49 PM
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I just followed the link someone posted in Phil's turbo thread about a wrx guy on nasioc who has been running an increasingly high mixture of e85 with gasoline in his wrx. Apparantly he has been running straight e85 for a while now with no ill effects. Without even having propper engine management ( he cleverly tricked his ecu into delivering the propper amount of fuel by putting in fuel injectors with a 25% higher flow rate) he's tearing it up and says that thanks to the performance improvements he only sees an 8% drop in mileage.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=803341
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  #22  
Old 08-29-2006, 12:37 AM
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Tom, you have 15% Ethanol mixes? As far as I knew there was only the standard 10% mix and E85 for ethanol. One of my professors (as far as I know) is one of the leading ethanol backers in the U.S. and has had to cancel class in order to speak before the house/senate in D.C. to push U.S. use of ethanol. My school is one of the main testing facilities for ethanol use (the Prius project was apparently a bit difficlt... some rubber bits did give way). He is always really busy but I am going to try to pose some of these issues to him when I can to see what the real deal is. We had to study this stuff and I am positive that he has real reliable answers to most of these questions. I hope I can get a minute of his time.
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  #23  
Old 08-29-2006, 06:51 AM
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Enough with the E85. Most of us don't have access to it, and if we did, we each would likely have our individual maintenance issues that would come to the fore because of switching to it. After all, we all have old cars, and each has its own weaknesses, some of which might unpredictably be impacted by a strict diet of E85. If we want to go on this diet, we would likely be better off with a car that has been originally designed as a dual fuel machine. This is certainly an intellectually enthralling discussion, but the meat of the matter is better performance, an end to 5MT stalling, etc. When and how much is my major interest.

Anyway, the major problem right now with ethanol is that it competes with foodstuffs for agricultural land, fertilizer, water, farm labor, equipment, handling facilities, etc, all of which will limit the amount that can be produced for reasonable cost. I think that widespread ethanol use will be limited until the cellulosic conversion process has been further developed. This will enable ethanol production from agricultural waste, and even dead leaves, and will open up huge resources for ethanol production. I have no idea why this isn't on the front burner of all energy activitists and politicals. It is the only conceivable cure for our annual transfusions of foreign oil.

But, back to the topic, when can we get the chip and how much?
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Last edited by shotgunslade; 08-29-2006 at 06:57 AM.
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  #24  
Old 08-29-2006, 09:30 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pure_Insanity8
Tom, you have 15% Ethanol mixes? As far as I knew there was only the standard 10% mix and E85 for ethanol. One of my professors (as far as I know) is one of the leading ethanol backers in the U.S. and has had to cancel class in order to speak before the house/senate in D.C. to push U.S. use of ethanol. My school is one of the main testing facilities for ethanol use (the Prius project was apparently a bit difficlt... some rubber bits did give way). He is always really busy but I am going to try to pose some of these issues to him when I can to see what the real deal is. We had to study this stuff and I am positive that he has real reliable answers to most of these questions. I hope I can get a minute of his time.
Most stations are a 10% mixture yes, but I am fairly confident that some have 15% or I am slowly losing my ability to count numbers

Tom
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  #25  
Old 08-29-2006, 11:49 AM
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I don't really care what people do to their cars but I do think they should be properly informed before making decisions. I know there is a number of people out there that claim the only reason they stop at a gas station is to let gas out of their car.

The most basic, non-technical logic would be that we all know the economies of mass producing automobiles, save a dime on a million cars, etc. Why would all of the OEMs research and build specific cars to use a specific fuel if it wasn't in their financial best interests?

That being said I'll leave it up to the individuals to make their own decisions. I was just tossing out some info.
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  #26  
Old 08-29-2006, 12:43 PM
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Guaranteed unbreakable, or certified insane?

Guaranteed unbreakable?
Because our cars were sold in an era when E85 was not available, at least not outside Brazil, then for sure any manufacturer who is asked about compatibility issues will simply say using high ethanol fuels will invalidate any warranty and is not advised.

They will say this because it's what they do best, keep well clear of liability. Some of you guys probably remember Nader, was it? Rupturing fuel tanks? Yeh?

Certified insane?
Just the same, there is validity in what Beav says. If the stuff eats metals, best to determine what metals are liable for corrosion, and ensure there is little or none oof those metals in the system before using any % of E85.

From what I have looked up, zinc is a no-no. I don't believe there is a zinc coating in our fuel tanks, but it would be nice to get this confirmed. Likewise the fuel pump will have been designed with the possibility of ethanol in the designer's brief, so I expect the pump won't fail. In any case it would be wise to replace with a 255 Walbro anyway, to be sure to be sure, as we say in Ireland.

Our fuel lines and filter look to me to be stainless steel, therefore, safe. You could change all the rubbers, to be sure to be sure, but I'm betting they are impervious to ethanol abuse.

This brings us to the engine, and, to be honest, I just don't believe the stuff can have a significant erosion effect on aluminium. I say this because this fuel or percentage variants of it are in use in Brazil for the past 20 to 30 years. Nobody is going to convince me that the world's car manufacturers have been putting all-steel engines into the cars in Brazil because of ethanol intolerance. It does not add up.

Back to Beav's point again about wear parts, pins etc, I would have to concede that formic acid formation would pose an accelerated wear situation in this case. However, I do suspect that this has been compensated for in Brazil by using the specialized oils to combat it. No reason we could not use these additives also.

The bottom line is you will have to assume these risks [and compensate for them!!] if you are going to use more ethanol and change your ECU to handle it.

As I see it the environmental benefits and the extra power benefits outweigh these possibilities of wear and damage to the engine.

Joe
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  #27  
Old 08-29-2006, 01:59 PM
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That has been the point all along. The benefits of using this for SOME outweigh the downsides of using this product. If rebuilding my engine once every 5 years is now a requirement due to the exrtra wear and tear on my engine... So be it. I will do this to compensate as I do not expect ANY of the engines in my Silver last longer than 20k anyway due to the extra force and heat it is making now withouth the use of E85. Really it comes down to the question of whether or not this is for you. I agree that the more information known about this product and it's compatability with our car's OE components should be known but to write it off as an impossibility or a severe danger to our vehicles makes no sense as anything can be done to allow this new fuel to work with our cars.

Tom
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  #28  
Old 08-30-2006, 04:59 PM
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In Manitoba we only have one company selling Ethanol blended gas and only at 10%. I've been filling up with them any chance I get because of the discounts I get. (94 octane for the price of 87 and $$ towards my CAA membership)

I have no issues with my car as a result of using their fuel. I wouldn't be filling with E85 yet if it were available here.
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  #29  
Old 08-30-2006, 06:25 PM
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Now that we have all explored the ins and outs of ethanol at various concentrations, could we get back to the initial thrust of the thread. The Chip. What, when and how much?
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  #30  
Old 08-31-2006, 09:16 PM
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What about our injectors?

Injectors need to pump 30% more fuel to run E85? Stage III has bigger injectors to meet fuel demands, correct?
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