With the price of gas going up and up I am seriousley considering picking up on of lethals budget return kits and switching over to e85. I was also thinking about adding a sct switch chip so I dont have to worry about not being able to find a station that sells e85 on road trips. As it is right now I only know of 3 stations here in sac that sell the stuff.
Switched to E85
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The tweecer is really neat because you can switch between up to 4 tunes, plus the stock tune. So I can literally run any mixture I want and just flip the switch. Generally, I have one for the summer blend (up to 90% ethanol), one for the winter blend (around 70% for better cold weather starting), a half tank mix (around 40-50%) and the 87 octane tune.
RedDaemon
10 Year Member
e85 has still yet to REALLY make an appearance up here in NY. We have 18 stations throughout the entire state.
Hey man so i was doing some reading on possibly using e85 as an alternative fuel or an additive to my fuel and had a few questions if you could help me. The tweecer programmer that you are mentioning allows the car to adjust the timing relying only on the ECU? Or is there other modifcations you have to make? I was also reading that generally cars not designed to run e85 usually average a difference of up to 20-30% difference in MPG. This would mean that i would have to be able to buy this fuel for 20% cheaper than gas to be effective. Do you know about how many miles per gallon difference you noticed when you switched? I have a 04 4.6l not sure if you have the same motor or not. Last question, suppose i was to get a permit and start making this fuel at my home, would it be beneficial, in you opinion, to create a mixture that contains 70% gas and 30% ethanol or something like that. I am trying to find a ratio that would allow me to use the stock tune and still help me save gas money. Thanks for the help!
The tweecer is just a tuner which plugs into the factory computer and allows you to modify the factory tune with your laptop: The TwEECer -- EEC-IV user programmable module
I pretty much left my timing tables the same, just adding a few degrees to take advantage of the higher octane (as you would for 91), and changed the injector slopes to trick the computer into thinking it was still running gasoline. I would think nearly any tuner would allow you to do that, I just happen to own a tweecer.
I haven't found my gas mileage to take as significant of a nose dive as the energy content would suggest. As I said above, the ethanol promotes a more complete burn to improve efficiency, and of course has a higher octane allowing for higher CRs to recover efficiency. On gasoline, I was usually around 21.something on my normal drive and on E85, I found I was around 19.5-20mpg. I guess that is a change of somewhere between 5-10%, but I must admit I am at WOT more while running E85.
As for mixtures... I saw a technical paper (SAE I think) once which looked at the gas mileage of E10, E20 and E30 mixtures on many different cars. The conclusion was that you generally don't loose and gas mileage on mixtures up to 20%, which they said was due to the more complete burn which the ethanol promotes. Interestingly, some cars gained a little mileage on these mixtures, even to 30%. So it kinda pisses me off when I see people shouting their mouth off about loosing gas mileage on the 10% ethanol gas which is standard these days. Clearly ignorant.
I pretty much left my timing tables the same, just adding a few degrees to take advantage of the higher octane (as you would for 91), and changed the injector slopes to trick the computer into thinking it was still running gasoline. I would think nearly any tuner would allow you to do that, I just happen to own a tweecer.
I haven't found my gas mileage to take as significant of a nose dive as the energy content would suggest. As I said above, the ethanol promotes a more complete burn to improve efficiency, and of course has a higher octane allowing for higher CRs to recover efficiency. On gasoline, I was usually around 21.something on my normal drive and on E85, I found I was around 19.5-20mpg. I guess that is a change of somewhere between 5-10%, but I must admit I am at WOT more while running E85.
As for mixtures... I saw a technical paper (SAE I think) once which looked at the gas mileage of E10, E20 and E30 mixtures on many different cars. The conclusion was that you generally don't loose and gas mileage on mixtures up to 20%, which they said was due to the more complete burn which the ethanol promotes. Interestingly, some cars gained a little mileage on these mixtures, even to 30%. So it kinda pisses me off when I see people shouting their mouth off about loosing gas mileage on the 10% ethanol gas which is standard these days. Clearly ignorant.
The tweecer is just a tuner which plugs into the factory computer and allows you to modify the factory tune with your laptop: The TwEECer -- EEC-IV user programmable module
I pretty much left my timing tables the same, just adding a few degrees to take advantage of the higher octane (as you would for 91), and changed the injector slopes to trick the computer into thinking it was still running gasoline. I would think nearly any tuner would allow you to do that, I just happen to own a tweecer.
I haven't found my gas mileage to take as significant of a nose dive as the energy content would suggest. As I said above, the ethanol promotes a more complete burn to improve efficiency, and of course has a higher octane allowing for higher CRs to recover efficiency. On gasoline, I was usually around 21.something on my normal drive and on E85, I found I was around 19.5-20mpg. I guess that is a change of somewhere between 5-10%, but I must admit I am at WOT more while running E85.
As for mixtures... I saw a technical paper (SAE I think) once which looked at the gas mileage of E10, E20 and E30 mixtures on many different cars. The conclusion was that you generally don't loose and gas mileage on mixtures up to 20%, which they said was due to the more complete burn which the ethanol promotes. Interestingly, some cars gained a little mileage on these mixtures, even to 30%. So it kinda pisses me off when I see people shouting their mouth off about loosing gas mileage on the 10% ethanol gas which is standard these days. Clearly ignorant.
Great info man, thanks a lot. I'm gonna do a bit more research on it, anything that saves me a few bucks will be great. I am confused as to what you mean by changing the injector slopes, I think its from tuning and not a literal physical change? Also a noob as to what WOT means but ill look it up haha. Thanks for the help dude. Who knows in a couple of weeks i might be making white lightning in my backyard! lol
The injector slopes are just what the program calls the injector size. It is just multiplied by a factor to come up with the slope. Yeah, all software. But on other cars, I have physically installed injectors that were about 30% larger to compensate for E85 instead of programming the computer.
WOT - wide open throttle
WOT - wide open throttle
it eats O rings and will def cause problems after a year of straight use. The new cars that are dual fuel have synthetic based poly's
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