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United Melrose Park e85 ethanol rating

crustycereal

By crustycereal,
in South Australia

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crustycereal Newbie

crustycereal

Posted
Posted

Hello everybody. I have no idea where to get a ethanol tester besides online and want to run a e30 mix in my bmw m2. In order for my calculator to work i need to know what ethanol rating the e85 pump is and this is my local station would anyone know or is it negligible to find specifically.

Thanks🙂

Kinkstaah Grand Master

Kinkstaah

Posted
Posted

United E85 is always 85% ethanol. At least it claims to be.

But that goes out of the window about thirty seconds after you put a tank of it into your car and can't do the math to determine if you have 76% ethanol, or 47% ethanol or 26% ethanol because you put 33L in, then 16L in, then a full tank of 98, then "Some" E85.

Ethanol tunes that aren't full flex or full E85 all the time are just absolutely a waste of time. Don't be stupid and ruin your car.

crustycereal Newbie

crustycereal

Posted
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Posted
7 hours ago, Kinkstaah said:

United E85 is always 85% ethanol. At least it claims to be.

But that goes out of the window about thirty seconds after you put a tank of it into your car and can't do the math to determine if you have 76% ethanol, or 47% ethanol or 26% ethanol because you put 33L in, then 16L in, then a full tank of 98, then "Some" E85.

Ethanol tunes that aren't full flex or full E85 all the time are just absolutely a waste of time. Don't be stupid and ruin your car.

So your saying e30 is a wate of time? there's plenty of solid calculators out there that can give you the exact amount flex fuel just re adjusts the tune for you which you wont have to do if you just calculate it accurately. and the point of running e30 over e85 is to not ruin your fuel lines. 

MBS206 Grand Master

MBS206

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, crustycereal said:

So your saying e30 is a wate of time? there's plenty of solid calculators out there that can give you the exact amount flex fuel just re adjusts the tune for you which you wont have to do if you just calculate it accurately. and the point of running e30 over e85 is to not ruin your fuel lines. 

E30 and E85 will both be reacting with whatever they can. One just has a little less in it and will take a little longer for you to see the things it's reacting with.

Plenty of replacement stuff out there that's ethanol friendly, and then it won't matter what Ex blend you run once you do a full flex tune.

Also fill flex would still be beneficial to you, even for the minor % changes down at E30.

Murray_Calavera Mentor

Murray_Calavera

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, crustycereal said:

because the cheapest one is over 1k lol

What ECU are you using? The flex sensors I'm used to working with normally cost around $300.

If you don't have a way of tuning the car, how do you plan to safely run e30?

Kinkstaah Grand Master

Kinkstaah

Posted
Posted

It's not that E30 is bad. I recently did a track day and half of the reason I took ethanol is because when I ran out of jerries, 'some' ethanol is better than none for protection and stuff, even N/A.

The problem with E30 is attempting to maintain E30. It's an akward target to hit and the maths required make the whole thing near impossible very fast.

joshuaho96 Veteran

joshuaho96

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, MBS206 said:

E30 and E85 will both be reacting with whatever they can. One just has a little less in it and will take a little longer for you to see the things it's reacting with.

Plenty of replacement stuff out there that's ethanol friendly, and then it won't matter what Ex blend you run once you do a full flex tune.

Also fill flex would still be beneficial to you, even for the minor % changes down at E30.

High ethanol concentrations all the time is bad for the fuel system. Not because ethanol has some inherent issue assuming you've done your fuel system setup correctly, but because PIB isn't soluble in ethanol and it contaminates the entire supply of fuel in practice. It is soluble in gasoline so you want to run a tank of normal pump gas every so often to flush all of that out before it causes an injector or something to clog.

Dose Pipe Sutututu Grand Master

Dose Pipe Sutututu

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, crustycereal said:

because the cheapest one is over 1k lol

From this comment, I'm assuming you're on the MHD platform.

Put it this way, $1k is cheaper than putting a hole through the block.

joshuaho96 Veteran

joshuaho96

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

From this comment, I'm assuming you're on the MHD platform.

Put it this way, $1k is cheaper than putting a hole through the block.

I would never run E85 without an ethanol content sensor. Just not worth the headache. Having to reflash the tune and only refill the tank when it's very nearly empty is super annoying.

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GTSBoy Grand Master

GTSBoy

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, joshuaho96 said:

I would never run E85 without an ethanol content sensor.

Plenty of people have been doing exactly that in Australia for many years.

All it takes is to only fill up at servos with E85. And that is not that difficult. I drive past several such every day.

The main pain is the consumption rate and having to fill up more often and stash more jerry cans in the shed.

joshuaho96 Veteran

joshuaho96

Posted
Posted
35 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

Plenty of people have been doing exactly that in Australia for many years.

All it takes is to only fill up at servos with E85. And that is not that difficult. I drive past several such every day.

The main pain is the consumption rate and having to fill up more often and stash more jerry cans in the shed.

Yeah, but in the US if you do this it's almost guaranteed you get the infamous black goo buildup in intake ports and E85 fuel stations while relatively common are nowhere near as readily available as E10 premium unleaded. E85 is also not regulated that well out here. Lots of places "E85" is actually as low as E50 in the winter to reduce cold start unburned fuel emissions. E85 especially doesn't do well with short trips, Mike Kojima at MotoIQ documented how his daughter's EJ25 running E85 experienced stuck rings from being driven short distances and the crankcase was filled with a thin layer of condensation + oil emulsion as well despite very aggressive oil change intervals.

joshuaho96 Veteran

joshuaho96

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

Which part of this sounds like the wrong thing to do?

I'd say, almost all of it.

Not wrong, but if I expected to not drive the car for a while but do a fair amount of garage shuffling I wouldn't run E85. Flashing a tune every time that happens sounds like a headache compared to a single map + flex fuel sensor.

MBS206 Grand Master

MBS206

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, joshuaho96 said:

Not wrong, but if I expected to not drive the car for a while but do a fair amount of garage shuffling I wouldn't run E85. Flashing a tune every time that happens sounds like a headache compared to a single map + flex fuel sensor.

It would be harder to drop the tank of fuel, then plug in a cable and hit "load tune".

The difference is, the change you are saying you'd do only removes the easiest part of the whole operation...

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