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      10-01-2012, 11:50 AM   #1
Valour
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E85 vs regular premium gas

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Hey I have been hearing people talk about E85 gas at track days and car club meets and was just wondering if anyone had any information on it as compared to regular 91-93 octane gas or which is better for the cars? any info would be appreciated thanks!
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      10-01-2012, 12:20 PM   #2
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E-85 is alcohol (well, 85% anyway). It has considerably less energy content than petroleum. It's usually cheaper at the pump, but you'll use more. I seem to recall it'll cost you more in the end, but that's a pretty straightforward calculation based on pricing in your area. It's yet another brainchild of the corn lobby trying to find a way to use up all of the corn the subsidies have produced.
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      10-01-2012, 12:33 PM   #3
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perfect thats what i needed to know. Is there a performance increase?
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      10-01-2012, 01:26 PM   #4
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If your car wasn't scpecifically designed (or modified) for E85 or Flex Fuel, you'll likely end up destroying various rubber parts of the fuel system.

From the F30 user manual, page 262:

Quote:
Do not refuel with E85, i.e., fuel with an
ethanol content of 85 %, or with Flex Fuel, as this
would damage the engine and fuel supply system.
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      10-01-2012, 03:22 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by elistan View Post
If your car wasn't scpecifically designed (or modified) for E85 or Flex Fuel, you'll likely end up destroying various rubber parts of the fuel system.

From the F30 user manual, page 262:

Good catch, I should have mentioned that. I was merely addressing the question of what E-85 is.
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      10-01-2012, 03:27 PM   #6
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perfect thats what i needed to know. Is there a performance increase?
Quite the opposite. As I mentioned, it has less energy content than petroleum. I have a feeling folks might be confusing it with methanol which is frequently used in racing applications. Methanol's main benefit is a cooler combustion chamber so it's helpful for insanely high compression/high horsepower motors - i.e. top fuel dragsters. There's zero reason to use it in a production car.

If you're going to track your street car, you'll be fine running a quality high octane pump gas. You won't see a benefit from the very high octane (100+) fuels sold at the track unless you have aggressive tuning/modifications that would benefit from it.
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      10-02-2012, 02:18 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BavarianFanatic View Post
Quite the opposite. As I mentioned, it has less energy content than petroleum. I have a feeling folks might be confusing it with methanol which is frequently used in racing applications. Methanol's main benefit is a cooler combustion chamber so it's helpful for insanely high compression/high horsepower motors - i.e. top fuel dragsters. There's zero reason to use it in a production car.

If you're going to track your street car, you'll be fine running a quality high octane pump gas. You won't see a benefit from the very high octane (100+) fuels sold at the track unless you have aggressive tuning/modifications that would benefit from it.
E85 is similar to about 105 octane. It's 5 times cheaper than 100 octane and puts down more power. But yes it will corrode fuel lines. My Evo IX was 340 awhp on 91. Flip the switch for the e85 map and it became 425awhp to the wheels on a stock turbo. That's 85 more hp to all four wheels. 420lbs of torque to the wheels. It's very common in the Evo scene.
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      10-02-2012, 02:24 AM   #8
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Ethanol ignites slower than fuel and you can add timing and make gobs of more power.
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      10-02-2012, 08:11 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pkim1079 View Post
Ethanol ignites slower than fuel and you can add timing and make gobs of more power.
Yes, but, this is totally unrelated to the OP's original query. It doesn't make more power by itself. It allows you to run more timing to make more power because of the cooler charge.

Internal combustion is all about cylinder loading and ignition timing. The more fuel/air you can load into the cylinder, the more you can compress that fuel/air mixture and the more timing you can dial in, the more power you'll make. Any alcohol-based fuel will allow for higher compression/more timing because of its inherent resistance to detonation.

In a stock car, or a car without the ability to toggle from one tune to another, E-85 won't outperform straight petroleum. And the corrosion of fuel lines is not a risk worth taking just for some extra power. If you follow that logic, why don't you just dial your boost up to 50 psi? That'll make more power too. Of course your pistons will vacate their bores before too long, but at least you were making tons of power.
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      10-02-2012, 09:54 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BavarianFanatic View Post
Yes, but, this is totally unrelated to the OP's original query. It doesn't make more power by itself. It allows you to run more timing to make more power because of the cooler charge.

Internal combustion is all about cylinder loading and ignition timing. The more fuel/air you can load into the cylinder, the more you can compress that fuel/air mixture and the more timing you can dial in, the more power you'll make. Any alcohol-based fuel will allow for higher compression/more timing because of its inherent resistance to detonation.

In a stock car, or a car without the ability to toggle from one tune to another, E-85 won't outperform straight petroleum. And the corrosion of fuel lines is not a risk worth taking just for some extra power. If you follow that logic, why don't you just dial your boost up to 50 psi? That'll make more power too. Of course your pistons will vacate their bores before too long, but at least you were making tons of power.
Evo IX fuel lines did not corrode with e85 and that's why ppl did it. Evo x different story. But yes you would need a tune. You are correct without a tune it won't work. But that is with anything else. A tune would give you proper gains for any mod you do.
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