The Complete Ethanol Thread

[scotty nm35]

I have heard good things about this Martini, I would be interested to see back to back runs comparing outputs. It sounds like you need to get both fuels on the dyno to check the tunes out on either fuel anyway.

[B-rice]

ok, use $uckrogen drum for base E85 tune - that's your pure 85% baseline, then 98 tune and however your tuner wants to work from there. I don't think it would make a difference using the Martini as your 85% reference if the tune is conservative. But given you won't be drum filling the car, use the other brand and whatever caltex gives you, caltex gives you.

ok thanks thats what i had been thinking before. I may have asked the question retardely, I my question was if running higher octane than what i used to tune would it affect anything. Talking about octane only im not worried about the ethanol as it will be the same. The only reason why im asking this is because the car that use this fuel run a different compression ratio. So with the R34GTT compression i wonder how it would respond.

I have heard good things about this Martini, I would be interested to see back to back runs comparing outputs. It sounds like you need to get both fuels on the dyno to check the tunes out on either fuel anyway.

if dollars permit would be interested in seeing how different it would be from the other stuff.

[SS8_Gohan]

i'm pretty sure Trent played around with some Martini 85? or at least some of the drum options. he didn't really see much difference compared to 85% United... from memory

My base 85 tune was Powerplus.

[NYTSKY]

I fill my car up at my local United.

Give it a blast in 3rd gear, if AFRs are between 11.2 and 11.8 keep thrashing.

[Super Drager]

I had actually always wondered if there would be any significant power gains from tuning on different E85 blends, like E85 mixed with 91, 95, 98, C16 or whatever other sorcery you can think of.

[SiR_RB]

Mine was tuned on eflex. But now I live closer to a united servo which has e85, all good to me AFR's still dip into very low 11's

Need 2000's though and a tune

[discopotato03]

I reckon that if tuners like reliable engines the only way you'll ever get a good flex tune is blending low octane ULP with ethanol . Hard to imagine Caltex and United using 98 PULP in their E70/E85 pump fuels .

If a tuner tunes for flexible blends where the ULP is 98 what happens when some mug comes along and throws in some amount of 91 E10 or 95 ULP ? The ethanol sensor can't tell the computer what the octane rating of the petrol content is and neither can an oxygen sensor . The AFRs can be perfect but if the timing maps are based on blended 98 ULP the engine can very easily nock with lower octane petrols in the blends .

I hear people say often enough that good tuners put all kinds of protections in their settings and if they want to be SURE you won't kill it they have to make allowances for petrol content octane .

Sure very high ethanol content blends wouldn't make a significant difference but that's because the petrol content is so low .

I can't see anyone here doing this but if I wanted an effective flex tune I'd start with 91ULP and build it up to E85 . That way you can put anything at the pump that isn't diesel in your car and it won't go bang if tuned properly . If you flog the piss bags out of your car everywhere gas up with E85 at United . If you drive Sydney Melbourne tomorrow do say an E40 blend and get good mileage along the way . I hardly think an RB would ping if tuned properly on E40/91 sitting on 110 down the Hume .

The difference tuning this way is that the tuner doesn't have to put protections in trying to fool proof the users gassing up habits .

If your tuner trusts you they may use 95 as the base ULP but it could go bad if someone put 91 or E10 in and leaned on it .

A .

[B-rice]

Disco glad you understood what I was asking. I was thinking too that the ethanol does musk some of the small errors but i wanted to address everything from the start of my base tune. From what i collect united actually uses a mix of 15% 91 and 85% ethanol the octane out of this will be 105. If I mixed the 15% 98 with 85% E85. Im prone to get higher octane. Furthermore if i ran martini with 116octane AFTER using 105octane as the base tune, im not entirely sure thats stiff going to be all sweet with the Map. Thats where i wanted someone to shed the light on me.

Seems like a tedious process though to get it tuned first on 98, drain it. Then pour in 91 about 10 litres then build your way up to the highest content you can, drain it again then put in 100% ethanol since the remaining petrol will not allow your to get 100% e85.

[scotty nm35]

You go the other way, drain the 98, fill on United e90 then add the petrol to bring it back. Just remember, the most 91 you would have in the tank is 30% due to Caltex fuel having that content, you would be watering it down with 98 if you filled at the servo...

The tuner will need to tune the fuel map fat for protection but I doubt it would ever ping, unless you leaned on it past the engine's sweet point. (like most of us have. lol.) Still much safer than a petrol tune, bad batches of 98 were common for me in the early days.

The Martini supposedly has more in it, but only the 116 octane drum. I asked a few tuners and they scoffed, saying there is no way, but who knows untill you do back to back tests. The workshop I heard the results from were selling the drums, so who knows. It made 40kw more on their race Evo apparently.

[Super Drager]

Anyone heard of FTW-purple E85 fuel? from the few forums i've searched it seems to pick up a bit of power over pump E85. So expensive though

[discopotato03]

I think ethanol changes "effective" octane because you spray more in compared to petrol and get a bit more evaporative charge air cooling .

In the States they have in some places "blender" pumps at servos so the user choses ratios like say E10/30/50/85 . These pumps blend ethanol and low octane ULP from separate in ground tanks and gives you the chance to experiment with percentages . Unfortunately E70/85 doesn't have a huge following here and since the local manufacturers aren't supporting it who knows what the future holds for pump E70/85 .

All the masses care about is how cheaply they can run their car and they know these days engines designed to burn ULP don't do well on E10 , if 10 is bad more must be worse . And of course ethanol "burns your seals out" , short of catching fire I don't know how that happens .

IMO maximum power tuning (highest possible state of tune) changes things because the highest cylinder temperatures and pressures are what demands the most effective octane . It is possible to have higher octane than you need to supress detonation and then the expense and effort isn't always worth it .

Anyway my point is without a petrol content octane sensor I don't know how you tune for petrols variable octane . In fact I'm surprised manufacturers haven't looked at this because relying totally on nock and oxygen sensors seems a hard way to go about effective engine management .

A .

[SimonR32]

I've gone through Sucrogen, Martini and now use United...

Changes in tune were virtually nothing, minor fuel tweaks no more than you would normally see without changing fuels. We actually made the most power with United but didn't push as hard with the other 2 fuels for various reasons.

One interesting thing we found was that Martini played funny buggers with the oil significantly more than United and Sucrogen!

Unless you're at the point where you are trying to squeeze every inch left out of a set up (which I would assume is less than 1% of people in here) then pump stuff

[SS8_Gohan]

^^ so this

I still want to do an E100 tune.... for shits and giggles - i've never seen United get out of the 82-85 range, but would be interesting none-the-less - that is full flex mapping there

[B-rice]

did you do E10 aswell?

[Piggaz]

did you do E10 aswell?

The "E10" you get from the pump would be a different fuel to an "E85" diluted with 98.

[B-rice]

i was only asking as a joke. i dont think theres a point really to go down to E10 i guess if you want to call 100% flex fuel.

[Piggaz]

i was only asking as a joke. i dont think theres a point really to go down to E10 i guess if you want to call 100% flex fuel.

Disagree.

What if you want to drive down to Victoria and keep your jerry cans for the track day?

[XKLABA]

i think he means pump E10 not E85 diluted to E10 by 98

but then if your going to dilute E85 with 91 then that is what your going to end up with

[SS8_Gohan]

don't need to do E10 as it's already effectively mapped.

Every iteration of E01 to E85 is in essenced, mapped

[ido09s]

What ethanol percentage are people currently seeing with Caltex E-Flex?