E85Forum.com

t1howard · Joined: 03 Apr 2009 Posts: 2 Location: Royal Oak, MI

I currently have a 12:1 BBC and can't afford 110 octane gasoline anymore. I drive on the street a lot and hit the strip. My question is how much of my current fuel system will have to change for E85? I know my holley 750hp will need to be converted and my pump should be OK, but I'm not sure about the rest.
Here is a list of the parts-
Holley 750 HP
Barry Grant 4-port Regulator
Barry Grant BG400 pump
Stock Tank with a sump
Barry Grant BG5000 Fuel Filter
Running -12an from tank to BG5000 Filter
-10an from the pump to regulator
two -6an line from reg. to carb.
-8an return line
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Thanx, Tom

Drag Chevette · Joined: 18 Sep 2007 Posts: 458

the carb....thats it.

your system is overkill compared to what I have.

t1howard · Joined: 03 Apr 2009 Posts: 2 Location: Royal Oak, MI

Thats great! Thanks for the input.

sallygreen123 · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 1:11 pm Post subject:

Isn't the mileage worse though with E85? I might be mistaken.
_________________
"I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself." Ferdinand Porsche Porsche 911 wheels

Drag Chevette · Joined: 18 Sep 2007 Posts: 458

Alcohol · Joined: 17 Apr 2007 Posts: 634 Location: Central Wisconsin

DC is correct- look at cost per mile rather than mpg. Each vehicle is unique in mpg differential from gas to E85. Some might be 5-10% less some on the other extreme might be 23-26%. Most factory FFV's fall in around the 18-22% range so if E85 is 25% cheaper you are in the money.
EPA in their labs ultimately expressed what DC stated by testing both ethanol and methanol in a dedicated alcohol high compression engine- fuel efficiency climbed on the alcohols to 42% whereas most gas engines operate around 27-29% efficient on gasoline. In the situation where the higher compression allowed by alcohol was built into the engine your mpg would not be less on alcohol even though the thermal energy content of alcohols are less than gas.

hotrod · Joined: 19 Apr 2005 Posts: 872 Location: Colorado

People need to stop thinking about miles per gallon and start thinking in terms of cents per mile.

On my WRX conversion (on the original small turbo) I got about 92% of my fuel mileage per gallon on gasoline with straight E85. At the time it was costing me 10 cents a mile to drive for fuel on E85 vs 12-13 cents a mile on gasoline.

There typically is a slight drop in actual miles driven per gallon volume of fuel, but if you compute the actual energy used to travel a mile, the E85 gets you there with less energy used. That means it is a more efficient fuel, and allows you to tune the engine to operate at higher efficiency, both in terms of emissions but in terms of fuel energy used per hp or per mile.

On the commercial domestic FFV's they typically get 15% - 20 % less fuel milage per gallon on E85 than they do on gasoline. BUT E85 only contains 72% of the energy per gallon. If you are losing 15%-20% in distance traveled and burning only 72% of the fuel energy you are gaining from 8%-13% in thermal efficiency due to the high octane and effecient combustion of the Ethanol.

For example today (July 24 09) the average cost for regular gasoline here in Colorado is $2.39/gallon, and E85 is selling for $1.98

If you get 24 mpg on gasoline it costs you 9.95 cents per mile. If you get 15% less fuel mileage on E85 that means you would go 20.4 miles on a gallon of E85 at $1.98 per gallon that comes to 9.7 cents per mile. At 20% less fuel mileage the cost per mile would be 10.3 cents per mile.

In the case of many of the folks here on this board they must use premium fuel. In that case E85 wins by a land slide on cost per mile.

24 mpg on premium fuel at 2.69/gallon would cost you 11.2 cents per mile for fuel, and in the case of the racers or high performance car owners who are looking at E85 for competition, they would be comparing to $6.00/gallon and up premium racing fuels to get nearly the same performance they can get from $1.98/gallon pump E85.

Larry

skiracer · Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:38 pm Post subject:

VP Racing C16 (117 octane) is like $12/gallon here in Los Angeles.
E85 is like $2.50/gallon.

Nuff said...
_________________
'06 Evo IX Stage 1 by RRE,Walbro 255lph fuel pump,RC Engineering1000cc Injectors, AVO exhaust,RRE flash, (325whp @ 22PSI 91 octane, 353whp @ 25psi on 100 octane, 383whp @30psi on E85),Zeitronix wideband/Ethanol Content Analyzer, Defi gauges

Thumpin455 · Joined: 04 Oct 2008 Posts: 227