had herd about these from a few friends that converted there cars to run on E85 and I was thinking about doing this to my car. I used to run e85 on my Honda, but I was using Neptune and having it tuned to run off of it. It was pretty insane how much power I was able to make with it, but that’s another story. My question here I guess is has anymore looked into doing this to your car? I know a large majority of you are from Cali and this kit is not legal for sale there.

I am not looking to get all the performance perks from E85, I just want to be able to choose what fuel to put in my car, and it looks like with this kit I will be able to do that. I would love to be able to put a fuel in my car that cost on average of $2.19 a gallon in my area.

Here is a link to the site for more info on the kit.
http://www.change2e85.com/servlet/StoreFront

 

Not sure how that pans out as it gets worse mpg.

 

That is something to think about, I was giving up about 10-20 miles per tank on average with my Honda, but to tell you the truth I was okay with that, seeing that I was getting 100+ octane gas for $1.79 a gallon (that was 1 1/2 ago).

 

Unfortunately Ethanol now sells [TODAY} for $2.77-$3.25 per gallon at the tanker rack.
http://www.ethanolmarket.com/
Look up your price delivered by each state

Then you must pay the ~~ 40 cents per gallon for state and federal highway tax.

E85 kits not tested for each model and brand must be tested by EPA for emission compliance. This cost $30-$40,000 per test.

If car is older than 1994 you can convert and opt for a local state dyno emission test. If it passes it passes and good to go.

 

If you are going to stay naturally asperated, you may want to think about increasing your compression. That should help you get better performance using E85. I would think it would also help on gas milage, but don't quote me on that. You might do some Internet research on that if you are interested.

On the other hand, you may think about going turbo. With E85, you should be able to run very high boost, assuming your bottom end is strong enough.

Either way, your going to need to tune your fuel injection and ignition timing. Instead of buying the generic kit, I would get in touch with a good VQ tuner in your area and look into going with a good engine management system. (e.g. HKS F-CON V Pro, etc.).

Also, I forgot to mention earlier, that the Stoich value (ideal air/fuel ratio) of Ethanol is much lower than gasoline, so you need to inject more of it. Thus, you likely will need larger fuel injectors.

For example, the stoich value for gasoline is approximately 14.7, though in practice, AFRs of somewhere between 11 and 12.5 are typically used to prevent predetonation and pinging. The stoich stoich value for E85 is approximately 9.76, and AFR values of between 7 and 8.5 are typically used. (The high octane rating of ethonal allows AFRs to be used that are closer to the stoich values.)

 

Stay away from E85 conversion kits unless they completley replace fuel metal components with stainless steel. As you can summize, all these pieces and assocated labor to install (or time for DIY) is a lot.

FYI, I use E85 in the flexfuel Tahoe and mileage went down from ~17 mpg city (87 octane) to ~12 mpg city (E85).