Man I just cannot get enough of these pictures. I find myself looking over them (for longer than I would like to admit) and examining every tiny little detail. I just wish they were a little higher resolution but thats hardly an issue. Thanks.

 

I would say he is on the other side of $75K by now.

 

 

You should be ready for testing around July.......

 

My builder is just about ready to plumb the fuel system. I set up a design to plumb the evacuation line for the E85 swap to 94 Octane for him that I wanted, we were in agreement so that will be one of the next steps. We will bulkhead the inside of the old fuel door (leaving the fuel door looking stock)- plumb it to the tank with a separate switch and an external pump and wall-la - out goes the E85 and back to 94 Octane for the street. I think the wiring and dash instrumentation will come after that. The car will have to be completely disassembled for paint - I am doing a complete color change - so that will be a bit of time and the frame has to be powder coated - and I have to address the hood - will probably have some kind of cowl then maybe extend the hood back and I can't forget the small bump in the hood. It maybe ready for testing but taking it apart and back together and the remaining fabrication will be a bit time consuming.

 

Exactly my point. And I highly encourage you NOT to paint the car until it runs perfect. Get at least 20 passes done before you do. Things shift, you may need a modification here and there, etc. Paint is hard to match. I am not up on using E85, but since it has more ethanol than gas, I suppose I can see the reason for it. Entirely different A/F ratio though. Are you running electronic injection? You will be around 12-1 on gas, and I am guessing 9-1 on E85. I was 6-1 on Alky. EGTs on Alky are low, like 1130 low, whereas on gas they can be as much as 1500.

 

It's lower than that on E. Stoich is about 9.8:1. PE with boost will be down in the mid 7s to start tuning.


Hopefully your pcm has real time monitoring / adjustment for ethanol content. That's one of my biggest frustrations with the 3800 pcm - no real way to have a closed loop feedback system. Fuel trims can account for some, but our local stations can have wild swings from 50 to 95 so I always measure before I fill up. I used to only run canned stuff just for that reason, but got tired of the expense when pump E is so cheap.

 

I used E85 a few times in my stock Impala. It was 50 cents a gallon cheaper. It was still a waste of money even on the interstate. Worked out cheaper using 87. Pretty sad. Must be using a lot more Ethanol than I imagined.

When I was racing, I got fed up buying $5 a gallon racing fuel, and we switched to Alky. Could buy it for $90 a drum. We were running a 6-1 A/F ratio, and making good HP.

 

I hear that! When I was doing the drum E85/T85 it ran about $400-450 / 55 gal drum. We did have a local performance shop that always had a dozen or so and would fill you up directly on site too as long as it was during normal Mon-Sat business hours.

Our pump "flex fuel" runs less than half that, usually in the low $3/ gal range. Bad thing is the variability. They put some garbage law in place years ago that they can't sell e85 locally anymore - its got to be e54 all year and labeled as flex fuel. A lot of stations got around it by flagging their E pump as a race fuel station "not for on road use" - just like they do with the pump race gasoline. But that lead to a lot of inconsistencies in E content from station to station and even batch to batch. Some stations are pretty good about staying 85+, but others run even beyond what is the normal range for E85 elsewhere in thr country (50-95+). Its a little pain testing every time, but well worth half off fuel for the car. Just wish there was an easy way to run a flex fuel sensor on the 3800 pcms so I didn't have to worry about keeping it relatively close to 85.

 

Bumping96: From the research my builder and I have done we found several manufacturers that make control modules that do have real time monitoring of your fuel and adjust for ethanal content. Holley is one if I remembered correctly and there are at least 2 others that my builder and I have researched.

All we have to do now is choose one.