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E85 plus

90volvo

Active member
Joined
May 27, 2017
Location
Eldorado Springs Mo.
First I?ve done a lot of reading on this subject but still I?m unclear? My setup 90 240 +T conversion. 3 inch ex. Npr intercooler. 19t turbo. Aftermarket big pump single in tank. MBC 20lbs boost. 3.73 w/posi. Running 365cc injectors now. Stock AMM. V cam 4 degree advanced. AEM AFR gauge. Sbabbs chips. I want to convert to E85 and 3inch AMM. I have the AMM ready to go on. I?m confused what size injectors I should start with? I read anywhere from 550cc to 1000cc. Next question- will I need a different 02 sensor or gauge or a ecu chip? Car runs mostly 14.5 but to the floor it goes rich. 10.5-11.0? I know it?s a tuning process but want to start in ball park. Will be going to a bigger turbo in spring. Also is 3inch AMM a bad idea with e85? My goal is get as much hp out my daily. Ty in advance. Oh yeh I want to stay with the 2.4 for now.
 
you have to run larger injectors (well, at the very least you *should* run larger injectors) with the 3in maf. In addition to that, full e85 ends up needing somewhere around 50% more fuel, so.. whatever the % difference is to get the 3in maf to work, add about another 50% to that.

You do not need another gauge or o2 sensor, you probably should get custom chips but people don't, really at the point you're at you need to learn how to tune your own junk, be it with lh 2.4 or something aftermarket (which will be easier and probably work better)
 
you have to run larger injectors (well, at the very least you *should* run larger injectors) with the 3in maf. In addition to that, full e85 ends up needing somewhere around 50% more fuel, so.. whatever the % difference is to get the 3in maf to work, add about another 50% to that.

You do not need another gauge or o2 sensor, you probably should get custom chips but people don't, really at the point you're at you need to learn how to tune your own junk, be it with lh 2.4 or something aftermarket (which will be easier and probably work better)

Thanks for info and your time. I?m working at it(tuning) just wanted a good place to start. Thanks
 
If you end up needing some help, shoot me a message. I'm about 2 hours from you but I've been down this road a few times. I own a repair shop and I've got the equipment to tune your lh2.4.
 
you have to run larger injectors (well, at the very least you *should* run larger injectors) with the 3in maf. In addition to that, full e85 ends up needing somewhere around 50% more fuel, so.. whatever the % difference is to get the 3in maf to work, add about another 50% to that.

You do not need another gauge or o2 sensor, you probably should get custom chips but people don't, really at the point you're at you need to learn how to tune your own junk, be it with lh 2.4 or something aftermarket (which will be easier and probably work better)

Doesnt someone sell MSPnP kits for this type of situation? If its easier that way maybe find that guy;-)
 
The stoichiometric ratio for non ethanol gasoline is approximately 14.7:1 or roughly 0.068 lbs of gas for every lb of air the engine consumes. E85 has a stoichiometric ratio of approximately 9.8:1 or approximately 0.102 lbs of gas for every lb of air the engine consumes. Everything else being equal and if you don't want to run big fuel trims the injectors for E85 should flow .102/0.068 x 100 = 150% or 50% more (as per linuxman51).

Note that if your injectors were running a high duty cycle at maximum output on regular gas, a 50% larger injector running on E85 will run exactly the same duty cycle so it won't improve your margins on injector duty cycle. If you plan to further increase the volumetric efficiency of the engine you are going to push the duty cycle higher so you may want to consider further upsizing of the injector (unless you are currently running a low duty cycle).

At the risk of stating the obvious, if you up-size the injectors to try and run E85 on the Bosch 2.4, you can't go back to regular gasoline. An aftermarket ECU which supports dual fuel maps with a gas sensor might be a workaround. However, even with dual fuel maps the 50+% larger injectors may result in bad idle performance when trying to run non E85 gas.

Remember that O2 sensors measure free O2 in the exhaust stream and the wideband controller outputs lambda, not an AFR value. The gauge is typically calibrated to display AFR on the presumption that you are burning straight gasoline (14.7 stoich ratio). Unless you have a controller with a digital display that allows you to enter the actual stoich ratio for the fuel, 14.7 on the gauge (lambda =1 for gasoline) will now represent an AFR of 9.8:1 (lambda =1 for E85).
 
Yeah, you tune to lambda on E85 or gas - same readings on the AFR gauge. Just some subtle differences in how E85 acts with rich mixtures. I.e. you don't need to richen it up as much as gasoline under boost because E85 is so detonation prone. And at the same contradictory time, you can richen it up a bit more under boost and get more power - past a point where gasoline wouldn't be adding more power.

I was running 1000cc injectors on my 16V turbo motor - they had no issues on ethanol or gasoline at idle. Modern 'big' injectors don't seem to suffer from minimum injection cycles as the older style did.

And I'd be somewhat cautious about merely upsizing the injectors to suit E85 fuel. Because E85 isn't always 85% ethanol. It can vary. Sometimes considerably. My first MS setup to run E85 involved using the nitrous input to switch boost/fuel/spark tables. I had a simple dash switch. I'd run it very low on one fuel, fill up on the other, then start it up, let it run for 10 - 15 seconds until the O2 sensor showed the new fuel hitting the engine, then flip the switch. 'Dual-fuel' instead of 'flex-fuel'. The E85 tune ended up being somewhat elusive. Constantly chasing the tune around. Lots and lots of autotune/map smoothing/retuning/etc.

Eventually, I moved to an MS3X setup that could handle a flex-fuel sensor and added a GM sensor. It did an interpolated blend between the gas and E85 tables, based on the ethanol content (with a curve to control the interpolation - it's not straight linear). And then, even though I never bothered to get 'known' content reference fuels to calibrate the ethanol sensor, I could see that E85 varied from tank to tank. Sometimes even at the same gas station. But especially between gas stations. From roughly (uncalibrated) 85% down to about 40%. I've read online that some people occasionally find plain old regular E10 in E85 pumps. The fuel is just labeled 'E85' - it's intended for use in flex-fuel vehicles that can detect the percentage and work with a wide range of mixtures. The constant fuel tuning issues seemed to lessen quite a bit with the flex-fuel setup - not constantly chasing whatever the latest tank of E85 had in it.
 
Myself in my Daily i run E54 (local station tests out between E54-E65 regularly) with a 19T @ 20psi. I am running my own custom tune with a 3" AMM and 60lb/hr injectors. Before I ran the same setup with 65lb injectors without any issues but when I swtiched to EV14's i got a deal on some slightly smaller units.

Depending on your power goals and next turbo you might want to size your injectors accordly. Otherwise I would recommend in the 60-70lb/hr range for the injectors. And from there you can work with Your tuner to get the map fine tuned for your setup. The biggest issue is that most flex fuel stations have a min of E50 and can go up to E85 so from tank to tank it can varry.
 
I know, I just thought it was kinda neat. Would save you from doing all the testing every time but once I thought about it once its in your tank your kinda stuck.
 
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