With gas prices at record highs, we know guys have been forced to garage their cars. Or have they? In areas of the country where E-85 Ethanol is available, enthusiasts have been converting their cars and finding serious benefits. Not only is E85 only $2.00 a gallon, and a “green” fuel, but it is the equivalent of 105-octane. That means guys with power adders are now making big horsepower for less, when you consider that 105 unleaded fuel runs over $9 a gallon.
Check out e85mustangs.com to see some examples of guys who have made the conversion. Steve Shrader’s 1999 Mustang pictured above runs a built 4.6L 2V, supercharged, to the tune of over 640 horsepower.
Patrik Svensson of Sundsvall, Sweden runs the 1969 Mach 1 to high 11 second ET’s. The car also is powered by a Vortech S-trim supercharged 4.6L 2V, and E85 fuel.
Thank you for that info. I really was not sure where e85 burned best. Gasoline at Stoichmetric we all learn at 14.7. The fellow I work with says he usually finds max power at around 12.9-13.8 for most of the engines he tunes on the dynometer on race gas. I knew where straight alcohol was from watching them set up a carb for alcohol. Myself, I’ve never played with straight alcohol in a vehicle. With the numbers you cite, one would definitely need a good high volume fuel system to handle such a conversion to E85.
By ranchero67. October 6th, 2008 at 12:45 pmRanchero67: It’s not just about energy/volume. Methanol and nitromethane have even less energy per volumetric unit and both are used in big power applications.
You have to counter in the stoichometry air/fuel ratio for each fuel. Straight pump gas has a stoich air/fuel mixture around 14.7:1 (but it varies). Ethanol is stoich somewhere around 9:1 so E85 would be around 10:1 AFR for a stoich mixture.
By Baldur Gislason. October 3rd, 2008 at 4:42 pmGoing by this you’re able to burn about 47% more E85 by mass than you can with typical gasoline. Going by your calorific values you can see that there’s almost 15% more energy available with E85 than 89 octane. To know exactly you’d have to count in the very slight weight difference between E85 and gasoline.
We did a survey on E85 available out in North Dakota service stations. The calorific value of the E85 was 89, 830 BTU’s/ gal versus 113,300 BTU’s / gal for 89 octane gasoline. I would say BTU’s rule. The only way to get more from E85 is to increase the compression ratio or strap on a supercharger to take advantage of E85’s 105 octane rating
By ranchero67. September 24th, 2008 at 8:49 amSo on an NA engine that runs perfectly fine on 92 octane pump gas, would it pick up, lose, or make the same power when tuned to run e85?
By Motrhed. September 24th, 2008 at 7:36 amat those prices i want to know when this fuel will be available here in new zealand-paying just over $2 a litre here sucks
By steharz. September 23rd, 2008 at 9:06 pm