The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk E85 fuel

Here in Nebraska Corn Country, several stations are beginning to market E85 fuel, which is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

I have been considering running this fuel in my yet-to-be finished 51 half ton. I have overhauled a 261 (bored .030) but did not mill the 848 head enought to raise the compression much.

Some of the ethanol websites I have checked suggested that engines with a 'hot spot' under the carb (like a stock stovebolt 6) do pretty well with this fuel as the 'hot spot' helps fully vaporize the alchohol.

Some newer cars are set up to run on this stuff and I was wondering if someone knew what changes the computer made to ignition advance and fuel delivery curves. In other words, what needs to happen to make an engine run right with this fuel.

Someone in the know willing to share???

theres a few places here in Wis. starting to use it..and i was wondering if the stovebolt could handle it??

Since alchohol has only about the half the btu's of energy per gallon as gasoline, I would expect you would have to put a much bigger jet in the carburator to make it run right.

Racecarl, I stopped at Southwest Implement last time I was through there, but you were out in the field.

As Eric Amlie stated, I would assume you would need to rejet the carb. I also believe your fuel consumption would increase.

Phil

Back in the 50's we ran Methanol in the family dirt track car, a 34 Ford coupe with a flathead V-8 engine. Ethanol has slightly more BTU output than Methanol, but either one is way behind gasoline in total energy released. You'll need much larger main jets, which will drop the fuel mileage to about half what it is currently. On the upside, you can raise the compression to above 10:1 if you choose, as long as you don't go back to using straight gasoline. Ignition timing can also be advanced. When we started jetting the flathead carbs for Methanol, Carter Carburetor told us to increase the cross-sectional area of the main jet 10 times, which is approximately 3 times the diameter of a gasoline jet. Then they said,"If necessary, go richer". With a 300 cubic inch engine with 11:1 compression, we were getting 8 laps per gallon on a 1/4 mile track. Of course, that was wide open, with a very radical camshaft, and about 5,000 engine RPM. At street speeds with a less-radical engine, I'd expect to get 8 or 9 MPG from the same size engine.
Jerry

They've been selling in Wichita for about a year. I haven't even been to a station that sells it. I remember hearing stories years back from Brazil. where they ran only straight alcohol. Milage and carburetion were horrible. For a website www.e85fuel.com and www.ksgrains.com/ethanol

Hi Phil, Barney gave me your card and I am sorry I missed you when you were here. We probably have another month of pretty hard running unless it starts raining again. Hopefully we will have no more crashes as it is sometimes hard enough keeping up with regular service calls.

I may just put in a slightly larger jet and blend the E85 down to a tamer mixture, say 60% gas and 40% alchohol, and experiment from there. Thanks for the links Fred and Hotrod. All of this planning assumes I will be able to make some time to work on the pickup someday.

I've heard that E85 is very hard on fuel system components not made especially for it. The FFVs have a sensor that auto-detects the alcohol level in the fuel and adjusts the injection system accordingly.