So I happened to pick up a copy of Modified recently, cause obvioulsy I was curious about Enjuku Racing's 350z drift car. Then when I read the article, it says that their Z runs on E85, but unfortunately no details on how they did it. Booo! Well, if any more E85 stations pop up in CA (which will not happen for a while), I don't mind coverting my Z.

I'm just wondering how Enjuku did theirs so far? Any good technical theories out there? Or does someone actually know how they did it? Please respond and spit your E85 Z knowledge.

Thanks!

 

Oh Crap. Posted this on the wrong thread. Can a mod stick this in the appropriate place for me and everyone else. Thanks!

 

 

You can run higher compression on E85, but only if it's E85 only.

 

BOOO-- Ethanol is the biggest hoax ever at least for the USA. We americans are simply not disciplined.Took Brazil 30+ years to be considered a success. Brazil is successful but look at what 98% of the people drive/ride there.Most Americans have no regard for anything other than instant gratification.

 

Ethanol can eat up the rubber that is in the fuel system , so obviously that needs to be replaced. Also, E85 has an octane rating of something like 105, so the ECU needs to be remapped for the changes. Also, E85 has ~65% the energy that gasoline has, so again, the ECU needs to be modified to control the correct amount of fuel to get to the engine.

All in all it is not that much that has to be done. However, it is not cost effective to run E85 due to the lack of fuel mileage, and the fact that E85 costs as much as normal gas across much of the country. That and it causes the US not to ship as much corn overseas so we can use it ourselves.

If a car is designed from the ground up to use E85 though, it can get better gas mileage than a gasoline equivalent. The Z is not that car though.

 

Good info.

The solution for optimizing an ethanol/petrol flex-fuel engine is to run a turbo. Raising the boost when there's higher percentage of ethanol in the tank would take advantage of its higher octane.

 

Yeah checkout the Konigsegg (spelling?) CCXR with the E85 conversion, it makes like an extra 200HP.

 

Correct. There is a car in Europe that gets better mileage using E85, and has more horsepower and other performace numbers, because its drivetrain was designed to use it. It has a smaller engine than its gas counterpart, and uses a small turbo to make full use of 100 octane fuel. If a car is designed with this in mind it will work. However, most American vehicles that run on E85 also run on gas, and due to the engines limitations, they get worse gas milage and a little bit worse HP/TQ when using E85. At least this has been my experience to date.