Hay guys

Has anyone on the forum tuned there cars on e85? Wat are the gains to be made from this fuel.?

Cheers

You could crank up the ignition advance a lot due to the higher octane. If you have forced induction you could also wind up the boost and get a lot more power out of this fuel. The down side is you would need to make your fuel system compatible with the E85. From my knowledge this would mostly require changing the rubber components (hoses, o-rings etc), not sure about injectors and other plastic components. Would be a worthwhile project if you are running forced induction. Have to remember that ethanol has 30% oxygen content so with E85 you would use about a third more fuel, this would negate a lot of the cost advantage.

It has been looked into by a few, but I am not aware of anyone having gone ahead yet.

I started looking into it about 2 years ago when it was pretty early days, but as soon as you mention a magna and e85 people find it hard to take you seriously, and even then they can't be bothered as magna's aren't too unfamiliar.

E85 is great for FI and the extra cooling effect can allow more boost and 30% more power is not uncommon.

For an n/a engine I reckon around 15%, give or take, more power is probably about right.
As said you will burn about 30% more which negates the cost per litre. But this also means you will need bigger injectors to cope, and a custom tune of course. Then it is change most fuel line components which are non compatible, and more regular cleaning of fuel system.

E85 is not available in many spots so a dual map ecu (98 tune and e85 tune would be desirable and someone is looking into doing this with a magna ecu), or you could have two seperately ecu and physically swap them over if wanted.

E85 is also a bit looser in terms of quality regulations, or it was anyway, and this turned me off a bit as well but as it becomes more common the quality regulations should improve also.


Chuck me a pm and I can let you know a contact who was very close to doing some testing, they may have finished ??

also let me know where you are up to with your new magna build (my progress has stalled due to lack of funds. Bugger!)


Cheers.

I had the tune done, it benefited me a lot because i have no intercooler with my supercharger, i picked up over 30kw at the wheels. Biggest problem i see is that magna's ecu has no dual map, thus you will be stuck with e85 and wont albe able to fill up with anything else. I have lpg aswell so i can switch over if im running low on e85 untill i fill up again (very few servos have it). Main benefits are: cooler intake temps + more power. On N/A you should not need larger injectors, with my setup im still using factory injectors (only slightly high flowed) and im hitting about 90% duty cycle.