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What is E85

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Right this might be useful for us guys in ireland. as we can only get 95Ron from the pumps....

so what excatly is e85?
It sounds like a mix in solution to boost octane.?

how safe is this to use? and does your car need to be mapped for it?
 

Nicely

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Yakozan

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E85 is a fuel with 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.
It got pretty high RON value (about 105 or something I think) but it contains less energy.

So a car running solely on E85 will use about 30% more juice. But in most places the E85 is cheaper, so it will cost about the same as running with gasoline. Maybe a bit cheaper.

We have numerous cars here in Sweden which has been converted to E85 from regular gasoline.

You could also need bigger injectors and a remap to cope with the extra fueling.
Make sure the fuel-hoses and fuel-pump will survive E85 usage.
Some types of rubber and fuel-pumps will wave the white flag with this stuff. Depends on what type of material the manufaturer use from the beginning.

I would suggest you talk to someone with more knowledge about this before attempting it though. But I know of several cars running with E85 here in Sweden with no issues. It's a little bit harder to start when it's really cold outside, but on the other hand, you could wind up the boost alot without knocking :)

I considered doing this conversion a while ago. But then didn't want to risk it. But we have 98 and 99 RON here readily available. So I really didn't feel the need to do it either.

But as I said before. I would recommend more research before attempting it.
 

Yakozan

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The official recommendation is not to run the SR20DE/T on E85.

Don't forget the injector O rings too...
There is a S14a here in Sweden running about 516rwhp with E85 :p
Very modified though and I think Madtech (the guys with the crazy powered S14a) did the mapping. E85 mapping isn't supposed to be the same as regular mapping. Something about risking getting too high cylinder pressure or something and the dett warnings signs are harder to pick up.

You could try to contact the Madtech crew. They might know what to exchange on the S14 to make it cope with E85.
 

Yakozan

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sound all to risky. think will stick with crappy 95RON fuel.
Could be risky. But then again it could be safe too. This is fairly new stuff so it havn't really been tested for extended periods of time.

The budget E85 converting is just upping the fuel pressure and put the E85 in the tank.

The safe way is to change most of the fueling system and have it remapped by someone with mapping experiece of E85 or Methanol.

A garage neighbor is gonna run E85 next year on his Audi A3. But he has a stand alone ECU and many other bits.

If you seriously want to try it, there is some companies here in Sweden with experience with E85 tuning and converting which you could contact.
One of the companies is called BSR. I think they had something to do with Koeniggsegg as I've seen a BSR sticker on the old speed-record orange CCR.

And as I mentioned before, the Madtech crew seems to have experience with E85 too.

But I understand if you don't want to try it.
I chickened out :) Maybe if I had a cheaper car I would have gone with it.
 

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Seen a video of a Lotus Exige running e85, only thing they did was change the map slighty, it was running 275bhp (ish), which i'm guessing is more than stock or they wouldnt have said.

A car running it uses more gas, and here in the UK, its not much cheaper than normal 95ron!

Video Here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBzmmO-3Cdo
 
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