Why arent you using E85 / BioEthanol ?
 

I know a lot of people have been getting their cars mapped for Methanol mixes but not many have done it for BioEthanol mixes in the same way.

As I have found out first hand, the benefits of using E85 are stunning and it is cheaper than Methanol too at 90.9p per litre as it was yesterday. (duty paid too unlike Methanol where the govmnt could clobber you for fuel tax at some future point) Not too bad for effectively a 109 octane fuel !

Admittedly, living in the east of england there is an abundance of Morrisons garages selling it, such as Wellingborough, Ipswich, Diss, Norwich, Dereham but Morrisons have stores in a lot of towns across the country.

There is a huge thread on NASIOC that goes into this - maybe that info is a bit too much for most.

E85 is 109 Octane and beautiful to run in mine. Obviously it is mapped for it but a recent before and after showed 490 bhp on tesco 99 and 545bhp on tesco 99 + 20% E85.

It is cheap at 90.9p per litre too !! So in essence the extra power is saving you money PLUS you get to gloat with your friends about how you are doing your bit for the environment.

Have you considered it ?

it is something i would think about duncan. do you store it at all? and are you finding the mpg?

that is a very good increase in bhp there, is the lbft up as well?

lb/ft went from 480 ish to 560 so quite noticeable :D

MPG - I am still getting an average of 23mpg on mixture of flat out and cruising and around 27 on a steady motorway cruise.

Storage - I take a few jerry cans to Morrisons and fill them. No problems on them allowing me to fill more than 1 at a go - I even ask them whether it is okay and they say that the 1 jerry can limit is for petrol :lol1: It is certainly less dangerous to store and handle than methanol :thumb:

I'd have loved to swap, but as the car does a lot of business miles, I couldn't guarantee that I'd be anywhere near a Morrisons at fill up time.
It needs a large petrol retailer to offer it on main routes, but as E85 is a bit of an environmental hot potato (mainly land use issues), It may just be sold as an evolutionary alternative fuel in small quantities.

nick

We just can't get any Duncan, Morrisons have no plans to sell it in Plymouth.
Methanol at the moment being sold for as little as 70p a litre in places.

Duncan,
Is there a list from Morrison's of all the stations that sell this stuff...... I can't find one?

What % of BIO are you up to now and what increase how you found over your previous 20% mix Road Dyno results? How much more ignition has the engine taken so far against VPower?

VP Import (120+ Octane) should give me a minimum of 13degs advance. Which is circa +80bhp (assuming everything is OK), but this works out at around £10 a litre. My only interest for funny fuels is for special events.

As this Bio fuel is cheaper than regular petrol, is there any disadvantage to running it neat, or do you recommend sticking to a 20% mix?

Butty - I run on a mix not on pure E85. carrying 5 litres of E85 in a can is enough for the next fill up.

Martyn - shame but the more people ask about it, the wider the appeal and distribution is.

Shaun ... lol trade secrets chap ;)

I havent done a back to back on the mix I am using/testing at the moment but will have it on the dyno again next week to see.

Do you really need an additional 13 degrees of timing - was it that far off MBT ?

You use about 30% more of it - so doesnt work out cheaper. Also injectors and fueling system needs adapting to allow for this additional fueling.

Trade secrets!!! roflol I can relate directly to ignition advance instead of relying on a RR graph! ;)

It's not a case of needing 13degs, it's the fact that the engine should take it on VP, and the increase in effecient power should be more than if it was 5, 8, 10 or 12degs. ;) It is all down to the individual set-up. Richard Bulmer has done a lot of mapping on this stuff and suggests that 50bhp should be a minimum on my engine, 80bhp would be the norm and it could achieve anything up to 100bhp. Has not been put in yet, so I will have to wait until I start testing the stuff. Richard swears by the stuff..... even if it is very expensive.

Sorry.... just remembered.

Richard was very surprised (read - shocked), that when he ran up my car at 2.5bar whilst on VPower, that he never had any DET what so ever. That was with an ignition curve that had been unaltered from the previous norm of circa 1.8bar.

The MBT was certainly a shedload more on that run! :D

Anyway... I digress. :)

you mean at 1.8bar it has no ignition in it :)

why would it still be in the same load zone at 2.5bar as it was at 1.8?

just jessing...

Simon :)

what is the bio symbol? my local donesn't appear to sell it :(

Thanks for that Duncan. Is there any point running E85 without making these changes? I have an 18g turbo waiting to be fitted in the new year so the car will be mapped then, but I don't see myself running E85 on a permanent basis purely on grounds of availability outside my local area, although it's not out of the question that I can get a regular supply locally as I live near Wellingborough.
Steve.

Running a mix % works wonders in the same way that Methanol does but without the danger of invisible flames etc.

Simon,

I'm not a mapper, so i'm not the best person to reply. I pay an expert to understand that! ;)

Richard was / is genuinely surprised it took 2.5bar peak on VPower with no DET and the same ignition map. Strangely enough the fact that it made 485bhp / 550ftlb at the hubs, was not surprising to him. ;)

If I was able to acheive 500/520 on Zen's RR at low ;) boost with no ignition then........ ;) :D

Duncan,
Looks like it is Wellingborough for me then. Which is a bit of :( and a bit of :)

I think I will have a chat with Richard about this and look in to giving it a punt, for what it costs. :)

When i spoke to Richard (on another suject) on Thursday or Friday he had done a car a couple of years ago on E85 so is fully aware of what is needed from a timing/fuel point of view.

No secret really but I was able to get loads more ignition advance from just that 20% mix - certainly enough to make it worthwhile for me. Exact figures wouldnt mean a lot to most without seeing an ignition curve.

I am surprised that your low boost and high boost ignition was the same, in fact like Simon it leads me to think there was not enough timing in there for the low boost map session.

I have a 94 wrx wich has a few mods but standard internals.. Im having it (mapped) soon and morrisons down the road from me sells it ..Can I run the car neat on it ?? or do you have to mix it or can I use it at all?

The Esso Terminals in Birmingham currently supply this fuel. W.London and Purfleet are in the process of converting their tanks to supply it.

It will eventually be supplied as normal petrol, much like the 5% bio diesel which we all use now.

If anyone needs any more info on it i can email you the COSHH sheet

Locations with BioEthanol E85 - Morrisons

Nearest to me is 45 miles away. Looks like it's going to be an event only fuel!!
2 x jerry cans = 40 lites roughly four tankfulls.

Whats this stuff like to store?

2 x jerry cans is enough for 200 litres of fuel in total - plenty enough for getting around on :)

My nearest is 45 mins away too.

Who's mapping it for you?

It has the same storage properties as conventional petrol.

I'm not sure if there is any problem with "waxing" if left for a long period of time, I'll check tomorrow when I'm in work

None that I am aware of. The E85 I got from Dereham was the first they had sold for a few weeks :o It worked perfectly in the car though.

Surprised that more of the east anglian scoobies dont use it as it is so readily available around the area.

Would you not be able to get just as much ignition advance (if not more) by using a 20% methanol mix rather than a 20% E85 mix? I say that because (gram for gram), methanol exerts even more of a cooling effect than ethanol when it vapourises, which is (I believe) where a lot of its octane boosting ability comes from. Also, E85 is only 85% ethanol, so a 20% mix contains only 17% ethanol. Having said that (as a methanol user myself), I would love to try running E85 mix, but the nearest Morrisons E85 filling station is fecking miles away :( On the plus side, I get my methanol for just over 70p a litre :)

Are you happy having a liquid that burns with an invisible flame in and around your home or in your car in a container? I

I am aware that E85 is 85% ethanol.

Many reasons for not using Methanol.

1. Methanol is pretty flipping dangerous stuff to handle / store
2. It is against Time Attack rules
3. Methanol requires even more additional fuel than E85.
4. It is old hat ;)

lots more where these came from etc etc :D

Duncan,
Just to give me some perspective, did you not run more boost with the E85 map? IIRC, your VPower run at Zen was 2bar peak but not held and your E85 run was 2bar flat decked.

The vpower run was done on the same boost profile as the green run to give a true comparison to that.

We ran out of time to do a 2bar flat on just vpower but to be fair I dont think it would have netted me any additional power as the std ecu was taking a couple of degrees of timing out no matter what i did to it. Damned OE knock correction grrr even though the KS3 was showing clean.

On the e85 mix, it held 2 bar easily with no timing removed (and 'some' added on top).

On the road, I have run anything from 2 bar to 2.5 bar (tailing down the boost beyond 6k) and it laps it up all day. On track, I back it off a touch as it gets a little warm with that much going through it repeatedly.

There is more ignition timing on mine for lower boost than high boost as it takes it into completely different load areas of the map. There isnt a huge difference though to be fair to what you were saying earlier.