Gains from E85 (ethanol) on an N/A bolt on 370Z

TerribleONE

The car doesn't come into boost any easier on E85, just takes a lot more fuel. Is the increase in MPG hand calculated?

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VitViper

A tune. Injectors if you want more breathing room.

Dash. Which has always been accurate on other vehicles I've converted (such as the new Coyote -- got 13-15mpg on E85, verified manually). I'll verify the reading next fill up, which will be a "combined" mpg (as I do a lot of city type driving as well).

My point was in boost it does consume a ton more fuel than pump. I don't know about you, but even small amounts of throttle input to do light acceleration would put my turbo cars into at least some level of boost, and as such into richer AFR targets than stoic at cruising.

I can give you much crazier examples -- I have a guy with a high c/r N/A 2.5L motor build in a Honda that gets crappy gas mileage on pump, but on E85 he does 40-50mpg -- the car will go from Ventura to Sacramento (California) on 2/3 - 3/4 tank of gas (it's a Civic, so roughly 9-10 gallons).

My turbo S2000 gets 19-21mpg on the freeway on E85 with a built motor. Factory they're rated 22mpg.

These are definitely the exception and not the rule... as usually I do see a 20-30% hit to economy on E85, but I can't say it's "always" after doing it long enough on a bunch of different platforms.

njobe89

which injectors do you recommend?

do i need to switch from uprev to ecutek for the tune or is staying with uprev fine?

i know ecutek offers launch and few more things, but i don't need that

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2 plus 2 times 2 = ? ... hint, it's not 8

Stillen CBE, Stillen Gen 3, TP's, Uprev tuned - 324whp/264tq

VitViper

Whatever your tuner is comfortable with.

You'll make more power on pump just switching to ECUTek. With the timing control being garbage on UpRev you probably will only seem the initial gains from the fuel itself. On top of which you can't really do a true E85 tune without screwing up the load scaling on UpRev IIRC (been a while since I looked).

conor1123

Thanks for posting Vit. Also saw this on your blog. Wish you were down here in AZ so you could mess with my tune! You've tuned like 4 of my friends k20s hah!

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VitViper

AZ to OR isn't that bad of a drive >.> LOL

I should be visiting Phoenix sometime soon, Andrew should be wrapping up his turbo K20 MR2 sometime soon -- we'll see if we can get 900whp+ out of it this go round!

conor1123

My friend was telling me to take a road trip to OR for a retune from you lmao. I've asked about sending logs but it is a little more difficult platform it seems like to etune. Nice! Sounds awesome.

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VitViper

Yeah if you really want to get all you can out of it you have to sit down and dial in the VVEL. The Honda stuff is relatively simple in comparison to the VVEL system on these motors -- and you're better off using ECUTek on the 3.7 motors at this point.

ANMVQ

With the VVEL/VTC system on this motor, do yourself a favor and find a competent tuner with a reliable dyno. I've seen minor 2-3* changes to VVEL net 4-5tq through parts of the curve, or the opposite -- cause huge 40tq dips in the curve. The goal is to fatten the area under the curve, and you're going to have a hard time trying to get 4tq here and there (and the cumulative effect is nice).[/QUOTE]

Yea finding a local tuner is a 0 to NO shoot for me Mass has NO ONE.

My dyno and TW curve is flat

Attached Images

Ecutek 302WHP.240Wtrq.jpg (89.2 KB, 107 views)

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14 Q50 AWD, ARK, ECUTEK (SEB), Takda,

VitViper

That's good, however that graph has no context for me -- looks like some sort of base and then a "tuned" pull -- looks very similar to the last G37 I did on UpRev.

My point was I can post overlays of 5 pulls for you and show you how little changes in the VVEL made minute gains between pulls but the cumulative effect was greater than the starting point -- you don't have that kind of precision and repeatable doing a street tune.

In an case, I'm not going to argue the merits of street tune (etune) vs dyno tune. They both have their niche.

ANMVQ

no agreed about the Street vs dyno thoughts, I should have been more clear about the graph. The lower WHP line was my finished UPREV tune and the other "Higher" line was my finished ECUTEK tune. I pick up 15 WHP just swtich from UPREV.

We made 10 pulls total, 5 on each software

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14 Q50 AWD, ARK, ECUTEK (SEB), Takda,

VitViper

That makes sense. The lower graph really looked like the motor wanted more timing. That's been one of the most frustrating things of dealing with UpRev -- you can tell the motor wants one thing, and no matter how hard you faceroll on your laptop, the ECU would fight you the whole way.

lol

1cleanZ

E85 gaining MPG's over unleaded? If you convert a car from a standard fuel system from running Unleaded to Corn, your MPG's will go DOWN due to more fuel being consumed.

This isn't a result of being boosted. If you take a TT 370z and take the MPG readings, and THEN convert to E85 (just as Blake did), your MPG's will indeed decrease.

Will E85 make more power? YES, why???? Ignition point = It means you can run a few degrees more timing (all in the tune)
E85 ignights at 365 degrees
93 Octane Ignites at 280 degrees

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2009 PW Nismo #0021 -My Built Progress >>1cleanG to 1cleanZ<<
Team NextLevel

VitViper

Theory and practice are not always the same thing. When I go through a tank of fuel and do a manual calculation at the pump, we'll know for sure.

I clearly demonstrated E85 making power with absolutely zero timing map changes. I've seen this on every N/A car I've converted to E85.

In fact simply stating the fuel allows you to possibly run more timing to make more power is nothing more than an assumption. In many cases I've had N/A motors that want zero timing map changes on the fuel over the pump gas map.

warpeacelove

Where can the flex fuel kit be obtained from for our platform?

Never mind I found it. http://www.e85converterkits.com/stor...exBox6Cylinder