[blueracecar]

ok heres the deal.a guy at my local track says that all he did to his hot rod was put an alcohol coversion kit in his carb and increased his jet size by 35% and went from 11.30s to 10.60s.it sounds kind of fishy to me.he has a 13:1 compression 427 smallblock that was running on race gas.if it is that easy to drop a bunch off the e.t. why arent there more e-85 drag cars around?

[heavy metal]

Alcohol does make a big difference.Some of my friends who race have changed over.Most of them run the injected system "flying toilets" and are running better.Alcohol burners take a while to get engine up to temp and have to change oil alot.

[UBie]

Believe him. I've been running E85 for two years with my 408. The one thing I did do double the diameter of the fuel lines. As it turns out, I was running out of fuel on the top end because of the smaller lines. So my hp increase was greater than 5% that you will get with E85. Since I ran out of cash with both me and my wife losing our jobs, I didn't have the funds to put in the required roll cage and the external ignition switch mandated by the NHRA. So my 11.80's runs before the E85 conversion is probably a 3/4 to 1 second slower than I can run now without the 400 hp nitrous system. I'm carrying the front wheels through second gear without the nitrous, with Comp T/A drag radials, which scared the crap out of me because I was trying to get through a busy intersection, and had no idea this would happen. His 13.5:1 is perfect for E85 since its octane rating is 105.

Many of the flex fuel vehicles are getting very poor gas mileage with E85, because their compression isn't high enough to take advantage of an octane rating that high. So, 35% of the fuel is going out the tailpipe(s) unburned. I'm glad to hear that more performance enthusiast are finding out about E85, plus paying $2.79 per gallon is like having your cake and eating it to. Also, I'm emissions legal for Colorado.

I would like to mention that you can get some of the gains of E85 with a lower compression motor by increasing the amount of fuel, possibly increasing the duty cycle on the injectors and bumping up the timing. One warning for those who have been running gasoline is that you may need to change your fuel filters a couple of times until all the lines are cleaned out, because of the 85% alcohol.

I'm stopping this thread at this point before I'm logged-off again, because I do get carried away when talking about the performance advantages with E85. My only problem now is that the modified Z06's don't want to play any more. Try-it. You'll like it.

[nickb]

that e-85 convertion sounds awsome. what would i have to change exactly. i've got a 93lx 5.0,stock right now.

[wicked65]

All the E85 guys love to tell you how cheap it is.. And they also like to not tell you that you will need more.. So you end up spending just as much as higher octane. Plus your tax money is why e-85 is so low.. so you are also paying that way.. The ONLY benefit is the ability to turn up timing. Dont let them fool you.. IF it was that good, everyone would use it.

[cindys_sn95]

exactly right wicked! and if the E85 picked up their speed/e.t. that much,their original setup must have been way off!

[mot250]

That's not it at all...

Everyone won't use E85 because "big oil" will not allow any good positive advertising campaigns FOR E85.

By keeping the quality of petro fuels low so that auto manufacturers are required to produce low compression engines for the masses, they force the higher E85 consumption which partially negates the savings per gallon.

The EPA isn't helping either...as it is technically illegal to convert a car to run on E85 if it was not manufactured that way to begin with, unless you use one of the few very pricy "EPA authorized" conversion kits. But who's really going to know?

As stated earlier, an engine designed to run on E85 (including, but not limited to, a higher compression ratio) will get better performance (HP/TQ), run cooler, run cleaner (internally, with fewer deposits) and run smoother than a similar gasoline engine (these are all even bigger benifits if running any kind of boost!). There will still be a slightly higher E85 consumption but no where near what we currently see with the difference between E10 and E85 in today's Flex Fuel vehicles.

[paul289]

Well, since I have seen premium for $1.87 at a Sunoco station in Michigan, the price advantage of ethanol has dried up. Also, I do not support the use of corn as a fuel source, only a food source. It takes several acres of corn to make a gallon of ethanol, from what I've read. Until cellulosic ethanol becomes practical and in wide use, I'm sticking to gasoline.