aspire on e85
 

what mods do i need to do to run e85?

The most cost effective way would be to trade it in on a flex fuel ready vehicle.
Unless... Your fuel injection system will need to be able to handle about 30% fuel flow increase to run normally. This will necessitate a new fuel and ignition curve. In order to start playing with these things, the existing computer will need to be replaced, as the current O2 sensor will not read correctly to compute lambda and the ignition will need to operate with a different curve. The O2 sensor is not going to supply the correct voltage signal to the computer when running E85. The computer will force a lean burn that is off the permissible mixture range for running the engine with this percentage of Ethanol. E85 lean burn works up to an 11:1 A/F ratio for simplicity in describing this.
To describe the effect, if your car gets 30 mpg, it will now get 20 mpg once it's tuned correctly. That's kind of a raw way to look at it.

If you want to keep the Aspire and have vehicle emissions testing to contend with, forget you heard about E85.

If your planning to become a mad scientist, and can get around the emissions issues, then you will need to re-write the cars control system. Allow for lot's of down time and testing.

Only you can determine if that's worth your time and effort.

CJ

I run E85 in "regular" vehicles with no mods.

Caveats:

Don't run straight E85 in subfreezing weather. My Fords do well on straight E85 in the summer. So I run blends in spring and fall; the strength varies with outside temps. If the mix is too heavy with E85 for the temp it may start hard and run poorly until the engine warms up.

Special circumstance: I did a long road trip recently in subfreezing temps and I ran a strong E85 mix, but that is because the car was already warmed up and I knew I'd be topping off with regular gas at or near my destination before shutting it off. Saved 60 cents a gallon for that segment! :thumbup:

The ford apire is able to alter the fuel mix but not necessarily the timing (depends on year OBDI vrs OBDII)

This means like some other users regardless of year apire you should be able to run up to about 50/50 mix of e85 w/ e10 in the summer months.

If you are willing to run tests you may be able to run much more e85, possibly even 100% but you need to use small batches to test the engine to make sure it idles fast enough and starts cold and doesn't miss or knock while driving down the road. My buick would stall at stop signs when running more than 50% e85. I also had hard start issues running more than 40% in the winter when it got very cold.

Also remember, never WOT (aka floor) a non-e85 car when running e85 as the older cars tend to go lean on e85 and if you are a person that drives the car to the floor a lot, lean burn at WOT can burn a piston in short order. And yes I speak of this because there are some fools who ignore their engine and keep flooring it anyway despite obvious auditory warning signs. One guy took out a 98 3800 this way, while I ran mine for years on the stuff. Many older cars do not have the ability to remap WOT/open loop enough for e85.

I mention that as a warning but not one I personally take seriously, its all in how well you know/maintain your car and how you drive it.

That said e85 has been said to damage fuel pumps, fuel tanks, etc. I think this rather unlikely except on very old cars and on cars that already have fuel delivery issues. A far more likely scenario is that the crud in your old fuel tank will be cleaned out and plug your fuel filter, to minimize this risk either
1. Increase the amount of e85 gradually (I would recommend that anyway)
or
2. Just go for it and have a spare fuel filter ready.

If you do have a fuel pump issue sometime in the far future from e85 use you can simply replace it with one guaranteed for the stuff or one that uses ethanol compatible gaskets/seals/components.

Personally as long as you use common sense and test how your car behaves safely I don't think there is any risk of running a mix of e85 and e10.

Now if you are doing this to drag race that is a whole other ball of worms and is a pain in the arse usually involving oversized injectors and remapping your ecu somehow. For normal driving this should never be necessary.\

E85 conversion kits? - Toyota Forums :: Toyota Nation

Good Luck
Ryan

As far as WOT, it's harder to do damage running lean on E85 than gas. I'd personally give the ECU plenty of time to adjust and re-map its tables, then make a single WOT run, listen for pinging, and pull the spark plugs after to make sure all looks well. If it's running lean enough to do damage, the plugs should tell the tale.

If the ECU needs help remapping enough, do like the turbo guys would and up the fuel pressure, as that allows more flow through a given injector. That would have it pulling fuel on E0 (rather than at baseline), but able to add enough on E85.

Sorry to be stuck on the wrong side of the fence but...

You can run leaner on e85 and not cause damage but it is much easier to not notice you are running very very lean as e85 does not make as much noise in the right ways to notice it like on gas.

It is very RARE for someone to get the right combination for it to occur and...

That said I don't worry about the above issue because it simply doesn't apply to me, I can count the number of yearly wot events in my cars on one hand.

Also it only happens on specific cars, stuff older than 96.5 definately is in that region were some superiorly gifted individuals can find ways of wrecking their engines.

A hypermiler would never enter into the situation where they could ever remotely run the risk of engine damage but not all here are hypermilers and are doing it for the wrong reasons.

A good running check is e85forum.com

Cheers
Ryan

True. E85 doesn't ping much when lean like gas, which is why I mentioned checking based on plugs, rather than just by ear. If you can determine that it won't run TOO lean, it should be ok, as there's a good bit of leeway. It's certainly not a dump it in and go WOT without checking type of thing, however.

I think one important thing before going too far is asking WHY do you want to run E85? if it's to save the environment, don't. more energy (usually from coal burning power plants) goes into the e85 than gets to your car. If it's to save money, won't unless it's like $.50 or more cheaper. depends on how your car responds to it because you'll see a large FE drop. if that drop is greater than what you're saving by running it, it's not worth it. that's before considering headache and damage to the engine. If you're doing it to support your corn-growing friends....good for you.

It'll be interesting to see the price (and availability) of E85 in a few years when the subsidies expire.

It'd be interesting to see the price of gasoline if those subsidies were pulled. :rolleyes:

Actually I've never seen a statistically significant drop on any of my non-e85 vehicles when running an e85 mix. (compared to e10 anyway)

The vehicles I own that would be affected are so old that they can't run ethanol gas in the summer because of vapor lock issues and I've never tried in the winter but likely I would have to get non-40year old gaskets replaced.

I have. Everyone I know that's done it has. By engine design and physics it should. Depends on how much ethanol there is/how many tanks and how the fuel management system works (like you mention). All FI cars should see a noticeable drop using full E85. My car that I tried it in ran fine, albeit with a little less oomph and the gas gauge dropped pretty quick. lost 2-3 mpg (starting at 26) and according to my math I only had about 40-50% ethanol in the tank for about a month (alternated tanks of E10 and E85 filling when it was around 1/2)

As far as the O2 sensor reading mixtures, it'll read fine with ethanol. the sensor reads how much O2 is left which is a function of the mixture. stoich for pure ethanol is around 9:1 vs gasolines 14.7:1. you get fuel system rich codes because the O2 is trying to correct the mixture to the 9:1 side and the PCM says that's not cool and turns on the MIL.

It's not a matter of "IF": the Ethanol subsidies are scheduled to end in either 2016 or 2018. Around the same time the car mfrs will stop getting credits toward CAFE for flex fuel vehicles.

You'll only get a CEL for it if it hits the +/- 30% fuel adjustment limit that most OBDII setups have. The CEL isn't for the fact that it's adding fuel, it's for the fact that it hit the limit and can't add enough.

I never ran full e85, highest was E60 which resulted in a slow idle, normally mathematically I came out around E30-E40 and I usually ran it in the winter. Also each tank had a different percentage because of how I filled, I kept track so I knew approx how much of each fuel to add on the next fillup.

My winter FE on standard gas versus e40 was within the margin of error over several seasons.

I have a feeling that if you have an OBDII vehicle, use mystery oil (my car wouldn't idle properly without it then, nor did/does my fathers suburban now) and run e30-e40 you will find most late 90's cars don't get much different FE wise. (I would say under 3% which is hard to appreciate or see on varying driving conditions)
What this meant is that driving on the highway WITHOUT hypermiling in the winter My 98 lesabre still managed 27-30mpg on e40 (the mix varied from e20-e55 week to week), which was no different than e10 in the winter. My fathers 93 suburban typically ran the range from 16-19mpg in the winter and also did the same on e30 (usually e15-e35), when I ran the average over the winter seasons from that year it ended up around .3mpg on the lesabre off from previous years (winter) and about .5mpg on the suburban from previous years (winter).

As you know personal experience is meaningless but not all cars drop massive amounts running on some ethanol mix, my experience is there is a sweet spot right around 30-40% where your mileage really isn't noticably different, I think an ethanol mix, ESPECIALLY in the winter can pay for itself. I think the winter gas must suck bad enough that the FE from it and actual ethanol isn't much different.

I also know many who run big boy vehicles that are made for ethanol and only experience a 1mpg drop between it and e10 year round. The 6% drop still gets paid for by the price difference.

This does not mean all vehicle behave this way, my experience is OLD vehicles drop large amounts of FE but most semi-new vehicles DO NOT. Around here when gas is high; ethanol is usually a $1 per gallon less and DOES PAY FOR ITSELF and then some at least in my own pocketbook on the typical vehicles I run.

Would I run e85 in my old Subaru? No, would my father run it in the 79 ford? No Would I run it in a lawnmower or small motor? No but it does have its place and it is at least for now cheaper to me (not cheaper to society but to me)

Cheers
Ryan

Alot of guys in the import tuning and muscle car scenes like it because it has such high octane. I only see problems with it eating rubber if your hoses are already worn out. But if you freshen up your whole fuel system you should have no issues.

Every body I have talked to with a flex fuel car complains about the lower economy but most people I have talked to have a large V-6 or a V-8 and do not hypermile.

I think with a few modifications to the fuel systems, a good ignition, and a dyno tuned mega squirt system we could probably get some really good mileage from E-85.

My personal thoughts on ethanol is that we should not be making it from corn, we have enough grass clippings and yard trimmings and wast product from corn and other grains produced in this country that we should be using those instead.

I agree 100% with this, only waste should be made into ethanol and preferably down south where it is warm enough not to waste massive amounts of energy heating the brew.

But why run pure e85? Most of the studies have shown the fuel economy sweet spot is between 20-35% ethanol.

Most vehicles require no tuning to run that mix and the cost to benefit is there because the fuel economy (for me at least) does not seem to start dropping like a rock until I get upwards of 40% ethanol and obviously saving 15-30% on the cost per gallon exceeds the slight drop.

If a stock car gets say 30mpg on e0, 28 on e10, 27mpg on e40 and 22mpg on e85 why not stick on the easy part of the curve where you are really saving money?

I am not the only one who noticed this effect.

http://www.eastcoastenergysolutions....anGasoline.doc

Not that I think the data for all cars with behave this way but certain ones run just fine with better than expected fuel economy.

I agree. However, true E85 still has its uses, mostly as far as cheap race gas, which allows people to build a high performance car that can be run on the street. However, due to the fuel economy penalty compared to E30-ish mixes, it's not worth it in most vehicles for day-to-day use.