E85 Ethanol

[red_dog007]

Can the L24 be converted to run on E85? What kind of work would need to be done? Also, would any benefits be seen from the use of E85 over regular petrol?

What about propane too?

[Walter Moore]

I guy that I used to work with ran is bracket racer (drag race car) on ethanol. He said that you just had to re-jet the carb. I suspect that is all you would have to do to the Z. Just change the jets and needles.

Z Therapy might know what was required.

As to benefits? ethanol burns colder than gas. Not sure about E85, it might not burn any cooler. But the big drawback is fuel mileage! There is a lot less energy per volume in ethanol, so it takes a lot more fuel per mile to drive.

(hence the need to increase the size of the jets.)

Propane used to be used in fork trucks used indoors because it burns so much cleaner. OSHA tightened the regulations on indoor CO levels, and now everyone uses electric fork trucks.

For the same reason there used to be people who would convert exotic sports cars to run on propane to make them pass emission tests. The problem is that propane burns really hot, and you have to dramatically increase the radiator size, and add extra cooling fans to keep the car cool.

With the L series engines propensity to warped heads when they overheat that might not be a winning combination.

[red_dog007]

Crazy.

Would it give any HP benefits? There is some supercar that can run on E85 and pumps out 50 more horses then on 91 octane. Though that motor was designed to take advantage of E85, so I am guessing it will have little effect on the L motors, especially when they don't change much for current E85 motors.

Propane would be cool because it is really cheap, but much more work. Was going to CNG my old truck before I had to sell it.

[DaveN]

Do a Google search for "E85 conversion". You'll find lots of ads for conversion kits and several articles warning that they're all illegal because none has been certified to meet emission standards. DIY conversion is also illegal unless you can prove (testing costs $$) that emissions are no higher than the pre-conversion standard for the same model.

Dig deeper into E85 and you may not want to touch it. The net energy gain is low (recent published estimates are in the 20-60% range for ethanol, around 100% for biodiesel with potential for improvement as higher yielding oil crops are found/developed) and we don't have nearly enough unused land or water to grow the amount of grain we would need to replace all/most of our gas supply with ethanol. It's mostly a windfall for corn growers -- a fat federal subsidy makes ethanol production profitable and corn prices are way up because of it.

[red_dog007]

No doubt that it will not replace all oil imports, but it is just one of those other things. 1 source to take over oil will never happen. You need more then just ethanol, you need hydrogen, electric, cng, and others to take down oil.

Though here in Tennessee I recently found out that we are going to try out switch grass. Would give a lot of jobs to Tennessee as you can grow it anywhere and give us E85 gas cheaper. Switch grass is supposed to yield more then double the amount that corn yields of ethanol.

Would be cool for the big three to make E85 capable engines and when you run on E85 you get like an extra 30 to 50 horsepower.

[hd240z]

The Big 3 already sell E85 capable vehicles, but they dont make any more horsepower, they just get fewer mpg on E85 because of the lower energy content per gallon. As far as the corn growers getting rich, who would you rather see getting rich, American farmers or OPEC?

[ta240]

The Big 3 already sell E85 capable vehicles, but they dont make any more horsepower, they just get fewer mpg on E85 because of the lower energy content per gallon.

An E85 only engine can run at a higher compression ration giving more power. The flexfuel ones have to run at standard compression so you don't get any more power out of them.

[Go240Zags]

As far as the corn growers getting rich, who would you rather see getting rich, American farmers or OPEC?

I, for one, would rather see the small family farmer profit - not necessarily the big corporate farms. One thing to keep in mind is higher food costs - everything from cereal (all types of grains as subsidized farmers switch to growing corn only for E85) and higher meat costs (as cattle and other animal feed prices start to skyrocket) because all the profit will be for corn production. I have higher hopes for things like switchgrass. Bio-diesel, bio-mass and other technologies need to be further developed. After watching "Who killed the electric car" it looks like hydrogen may be more of a dead-end than we are being led to believe.

[KDMatt]

An E85 only engine can run at a higher compression ration giving more power. The flexfuel ones have to run at standard compression so you don't get any more power out of them.

Yep.

E85, I believe, has an octane rating somewhere around 105?

[CoastGuardZ]

FWIW,

I used to have a 2000 Ford Ranger (yeah, haha, whatever). Anyway, it had the 3.0L V6 E85 compatible engine and the one time I tried E85 it ran "funny"... It had a miss at idle and a little hestitation off the line, all that coupled with the ridiculous drop in mpg, I never ran it again. A little search online at the time revealed that this was a common thread amoungst other E85 Ford owners. Now maybe this was just some issue that Ford had with it at the time, but it definetly soured my perception on E85. The other issues I had with that truck turned me away from Ford completely.

And here is another thought I have on E85... Are any of the major Jap brands playing with E85? The only one I know of off hand is the Nissan Titan. It just seems like if it was a great idea or technology you would see Toyota playing it up for the Camry or Honda advertising it for the Accord. But then again they pride themselves on mpg. So that would probably be counter productive for them to brag that their cars would run on E85 but get crappy mileage.