To E85 or not to E85, that is the question

Are any of you running E85 in your racecar, for at least a few years? Do you flush the alcohol out during the offseasion, and if not, what do you do?

I was all set to ditch racegas plans for the turbo motor and go E85. The fuel system would support enough flow and everything I read told me it has better DET resistance than even higher claimed octane race gasoline (I guess due to the cooling). But I later read a rant by Injector Dynamics saying that alcohol makes your fuel system a rust magnet, even the injectors. So you either need to prepare for this or flush the fuel system with gasoline before storing the car for longer than about 3 weeks...

I'd love to hear opinions from those who have been running it for some time now.

my Regal sat for 3 months with 3/4 tank of E85 in it when the fuel pump died, and it looked like brand new inside the tank when i finally dropped it to replace the pump. and, no, i don't think the E85 killed the pump, since it was making noise when i got the car in '04 and finally stopped making pressure in the summer of '08. i think it was the 13 years the car sat with 1/2 tank of gas in it that did the pump in..

there's a lot of misinformation out there about E85- mostly from people that have never used it and don't know the difference between Methanol and Ethanol. if it worries you, then drain it out at the end of the season and run some gas thru the system before putting it away for the year.

Thanks guys! I didn't realize gasoline was hygroscopic as well (being a petroleum product). My tank doesn't have a drain in it, plus it's a saddle-bag type so I'd need 2. I also have a large swirl pot (2 transfer pumps from the main tank) and inline filters, so there would be a lot to drain.

Over the winter it should be ok right, since the air is dry? So then even if I don't have any events for a month, if I fire it up and entertain the neighborhood kids a little bit, it should be ok? Maybe with the additive as well.

Do what you would do for welding on a gas tank, fill it full. If you don't have any air space in a closed system......

And air is far from dry.

Here's the writeup I was referring to:

http://www.injectordynamics.com/AlcoholArticle.html

Ranger50 wrote: Do what you would do for welding on a gas tank, fill it full. If you don't have any air space in a closed system...... And air is far from dry.

Good point, I'll keep it topped up to minimize absorption.

Sorry, by dry I meant relatively. Where I live, the difference in absolute humidity in the winter vs summer is probably by a factor of 3 or more (southern Ontario).

For peace of mind, in the offseason you can easily run the tank low on E85 and fill it with regular stuff. Most fuel system rubber that's older doesn't like the ethanol, so prolonged exposure can be a bit hard on it. At the end of the offseason, burn through the regular gas in some test drives to get the system all checked out, or if that's not realistic because it's not road legal you can always siphon the majority of the tank out and run it in your daily driver. Fill it back up with E85 and go racing.

Bryce

I ran E85 for 4 years on a stock Civic fuel system. Zero problems. It would sit all winter, and still run like a scalded dog come spring.

Nashco wrote: For peace of mind, in the offseason you can easily run the tank low on E85 and fill it with regular stuff. Most fuel system rubber that's older doesn't like the ethanol, so prolonged exposure can be a bit hard on it. At the end of the offseason, burn through the regular gas in some test drives to get the system all checked out, or if that's not realistic because it's not road legal you can always siphon the majority of the tank out and run it in your daily driver. Fill it back up with E85 and go racing. Bryce

This shouldn't be a concern for me since I was told by several friends that the rubber braided lines weep fuel vapor so my fuel system is either aluminum hard line or teflon braided soft line.

DILYSI Dave wrote: I ran E85 for 4 years on a stock Civic fuel system. Zero problems. It would sit all winter, and still run like a scalded dog come spring.

Thanks man, that's reassuring!

Just to clarify, E85 is 85% ethanol.

I have no doubts about E85's performance. I know it's formal rating is about 100 but it's a bit of a pointless rating. Practical experience (from observing friends with similar setups to mine) in turbocharged engines like mine is that in order to get the same performance and det resistance as E85 from gasoline, you need 114+ oxygenated racegas and it's still questionable what will make more power due to the cooler charge. The only drawback to E85 other than my concerns is that it requires at least 50% more fuel (so it's a bit of a joke in terms of fuel economy for street cars and for race cars, you need enough fuel system to support that, but I've got an A1000 pump feeding ID1000 injectors). All of this is besides the fact that one is under 4 bucks per gallon and the other is 16ish...

My only other more minor concern is that since my standalone doesn't fully support an ethanol sensor, I have to be careful to avoid the winter and spring blends (which I'm told are E70 and E77ish) but otherwise summer blend pump E85 is supposed to be quite consistent - but I'll still tune for safety.

I haven't looked through it too much myself, but moonshine has ran well in my dad's truck before....

FlightService wrote: I haven't looked through it too much myself, but moonshine has ran well in my dad's truck before....

LOL yeah, that's a typical Russian thing to do too. If you're out of gas, rig up a bottle of strong spirits to feed directly into the carb. Car ran fine, just a bit down on power.