Hi, i've been reading this thread with much interest. I only do 3000 miles a year, and am thinking of giving this a try.
My car has 330ish bhp, and is at the 440 injectors limit. I want to fit 550's, and get Zen to re-map the ESL Live to suit. What would the realistic power increase i'd expect running the 10% E85?

Thanks,Tim

 

I would have thought you would get a fair bit more mid range and some gain at the top end too - Paul is the best person to chat to as he would know your set up as he mapped it in the first place but would have to be the happy side of 350 imo.

 

Damn, just found out that this is Swadincote, which is about 15-20 miles the other side of Tamworth and not the one I thought it was..!

So in total about 60 mile round trip..!

We need to start pushing Morrisons to do more for us, seen as we're so environmentally minded..!


I'd got it all planned too..!

 

can bob r map this with ecutek?

 

yes

 

got a remap booked end of jan so will put £40 tesco 99 and £10 of bio e how much do morrisons charge a litre (york)? or rough idea

 

dont do it on cost as bio is cheaper than tesco 99 and it will screw the ratios. Work on a %

for 20% mix => 40 litres of tesco 99 + 10 litres E85
for 10% mix => 45 litres of Tesco 99 + 5 litres E85

 

yeah thats a better way of doing it cheers for all the info

 

put the E85 in first to help it mix better

 

i too have some interest in this, my car was re mapped by Simon and was delta dashed at 349/343 running prodrive sports cat, de res centre and afterburner b/box, green filter and ngk7's. What mix would you recommend and what gains could i expect without anything but a remap?

thanks

Aaron

 

Aaron - have a word with Simon, he will know your car best and will be able to advise what he could get with it (it will be bit more than you have now though )

 

Steve : If you get your car mapped to run on a mixture of two different fuels ie. Bio plus petrol then you must always run these fuels. You cannot map your car for these fuels and then tootle off adding V-Power or Tesco 99 only or whatever is available to you locally without risking damage to your engine.
As long as you are clear about that ... fine.

 

Thats a very good point Harvey is making as it's not only the fuelling that is adjusted to suit. Im running 5 or 6 degrees more advance on boost so far on
10 litres Bio + 35 litres Vpower. At 1.25 bar im feeling the same power that i did at 1.5 bar - and there's more to come.. great stuff.

 

cheers harvey

 

Yeah very good point about the mixture...

I almost ran out of fuel in Wales and couldn't find a shell close enough and when I last passed one it was too soon to fill the tank up.

I ended up sticking half a bottle of NF octane booster, 5 litres of E85 and filled up with tesco 97 (the best I could find). Then I pootled along off boost for the next 280 miles before I filled her up again.

It might be worth having a jerry can in the boot with pre-mixed E85 + vpower on longer journeys, if you can stand the smell (of which there should be only a tiny bit if you have a good jerry can).

 

This is exactly the reason why I have two fuel maps at present, one for normal super and one for VPower. Any other fuel would require another (third) switchable fuel map.

 

I've been following this thread with great interest, and I think I'm going to have a crack at this fuel mixing malarky.
My scoob is in with Paul @ Zen on Thursday this week for an 18g upgrade, new PFR7B plugs, and refit the decat DP.
Being close to a Morrisons with E85 available it seems a shame not to dip a toe in the water and see what the benefits of a 10% fuel mix will be.
Although this will mean carrying 5L of E85 around on longer journeys, it doesn't seem like a high price to pay for a bit more ooomph, and if I run out of E85 I'll have to be good and run it off boost. If it proves to be too much trouble I will just have to have the map re-adjusted.
Seems like a fairly simple bit of planning to me.

Although 'just' a road car and some might question why I'm bothering with a fuel mix, curiosity has got the better of me and I can't pass up the opportunity to have a play. I'm not interested in chasing dyno numbers, just want to see how big a grin I can get.

I would appreciate any comments by anybody with experience of this level of tune up.
Steve.

 

Can you fill up 45 litres of VPower, then drive off-boost to get the E85 and add it then?

Or does it ideally need to be added at the same time?

- Was thinking that might be better so i don't have to carry a fill-up can.

 

This is exactly what I was going to do (lol, this thread got the better of me too..) that was until I realised the local E85 Morrison's wasn't so local..

 

Gaz - I run 10% methanol plus a splash of NF and the car is mapped for it. I run 1.6 bar midrange boost tailing off to 1.5 bar at the top end. I can reassure you that there's absolutely no problem running the car on pure V-Power provided you don't cane it. Paul (at Zen) explained that the extra ignition timing on methanol is added mainly at high revs under full throttle. I can use up to 1.3 bar of boost on V-Power only (no meth or NF) and my knock indicator is still completely quiet. In fact, when I'm doing a long motorway run, I never bother adding meth or NF and so long as I don't give it full throttle, it's fine.

On a recent road dyno run, Paul found that the ECU was runing full ignition advance, so filling up with just V-Power for cruising or modest throttle is obviously having no detrimental effect. I should also add that I've now done over 15,000 miles on the 10% methanol + NF map and the car stills runs as sweet as a nut. In fact, I'm so impressed with the standard engine (03 UK STI) as it's been running around 400bhp for the last 23,000 miles and is still going strong (I reckon that's a lot down to Paul's superb mapping though)

 

sorry if its been covered already but what would your car require to totally run on e85, and is it even possible? Also been reading a bit about this fuel and it states that a saab that runs on this has 50%-70% less emissions, now would you be able to get your car reclassed for rd tax if you could run on pure e85?

Aaron

 

I assume running with too much ethanol in the tank wouldn't be of any detriment due to the increased resistance to detonation?

As it's not very pratical to drive around until the light comes on and then fill up, or fill up at the same point on the fuel gauge, etc.

Even if you added 1 litre of e85, then 9 of petrol, another 1 of e85, and so on, you're likely to end up getting caught short sometimes and end up being a couple of litres of petrol short.

 

Thanks Lunar.

 

Ah, this is very good to know, thanks for sharing

I'm going to get a knocklink at some point to see what the engine is doing, at the moment I have no monitoring (apart from boost and oil gauges)

 

Definitely recommended. Provided the knocklink is correctly set up and you can drive with restraint, you can use it to monitor engine performance and maintain a safety margin when you're not running methanol

 

so as e85 already has 15% petrol in, how would running a 20% mix differ from running a 10% mix as the there would be more or less in the tank depending on what mix you are running

would you benefit more from 20%? would also work out cheaper to fill up wouldnt it? 20% e85 + 80% v power?

 

It is cheaper to fill up but you need to increase the fueling for it so about evens itself out.

20% got a substantial increase in both power and torque on mine. More than 10%.

 

Sounds like this is going to be a better option for me then methanol!

 

this only available on a hydra ecu?

 

are tesco 99 and v power not the same octane rating?