Talk:E85 in standard engines

Sourcing and appropriateness
This article was created from a section of E85, the below comments were moved from Talk:E85. The spun-off article is still 33K; it is rather wordy, however, so perhaps careful editing can make it more concise and thus shorter. -- Beland 03:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Length
This article is now 53K. The "Experimental", "Risk", "Aftermarket conversion", and "Air fuel ratio comparison" sections are long and somewhat dry. They seem to contain lots of information which is only of interest to people who are actually trying to run E85 in their cars, which may or may not be appropriate for an encyclopedia. They also seems to be somewhat repetitious. Can they be chopped down or spun off into another article or something? -- Beland 13:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Many of the people coming to this article are doing research and gathering information precisely to run E85 in "converted cars". I personally think it is highly appropriate as an encyclopedia entry.

I suppose someone could split out the information into an "E85 overview" article for the quick and dirty discussion, and an "in depth discussion of E85 as a fuel" but I believe that would be less useful than to have it all in a single article. I have no problem with long encyclopedia entries personally, some in the hard copy encyclopedias cover 10-20 pages of fine print, so this is pretty brief by comparison.

There is a tag in the article regarding the section on fuel mixtures possibly containing original research.

I produced the chart on comparable fuel air mixtures for my own use. It is a simple compilation of widely available bits of data from a multitude of sources. Some simple computations from basic chemistry and standardization of multiple references to typical fuel air mixtures used in many references involving E85. There is no single source that can be sited for the data and I consider the information public domain. It is simply a summary readily available information.

Information was compiled from 50 year old NACA studies on aircraft engine performance, public domain common knowledge in the automotive performance community regarding fuel air mixtures and their behavior, and mentions of actual fuel air mixtures used with E85 in various studies by universities, and the EPA to mention a few. Additional information for the mixture chart is drawn from personal experience of dozens of experimenters who have reported their tests and results to verious automotive and E85 specialty forums.

Much of that information is in my already referenced E85 faq on http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=803341 if anyone wishes to contact me directly they can through that forums PM feature. Also additional info on the personal experience of experimenters can be found on http://e85forum.com/ which is also cited as a resource in the text.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 32.97.110.142 (talk • contribs).


 * The Article size guideline gives 32K as a good upper limit. The material on using E85 in standard car engines distracts from the rest of the article for general readers, including me, so I've spun it off.  The official policy No original research requires references for substantive material like this.  If the facts at hand are well-known, then it should be easy to cite reliable sources for them.  Multiple sources are perfectly fine. I guess the thing to do is to start  connecting the references in that FAQ to specific claims in this material, using footnotes.  Also remember when editing this information that Wikipedia is not an instruction manual. -- Beland 03:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I would like to comment about the use of the term "E-85" fuel throughout this article. Using the term "E-85" in refering to any other blend of gasoline and Ethanol that is not 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline (other than a few ppm of water) is not correct and is highly misleading. E-85 is 85% ethanol 15% gasoline give or take a few ppm of water, nothing less and nothing more. Any other concentrations of this type fuel should be refered to as percentage of the Ethanol and Gasoline, only and should not be called E-85 I.E. 47% Ethanol and 53% gasoline. Please refer to Department of Energy guidelines for E-85 fuel to verfiy these comments.


 * I re-removed the section on water contamination. This text, wherever it came from, was originally written to refer to E10 fuel. It was edited by someone to replace "E10" with "E85." The Ethanol_fuel article explains the situation here. E10 can become contaminated by small amounts of water causing phase separation-- the critical level is around the 0.5% mark mentioned in the deleted text-- but E85 does NOT have this problem until relatively high levels of contamination. Ethanol will go into solution with about 5% water, so E10 can hold about 0.5% water by total volume. E85, by extension, can hold a much higher fraction of water without causing phase separation. So let's not go stuffing this bogus text back in, okay? 24.7.127.106 20:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Back in June 2007, editing as 24.7.127.106, I removed the section on water contamination and added the immediately previous content. That section of the article was factually wrong. The facts were, and are, explained in the Ethanol Fuel article. As I said above, everything in that section is correct for E10, which suggests strongly that someone changed "E10" to "E85" without understanding that this change is material to the conclusions of the text.

In spite of the fact that I explained my action here, an editor at 24.243.130.138 reverted my edit and restored the erroneous section. I didn't care to get into an edit war at the time, so I gave up.

I have since found another source that explains the facts so I am going to remove that section again, except for a note stating the bare facts and providing a link to the new source, which is a presentation that shows that relatively large amounts of water (as much as 25% or so) added to E85 fuel will NOT cause water phase separation. Lesser amounts of water will simply go into solution.

I suggest that if someone wants to restore the erroneous text, we should discuss the matter in more detail first. 67.164.125.7 (talk) 05:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Name change and relevence
I have used various mixtures of E85 and regular gasoline in my 1995 Toyota Celica for over 6 months. This car does have a high compression engine and premium gasoline is recommended. The car runs very well on E50(50% ethanol, 50% gasoline). Much more horsepower, and very little to no noticeable loss in fuel economy. Three tanks averaged 21.5MPG, while the EPA estimated is 20 city/25 highway. I understand that there are many variables to a true fuel economy study, and that my results don't really carry much weight. I just really think that the estimated 30% less fuel economy is completely false, and that this is only propaganda by the oil company to discourage the use of alternative fuels. Seriously, 21.5 MPG falls within the possible economy using regular gas. My driving style for this period of time included full-throttle starts and speeds at times 100MPH+. I am skeptical that I could get this fuel economy using regular 87 octane fuel, possibly premium, but who knows.

Now I think this article has promise, but needs major modifications. The focus should be more in converting older cars to be able to use E85 safely then to put it irresponsibly in a car that is just going to have mechanical problems as a result. I did have this happen to me when a fuel injector got clogged in my other car, a 1996 pontiac sunfire, when I used to high of a concentration of ethanol. Conversion can be accomplished on any vehicle, the complexity of this procedure does depend on the type of car and the year. Sources are available to cite to make this more relevant of an article.

Possibilities for name changes: E85 conversion E85 conversion in standard engines E85 conversion in older cars converting cars to run on E85

I don't really like the term "standard engine" and I really would like to do away with that. What is a "standard engine" after all. Is it an engine not specifically designed for E85? Current flex fuel cars aren't really designed to utilize E85 to their full potential, and really only have a modification to the ECU (electronic control until) which controls engine timing. This is why I feel that even cars that a marketed as "flex-fuel" still use a "standard engine".

Campb416 19:45, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You raise some important issues. FlexFuel vehicles do indeed utilize standard engines, only the motronic (motor electronic) is enhanced by a fuel sensor, which determines the ethanol percentage in the fuel mix and adjusts ignition timings and fuel quantities accordingly. Standard engines do not have such a sensor, but can run on E85 very well thru the use of their lambda sonde, which determines the rest-oxygen in the exhaust and thus enables the motronic to calculate the correct fuel quantity. Furthermore, standard engines on E85 make use of the sharpest possible ignition timings, since with E85 the knock-sensor gives green light for that (no knocking with E85 thnaks to its extremely high octane rate of 104 or more). However, the 30% figure for additional consumption on E85 is generally correct, due to the lesser energy content of E85 (40% less than gas, which is compesated by more efficient burning, hence 30% more consumption in the end). Some engines, like your high-revving, high-compression Celica engine are able to make better use of the high octane rate of E85 even with their standard motronic, thus reducing consumption a bit - but they should still require ten to twenty percent more fuel than on gas ! If your engine doesn't consume more on E85, it's running lean ! Check your lambda sonde. Your defect on the other car is due to gas residue which was soluted by the ethanol. Ethanol cleans the tank and fuel system, so any dirt that is there will be loosened and pumped to the engine - in your case it got stuck in the injectors. -- Alexey Topol (talk) 14:27, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Renaming proposal

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was not moved. Aervanath (talk) 05:23, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

E85 in standard engines → E85 conversion &mdash; This article repeats a lot of the info on E85 and recent edits actually deal with material pertinent to E85 engines, not converted engines to run on E85.--Mariordo (talk) 01:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

So I support changing the article name, and so I will reopen the discussion. Please add your comments below. For the article to have content of its own it make sense to rename it E85 conversion. I will tag the article accordingly.--Mariordo (talk) 01:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Merge to the E85 article, and then if necessary, resplit to E85 usage in engines . 70.29.208.129 (talk) 05:35, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Based on the latest edits, the article has improved a lot (though references are still missing). Thus, I DO NOT support the merge proposal to E85, and now I am a bit neutral on changing the name to E85 conversion, but definitively DO NOT agree with the proposed E85 usage in engines as E85 usage includes flexible-fuel vehicles which already have they own article, for both E85 and E100.--Mariordo (talk) 18:40, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

E85 tuning and fuel economy errors
The article contains this passage, which is factually wrong:

"Operating fuel-injected non-FFVs on more than 50% ethanol will generally cause the Malfunction Indicator Lamp (MIL) to illuminate, indicating that the electronic control unit (ECU) believes that it can no longer maintain closed-loop control of the internal combustion process not due to the presence of more oxygen in E85, but rather the fact that E85 has less carbon per volume, thus requiring more than the injectors can deliver, than gasoline. Once the MIL illuminates, adding more ethanol to the fuel tank becomes rather inefficient. For example, running 90% ethanol in a non-FFV (Flexible Fuel Vehicle) will reduce fuel economy by 33% or more relative to what would be achieved running 100% gasoline"

I own a BMW 5 series, built in 1990, and do run it on E70 without any modifications whatsoever. I know several other BMW owners who even run their all-stock cars with E85. Google searches brought me to several different sites where people with cars of other makes/brands report the same: They run on pure E85 without any mods ! In none of the cars did the MIL or a similar light go on. Some engines may have limitations as to the quantity of the possible fuel quantity correction value, be it due to software, injectors, or fuel pump. But most modern, i.e. 1980 - 1990, engines with a regulated catalyzer (i.e. in combination with a lambda sonde) have unlimited regulation capacity as far as the software is concerned, and more than sufficient head-room as far as injectors and pump pressure is concerned. As to the mileage, a value of 20 - 35% more consumption when running on E85 is completely normal, also on specially tuned engines, since ethanol got 43% less heating value than gasoline. -- Alexey Topol (talk) 01:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Update: I switched from E70 to E85 two weeks ago. The car is still all-stock, and it runs perfect ! Only the cold start at the current temperatures here (way below the freezing point !) is a slight issue - you have to push the pedal to the metal when you upstart the engine, otherwise it will die again. On the first few hundred yards you will notice a significant loss of power, but after the first quarter mile it runs fine again. Warm starts funtion smoothly, like on gas (by warm I mean engine temperature around normal room temperature or above). So much about the claim that you need modifications to run E85 in your all-stock car - it's plain bullshit propaganda spread by the petrol lobby ! -- Alexey Topol (talk) 12:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Fuel-injection engines
The following passage is erroneous:

"Fuel-injection engines

Modern cars (i.e., most cars built after 1985) have fuel-injection engines with oxygen sensors that will attempt to adjust the air-fuel mixture, but the oxygen sensor only changes the air to fuel ratio at idle, and at light cruising speeds. As oxygen sensor feedback is ignored at high loads the computer does not know to add more fuel and there will be significant power losses in modern cars."

Motor computers save the lambda values obtained at idling and "cruise speeds" (it really has nothing to do with the speed, but only with the engine load, i.e. lambda measures are taken at all stages except at full-throttle) and then takes these values to compute the full-throttle injection quantity. So there is an automatic correction of the fuel quantity even at full-throttle when running on E85, and there won't be any loss of power ! -- Alexey Topol (talk) 01:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Corrosion
All vehicles built in the 1980s and later, with very few exceptions, are 100% ethanol-ready and do not use any material like rubber, which could be corroded by E85, for their fuel system. -- Alexey Topol (talk) 01:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)