Since this topic is still fairly new to the performance world and there is not a lot of information out there on this subject, I figured I would make a thread on "What You Need To Know" about E85.
E85 is still one of those things that people in general don't know much about. Ask 100 people to tell you about what E85 is and 90% of them will not know. The 10% might remember seeing something at a gas station, but not understand what it is or the benefits it provides.
For gear heads such as ourselves, the benefits are HUGE! Especially on todays boosted engines such as the popular 03-04 Cobras and 07 and up GT500's.
Being an owner of a 2004 Cobra with an upgraded Whiple Supercharger I am always looking to learn about how to get the most performance out of my car.
This means tuning the car for optimum performance. Running a safe amount of boost and timing to keep the engine alive while increasing it's performance can sometimes be tricky. One of the limiting factors of how much boost or timing you can run comes down to fuel. Octane limits, depending on where you live, can range between 86 an 93 and limit the amount of timing and boost you can run. Thus you have to tune accordingly to what fuel is available in your area.
The more Octane you have, the more boost and timing you can run without detonation. This means More Power!!!!!
Since a lot of us drive our cars on the street, we are limited to what fuel we run due to availability, price and ease of aquiring the fuel.
Race Gas has been used for many years and there are tons of brands and types out there, but the availibility and price tends to turn most people away because it is not convenient enough to run on a regular basis. So most cars are tuned for what we call "Pump Gas". And if you are the street/strip type, then you get 2 tunes. One for "Pump Gas" and one for "Race Gas". Which has been the way for many years for a lot of racers.
But what if you could run "Race Gas" all the time? What if it was CHEAPER than regular gas and you could buy it at the pump? Would you be willing to switch?
In comes the answer!
If it is available in your area and you are running High Compression or Boost, then this is the fuel for you!
Here is some good information sourced from the members.tccoa.com.
There are many Myth's floating around about Ethanol not being good for an engine. These are primarily from people who own oil companies and do not like to see profits decline. On thing to remember is that the petroleum industry is the largest money making industry on the planet! Take some of the Trillions of dollars away from the oil companies and rumors start to fly!!!
With that being said, here is a good example of what you would typically find when running E85 VS Gasoline.
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Hope this helps some of you. Feel free to ask any questions I will try to answer them to the best of my ability.
Kevin
Question:
Since e85 varies from station to station and time of year, what is the impact of this change on a vehicle with high boost and lots of timing? Mine was tuned with an ethanol content of around 79/80% but mostly what I am finding now is much lower than that. Am I risking my motor? What if I buy race e85 that really is 85%? Is that going to run leaner than what my motor was tuned for? Since ethanol is cut with gasoline, will the lower ethanol content/higher gasoline percentage fuels tend to detonate sooner?
Thanks for any input.
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