And while I don't have any evidence of it, I feel like regular pump gas is more likely to give you a bad tank of gas than e85. Sure there are winter blends of e85 that are actually e70... However as far as my experience, that is perhaps not common practice anymore? Because the stations I go to do not change for winter. I don't even see why they should... Dead middle of winter and my Z starts up every bit as quick as it does in the summer. A week ago we ran into a guy with an E content tester at a local pump. He came up with e91. Thats awesome. I'm paying 2.70$ a gallon this summer.

Thanks.

I got that plate last year, when they finally revoked my previous custom plate that I managed to get away with for 10 years... FSTASFQ

In 2002 I put that plate on a '94 civic hatch I built as a shop car. I drove the car like 3 times so I moved the plate to my 350z in 2004. Sold the 350z and moved the plate to the 370z.

Just FYI, ever since I showed that plate on the old Z forums, there have been a dozen Z/G guys that started using that as their handle on forums and social networking links etc, and I wouldn't want anyone to think that was me, I never used it for anything but my hotmail or my license plate. I do have my doubts that anyone else was ever able to slip it through their state. I just happened to get lucky with a probably drunk lady at the DMV who thought it was cool.

Nice numbers glad to read that the car is still running strong Charles and has been good to you.


I say build that spare block over the winter I remember when I spoke to you over the phone about it.:tup:

nice to hear about your reliability!

I am not sure I agree with you on this. At least here...E85 isnt used hardly at all by anyone...so the fuel sits for a long time...a lot longer than the pump 91 that is freshly refilled on a daily basis.

I was running E85 in my truck and got one bad tank of it and it went boom in the 1/4 mile..rods shot out all over the place.

Still love E85 but I would like to run a E85 sensor in the fuel line and make sure its really E85 before boosting/driving hard

Out here, the E85 pumps are always being used. The stations that have the E85 pumps, usually have 1 or 2. I would estimate that 1/3 of the time I have to wait for someone who is filling up a flex fuel vehicle.

Water / Methanol injection helps cool the cylinder temperatures when you're running leaner air fuels, adding more timing, or boost. It will also increase the octane rating of the gas. When I went direct port with a 50/50 mix, I saw about a complete point lower on the air fuel ratios compared to without. It went from 11.8 - 12.0:1 air fuel down to about 11.0 - 11.3:1 when spraying.

You're probably right about the motor holding up due to the E85, it really does allow for more timing / boost compared to 10% Ethanol 91 or 93. It's unlikely you would have gotten so many miles out of your motor if you ran that on regular 91 by itself.

The way gas has been lately (especially on the east coast here), 91-93 octane has been horrible and unreliable. If I had E85 available here easily, I would be tuned on it for sure.



Question, what wheel and tire setup are you running?

Well thats nice! I think I just had bad luck one day.

More timing doesnt mean more HP. Correct timing means more HP. So for whatever fuel you are running, to run the correct ignition timing will yield the best results. E85 requires more timing, or you will actually lose power from gasoline. So I wouldnt say that the fact you can run more timing gives it any better HP. For any fuel at all, too much timing starts to reduce power just before it blows up your engine. For whatever fuel you have, your goal is to achieve peak cylinder pressure at a specific crank angle which will be the same for any 2 identically built engines. How much timing advance is required to land at that crank angle is a factor of many things but mainly the burn rate of your fuel... but the best you can do is hit that correct crank angle.

I think that the advantage to E85 lays solely in its knock resistance and cooling, and thats about it. Any stock VHR running the same boost pressure as me from the same turbo kit, is pushing the same airflow, and will make the same power if the tuning is correct. The question is, is combustion going to be stable enough to avoid knock using premium pump fuel. I cannot answer that, since I havent tried. 9psi isnt much, but the compression ratio is pretty high. To make better HP at lower PSI just means that my engine is able to run more efficiently while retaining stability. My Greddy 20g turbos are probably larger than most of the smaller stage kits, already aiding that, and the E85 fuel allows me to tune the engine more efficiently because it remains stable. If I moved to pump gas, I would probably have to run the engine quite a bit richer to keep it cool and stable, therefore reducing efficiency, and thus requiring more airflow, more boost, to make up the power. I might also have to run less than optimum ignition timing advance to reduce burn time and increase combustion stability.

I am sure that with all the tricks and techniques, somebody can match long term HP with me using regular pump gas. I let my A/Fs hit mid 12's on gas calibrated gauge... I can run optimum ignition timing for my fuel because the fuel is stable. Between water injection, running the engine rich for stability, conservative ignition timing, and then more boost... I am sure my numbers are easy to match, I just dont know about making as much at as low of a boost pressure. But if you have boost to spare, then it doesnt really matter what that boost number is.

I will add that everything I say is based on very limited research into E85. Most of it is just gut feelings and impressions based on my experience of running it just one car, my own. I used to dyno tune cars every day when I had a dyno, but it was a lot easier when there was only high or low octane. Now with E85 its entire dynamic is all different and the numbers and curves are vastly different than gasoline and since I dont have the motivation to deep research it, I just use my feelings on it. Anyone who knows EXACTLY what is going on in there, is more than welcome to come school my ***. I am one or two steps from the furthest thing from a full time engine management tuner.

I have 19x11 with 305/30/19 R888s and 18x12 with 315/35/18 Toyo TQ. Neither setup has good enough traction to lay down the law.

Tracking is going to be tested with FI when I'm done. So time will tell. I hope to slam my results in a lot of peoples faces. Since several have stated it won't last two days. Cause none of THERE experience nor ANYONE at that has already proven it yet. :ugh2: Love knowing people make solid statements based on nothing.

Drag Racing (if you call that a sport) is harder on a motor than tracking.

You will just have to make accommodations for the fact that you are going to push the engine hard repeatedly, without any time lapse. I dont know how often you will track the car, but it might take you a really long time to catch up to me, as far as how many times you floor it through a few gears in a row.

You will need to make sure that water temp and oil temp and air intake temps remain stable. If any of those cannot remain stable, then you need more radiator, more oil cooler, or more intercooler. The higher boost you want to run, the more you will strain those systems. I would consider running high octane fuel for road racing, since elevated temps will degrade stability.

Overall life expectancy should be reduced since you are expediting your engines abuse. I could maybe estimate that you might put as much abuse on your engine every lap as I do every day.

I would recommend gauges with configurable audible warning, or some sort of display on a full size LCD screen head unit like some guys have, where you can display them large and easy to read at a glance.

You already know that you need to stay out of fuel starvation, and youre already on top of that. It would be nice to have a way to log fuel pressure and oil pressure, to check for drops/issues.

About 90% has been taken care of with some nice cooling features I've added. And as I said before I only plan to run about 400whp on track days. I know expectancy is going to be reduce a lot but not by two days. Plan to do 8-10 track days a year. If something happens better believe I'm going to build a great motor for abuse.

Well if thats the case and you actually kept it at 400, I dont imagine a whole lot of accelerated wear if temperatures are all in check.

Most likely, you will end up trying 500rwhp within your second or third time out :)

586rwhp feels pretty slow, let me tell ya!

Depends on how many pass me in the straights. But I'll try to hold out for a good bit. I just wanted that edge you can't get with NA.

Its funny how quick the car seems back to normal once you go boost. I remember after getting fullu tuned I felt like I was the fastest car on the road.
After few days n the excitement is over I feel like I need more power. Can become very addicting and always wanting to turn up the boost.