E85 changes

[keith1365]

Couple of questions on E85. I am switching over to EFI on my 68 Camaro. E85 is very available. I have a steel fuel tank and aluminum fuel lines and fuel rails. Is this recipe for disaster? Also, I am using LT1 fuel injectors and regulator. Any way to tell if these are compatible? Programming does not appear to be difficult. I may have to load two fuel maps if E85 is not available.

[indyjps]

Depends on where you live on availability, consider road trips if you take any. I live in the middle of Illinois and have trouble finding it for my 2006 Silverado "Flex Fuel". I run it when its available.

the main thing Ive read about it is its corrosiveness to different materials. I would think there would be an issue with the LT1 hardware. There are carb builders specifically for E-85, see if they can give you fuel system advice on what is required.
You'll need to flow a larger volume of E-85 compared to Gas so the LT1 fuel injection may not keep up, depends on your fuel demands.

[keith1365]

I plan on switching to larger injectors as soon as I get it running. I am more concerned about the aluminum fuel lines and fuel rails.

[camcojb]

methanol and aluminum is a disaster, but ethanol is not as corrosive. However, I would be running stainless hard line instead of aluminum in mine if running ethanol.

Jody

[MonzaRacer]

I actually wouldnt use aluminum for any fuel injections system.
But thin kof this everthing thats over 3 yrs old thats rubber may need sawped out, you need to use a fuel pump for Ethanol and get cross fuel compatible injectors. Now if you have a steel tank and its older change it, if its new it should be ok.
Now dont skimp on the venting of the tank, if its left open its going to absorb water.
You will need to make sure you have wideband tuning for the FI a narrow band wont work.
You will need to run cooler plugs, make sure your up to the tuning effort it will take. Now dont worry if you run low on E85 as it willstill run on gas just freak out the computer some and you may have to change plugs.
I am pretty sure as long as you make sure to keep a current list of E85 stations in car you wont have much issue and so far several of the cars I have worked with have had no issues if they filled up with gass at 1/2 tank, the computer never burped it was just a little hard to live with the retard the computers dial up(remember if you build for 105 octane its going to knock on 92/93 and if you have a knock sensor which you need its going to pull timing out).
What I have done for friends is find evap can out of a flex fuel vehicle and set up a temp/timer circuit for the vent solenoid. I let the tank vent to the vapor canister and let the enigine pull a slight vacuum on the tank running.
The big issue is that E85 will clean the whole system out and stop things up, use good filters and change them several times.
And yes get rid of the aluminum line, its just too brittle for fuel line on a street car.
Lee Abel
AFTERMARKET PERFORMANCE

[Scott Parkhurst]

If all of your stuff is fresh, you'll be fine.

Dial in the A/F ratio for 10:1 instead of 12.7:1, bump the compression to 13:1 from 9.5:1, and hold on.

E85 has 110 octane and runs cold. You might as well take advantage of it!

If you don't want to swap pistons or heads to up the compression, consider supercharging. The heat issues usually associated with supercharging and high compression are not a problem on E85.

Of course, this would be a dedicated E85 powerplant and you couldn't 'Flex' back to gasoline once you make the commitment.

Good Luck with it!

~SP~

[bochnak]

Bare AL is not horrible, anodized is best:

https://www.sealsales.com/chemicalcompat2.htm

Steel tank as in terne tank? That's probably something you may want to consider changing. Although, from what I have read, a large amount of water will cause it to corrode:

http://books.google.com/books?id=DKN...vH03kAZUhwKLrQ

E85 is 105 octane in summer months, and less in winter months.