Going to try and run E85 this winter

S

Super Duper Cou

Registered User
I'm planning on converting my 1993 Thunderbird SC to run on E85 hoping I will be able to make a little bit more power on it than 92 octane gasoline. My friend doesn't think E85 will really benefit a super coupe but I'm still willing to try it. Will I see any benefits to running on E85 as far as horsepower numbers? Any recommendations on injector sizes or pulley setups?

Current Mods:
true 2 1/2 dual exhaust
3" intake pipe
9" k&N air filter
Bigger MAF
5% blower pulley
5% jack-shaft pulley
custom front mount inter-cooler

Mods this winter:
Remove cats
94 blower
Magnum powers tensioner springs
20% jack-shaft pulley
adjustable fuel pressure regulator
60lbs injectors
Walbro 255 fuel pump
SCT chip and have it dyno tuned on E85
 
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Super Duper Cou said:
20% jack-shaft pulley
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Are you planning on having a custom one made? I've seen 0, 5 and 10 and a custom 13, but never a 20.

Is your 94 blower ported? Do you have a MP inlet for it? If no to either one you should reconsider going with any OD over 15%.

Super Duper Cou said:
60lbs injectors
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If you haven't purchased injectors yet I'd go with 80's and be on the safe side.

Super Duper Cou said:
SCT chip
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If you haven't purchased the chip yet I would HIGHLY recommend getting a Quarter Horse instead of SCT.
 
90blkbrd said:
Are you planning on having a custom one made? I've seen 0, 5 and 10 and a custom 13, but never a 20.

Is your 94 blower ported? Do you have a MP inlet for it? If no to either one you should reconsider going with any OD over 15%.



If you haven't purchased injectors yet I'd go with 80's and be on the safe side.



If you haven't purchased the chip yet I would HIGHLY recommend getting a Quarter Horse instead of SCT.
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I already have the 20% jack-shaft pulley, my buddy gave it to me a while back and told me it was a 20% jack-shaft pulley.

My 94 blower isn't ported and it has the stock 94 inlet plenum. Would the blower not flow enough at 25% OD to make any power difference?

I haven't purchased injectors yet so i'll buy the 80's to be safe then.

I've never heard of Quarter Horse. Why would recommend that over SCT?
 
Super Duper Cou said:
I already have the 20% jack-shaft pulley, my buddy gave it to me a while back and told me it was a 20% jack-shaft pulley.
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Measure the diameter's and post them cause that just don't sound correct. Not calling you or him a lier, it just doesn't sound right.

Super Duper Cou said:
My 94 blower isn't ported and it has the stock 94 inlet plenum. Would the blower not flow enough at 25% OD to make any power difference?
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At that OD you'll more than likely lose power and can cause severe damage to the engine (due to detonation from all the hot air the blower is pushing) as well as the blower itself.

Super Duper Cou said:
I've never heard of Quarter Horse. Why would recommend that over SCT?
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Because, with a Moates Quarterhorse, you can have it tuned at a proper dyno facility for E85 and then fine tune it on your own. With the SCT Chip you would possibly have to make several trips to a dyno to get it set correctly for E85.
 
Even if you were to port the blower the plenum would still be a restriction.

I personally believe no one should OD a M90 (including a MPx) over 15% unless the car is strictly a weekend racer. For a daily driven SC 15% should be max. They just aren't reliable at those RPMS and your bound to have problems sooner or later.

Even if you had access to free SCT software to tune your car, QH is still a better deal. Fraser did an amazing job deciphering the EEC's in our SC's that SCT will probably never catch up unless they get their hands on his work.

QH along with Binary Editor and Fraser's strategy you can data log any sensor on your car. Along with a LC-1 (aftermarket wide band O2 sensor) you can data log your car enough that you can have it remotely tuned by a expert tuner. You could also post the logs here and get help as well.
 
Hock said:
Measure the diameter's and post them cause that just don't sound correct. Not calling you or him a lier, it just doesn't sound right.



At that OD you'll more than likely lose power and can cause severe damage to the engine (due to detonation from all the hot air the blower is pushing) as well as the blower itself.
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I'll measure it sometime here, it's at my old house in the shed. Maybe I'll talk to him again see if I heard him correctly.

Won't E85 cool the intake temps down? E85 has a pretty high octane rating so with the right tune do you think it would still detonate?
 
90blkbrd said:
Even if you were to port the blower the plenum would still be a restriction.

I personally believe no one should OD a M90 (including a MPx) over 15% unless the car is strictly a weekend racer. For a daily driven SC 15% should be max. They just aren't reliable at those RPMS and your bound to have problems sooner or later.

Even if you had access to free SCT software to tune your car, QH is still a better deal. Fraser did an amazing job deciphering the EEC's in our SC's that SCT will probably never catch up unless they get their hands on his work.

QH along with Binary Editor and Fraser's strategy you can data log any sensor on your car. Along with a LC-1 (aftermarket wide band O2 sensor) you can data log your car enough that you can have it remotely tuned by a expert tuner. You could also post the logs here and get help as well.
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I'll talk to the guy that will be doing the tuning on my car see what he thinks.
 
Super Duper Cou said:
Won't E85 cool the intake temps down? E85 has a pretty high octane rating so with the right tune do you think it would still detonate?
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With E85, combustion chamber temps (not intake air temps) will be lower, but you can avoid detonation with 87 octane gasoline as well. Don't attribute too much to the fuel. You can easily blow up your motor on E85 just like you can with gasoline.
 
The most a 94/95 blower can be OD'd and work efficiently is 15%, and that is with good proper porting, a good cam, properly ported heads, and the mp inlet plenum... the stock plenum is no good after 10% OD. 20% can be had but the blower is not going to do alot more for moving air worth mentioning and unless you are running a very good IC setup all you are going to get is ALOT higher temperatures, and e85 is not going to help you there.

You want more than 15% OD efficiently, then you will need to go to the MPX.

Fraser
 
I have a pretty good size front mount intercooler with a 3 inch pipe coming out of the blower and a 2 1/2" pipe going into the intake but I'll still probably shell out the extra 85 bucks to get a 10% jackshaft pulley then.

Will I see any extra horsepower gains running E85 compared to 92 octane gasoline on this set up?
 
Super Duper Cou said:
I have a pretty good size front mount intercooler with a 3 inch pipe coming out of the blower and a 2 1/2" pipe going into the intake but I'll still probably shell out the extra 85 bucks to get a 10% jackshaft pulley then.

Will I see any extra horsepower gains running E85 compared to 92 octane gasoline on this set up?
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PROBABLY NOT, i mean if you compare a tune using 92 and that setup vs the same tune using that setup (not corrected for e85) then probably not, might even loose some. BUT!!!!! what e85 gives you is more potential to tune the motor with more timing, fuel, boost, ect..... so if its tuned properly then yes... see what I am saying.

i have messed with e85 carbed vehicles a bit lately and you can run some sick timing on them before they start to ping and knock. but the carb is dumping lots (make that tons) of fuel into the car and mileage goes to hell in a hurry..

but its fun.....
 
e85 may not give you much if any gains, depends on what you engine wants, ford did an excellent job tuning our supercoupes with the stock tune on them, they got quite aggressive compared to any other stock ford tunes i've ever dealt with which says alot

e85 gives you the ability to either up the static compression ratio and add more timing but thats ONLY if your engine wants more, some engines just don't like a bunch of timing, our supercoupe engines stock are pretty content right where Henry put them on 93octane, switching to e85 lets you run a crap load more spark, i wouldn't be hesitant to drop in 10 degrees right off the bat

I would think with your current setup you shoud be about ~220rwhp, could probably get 40-50 more rwhp by switching to e85
 
With E85, you do not... and I mean it, do not tune to detonation. If you do that, you have a significant chance of bending a rod or cracking a piston. E85 will effectively... never detonate when run at the proper AFR. What that means is that you can easily over advance the engine such that peak cylinder pressure occurs before the pistons are in the right place leading to significant piston, rod, crank stress.

The benefit a stock block car might see with E85 is the ability to slightly advance timing if, and only if, the engine was previously knock limited in it's timing. i.e. if minimal best timing is 26, but due to combustion chamber design or intake air heating, you can only run 21, then you might be able to move up to 24 or even 26 when running E85 and with a proper tune. That can lead to increased performance.

But, where the best benefit with E85 can be found is a motor built for E85. I.e. if your stock compression ratio is 8:1, with E85 you may be able to run the same timing you could at 8:1 compression ratio but instead go to a 9.5:1 compression ratio. Thus increasing the power potential of your engine more so than simply a timing change.

The down side is that while you might find an E85 station everywhere close to home, they really are not that common. Some states may only have 10 or eleven pumps. Some not even that many. So keep that in mind if building for E85. You can easily drive far enough to find out you don't have any place to fill up.
 
Thanks for all the info and input guys, I really appreciate it. I'll start on my conversion to E85 this winter after pay off the truck i just bought for a daily driver. I'm planning on driving my car around town on weekends and racing it at the track after I get it converted to E85. Right now my car made 227rwhp on a dyno jet. I'm hoping to make like 280rwhp with a tune on E85 with more boost. There is a station I can fill up at like 20 minutes away from my house so it's not too bad. Hopefully my experiment will help other Super Coupe owners with just bolt on modifications decide whether or not E85 is worth switching too. Either way I think I'm going to like it when it's done unless it blows up. lol :D
 
I have been running only E85 in my Bird now for about 4 years. I can give you some of the actual facts about it. When properly tuned, you will use between 15-20% more fuel while cruising, and light stop/go driving. At WOT, it will use 30-35% more fuel. It has most of the benefits of Methanol, with very few of its draw backs. It can handle a lot more timing, but does not need it. It will handle a LOT more compression and boost with out having to pull any timing. To get the most out of E85, the engine should be built with more compression, or more boost, or a combination of both.

I am running 10.5-1 compression, and 15 psi of boost. My timing is locked at 34 degrees, and have it set to pull 1 degree per psi starting at 12 psi. The engine does not need this, but just getting ready to up the boost as soon as I get a big enough fuel pump to support it above 15 psi.

Mine is a weekend play car, and E85 is perfect for it, with the only down side, is E85 is not readily available up in Ky. If it was, I would make it to the Shootouts. Too poor for a trailer.

I put together a section on E85 on my web page.
http://members.tccoa.com/392bird/e85.htm
 
Super Duper Cou said:
Thanks for the link. Would you still recommend 80lbs injectors or would I be fine with 60lbs?
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If you need to buy injectors. I would get the 80's. There isn't any reason why you should go with 60's if you are going to switch to a fuel that effectively needs 40% more per injection cycle. The 80's that Dave Dalke has been selling (Siemens/Deka) are no more difficult to tune for than 60's.
 
Mike8675309 said:
If you need to buy injectors. I would get the 80's. There isn't any reason why you should go with 60's if you are going to switch to a fuel that effectively needs 40% more per injection cycle. The 80's that Dave Dalke has been selling (Siemens/Deka) are no more difficult to tune for than 60's.
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How much do 80's cost? Where do I get them at?
 
You can email xr7 Dave (dave dalke) and see if he has some to sell you. I'd start there. Then if he doesn't have any, he can tell you where you can buy some from.
 
What will happen to a car/truck that has e85 gas in it, but is not tuned for it at all, other then run like crap? Can anything bad happen?
 
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