E85 and older cars

Will my 91 740 non-turbo Regina engine run E85 (ethanol) with no
deterioration problems to engine parts?

 

For a car not designed for that lethal mix, E85 will irreparably ruin
your engine. Ethanol is a) less energy efficient than gasoline and b)
corrosive to the fuel system.

Try it once and plan to get a new engine.

Chuck Fiedler
Nothing but Volvo since 1974

 

On the contrary, the B230 engines adapt quite well to E85, particularly the
turbo versions which can run higher boost due to the higher octane. Many
people on the Megasquirt forum are running E85 using mostly stock fuel
components and have not reported any issues so far. One would probably have
to find a remapped chip in order to use the stock Regina ECU, but ruin the
engine? No way, that's just false.

 

I've heard it corrodes aluminum, and some synthetic hoses, though that
is old info, and I don't know any details.

There's some retrofit kits, or one I saw, for making cars flexi-fuel,
but you can't trust the claims of niche manufacturers like that. Can't
trust manufacturers in general, but for a subject/product that is not
mainstream, its even dicier.

 

Dunno about the synthetic hoses, but aluminum corrosion is methanol's evil
trick. It's a diabolical triphase process. Methanol attacks the oxide that
normally protects aluminum, converting it to methoxide. Methoxide is soluble
in methanol, so bare aluminum is exposed. Methanol is enough of an oxidizer
to re-oxidize the surface of the aluminum, and the process continues. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol

Mike

 

Um, E85 uses *ethanol*, not methanol. As far as I know, ethanol is not
corrosive, it's already present in much smaller percentages in most
gasoline.

 

In <JEJbi.5733$3Q4.318@trnddc05>,

Ethanol is corrosive, just not as corrosive as methanol (substantially
less corrosive than methanol). 10% - 15% ethanol (present in gas right
now) is much less corrosive than 85% ethanol (E85).

With ethanol I wouldn't worry about rubber hoses and the such, or an
red-block or white-block engine. Just make sure that fuel line / gas tank
is okay.

AC

 

Vehicles that are E85 capable have some kind of ethanol sensor in the
fuel line, and the higher the ethanol percentage, the more fuel by
volume needs to be used. A fuel system not designed for E85 would have
a mixture so lean that it wouldn't even run. If you adjusted it (say
with higher flow injectors) then it would be way too rich for normal
gasoline.

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)

 

Flex fuel vehicles capable of running any mixture of E85 and gasoline have
the sensor, plenty of people have converted Volvos to run straight E85
though, I personally have spoken with two of them but there's more. Have a
look on the turbobricks forum, it's really pretty easy to do and the cars
seem to respond well to it.

 

Yes, but my point is what's going to happen if you can't find E85 when
you need to fill up? If you stay local, and there's a good supply of
stations around, then you'll have no problem, but you lose the
flexibility to use gasoline.

In my area, it's a moot point - there's no E85 sold within hundreds of
miles from here. (Even though flex fuel Malibus are made only 75 km
away!)

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)

 

I don't think you understood the line from the previous post. Its not
one or the other.

 

I must have misunderstood, too. It sounded like the flex-fuel designed cars
could do either by virtue of having the sensor, but the converted cars were
single fuel. That would make sense because of the difficulty of adding the
sensor and associated stuff. It would also mean the converted cars couldn't
be driven out of range of E85 distribution regions, unlike the flex-fuel
cars.

Mike

 

I have an older version of the device that allows you to convert a car to
use E-85. There is a switch on the device that allows you to select E-85
(or anything above about 40% alcohol) or regular gas (anything below 40 %
alcohol). The exact percentage depends on the car's make, model,
calibration of fuel injection system, age of car and injectors, etc. The
newer versions have a control that you can mount in the passenger
compartment so you don't have to open the hood to flip the switch. In my
case, the Bosch Jetronic system had enough range to provide the correct
air/fuel mixture when the switch was set properly. If you have the switch
set improperly, the Check Engine light comes on. This still gives you
enough time to pull over and set the switch correctly.

Result: even with the aftermarket conversion kits, your car is truly a
Flexible Fuel Vehicle and can run on both regular gasoline, E-85 and any
mix. Don't forget to change the fuel filter after the second tankfull of
E-85. And start pricing new fuel pumps if your car is more than 10 years
old. (Don't ask me how I know this.) I also noticed that the gas mileage
reported by my trip computer showed double the gas mileage I usually get.
When I switched back to gasoline, gas mileage went up about 5% from what I
was getting before I started using E-85 - likely my fuel injectors were
dirty and the E-85 cleaned them.

On another note, newer factory implementations of FFV cars don't use a
separate sensor to detect E-85 fuel. Everything is now done by the Lambda
Sensor (Oxygen Sensor) to provide the information for the proper air/fuel
mixture. The engine management system just needs to know that the higher
oxygen content of E-85 isn't an invalid condition that will cause it to
ignore the sensors and turn on the Check Engine light. (Obviously that is
an oversimplified explanation, and other changes are required, but that
conveys the idea behind the newer designs).

Walt Kienzle

 

Thanks for the update. Can you tell us a source for the conversion
equipment?

Mike

 

Mike,

I bought mine on e-bay, but here are some manufacturer's links:
http://www.abcesso.com/
http://www.flextek.com/ (I have the older version of this model. It has the
old-style Bosch (EV1) fuel injector connectors.)
And if you want to find E-85 fuel pumps: http://www.e85refueling.com/

Walt