2.0 Turbo Converted from Pump Gas to E85 Ethanol

[BowTieTillIdie]

I found an article saying the 2.0 Can be switched to run E85 Gaining HP on just E85. Not only that but E85 is only $2.87 here !!!!!! Is this just a tune or a kit ???

[RecklessL61]

Originally Posted by BowTieTillIdie

I found an article saying the 2.0 Can be switched to run E85 Gaining HP on just
E85. Not only that but E85 is only $2.87 here !!!!!!


Is this just a tune or a kit ???

idk bout this but where are you at cause i want gas for 2.87

[titaniumss]

E85 is consistently lower in price than regular gasoline. It's cheaper but usually is just as efficient in cost vs mpg as regular gasoline due to it netting lower mpg's but more hp. You may need to check the fuel system and get a tune to run it correctly.

[silver187666]

i could be wrong, but dont you need to change the seals in the engine, and i think theres was somthign to do with the cylinders its been a while since ive read about it, i think this will help though
http://e85vehicles.com/converting-e85.htm

[car_guy_09]

Mainly all you need to run e85 on most newer cars, Is a tune.

Check out this website, http://www.mye85kit.com/e85_conversi...uel/index.html

[USMCFieldMP]

Originally Posted by car_guy_09

Mainly all you need to run e85 on most newer cars, Is a tune.

Check out this website, http://www.mye85kit.com/e85_conversi...uel/index.html

Interesting.

E85 is like 104octane, something like that...

[silver187666]

yah you can find it like that, ive heard of racing e85 of 110

[USMCFieldMP]

Originally Posted by silver187666

yah you can find it like that, ive heard of racing e85 of 110

???


Depending on composition and source, ALL E85 has an octane rating of 100 - 105.

[blackbird]

Ethanol is cheaper and has a higher effective octane rating/knock resistance than pure gasoline but also contains less energy per gallon so you use more of it. While E85 is nowhere near as corrosive as the methanol used in the older flex fuel cars of the '90s, it's still harsher on certain rubber seals and can absorb moisture and lead to corrosion. That can affect things like the in-tank fuel pump, electronic sending unit in the tank, etc., and I personally would be very careful about running it. Especially with the direct injection setup for a couple reasons.

One, GM says not to use ethanol in greater concentrations than 10% (E10) on the LNF and the high pressure pump and other components are awfully expensive items to risk if you're not 100% positive there won't be any long-term damage. Second, even if the entire fueling system was physically compatible with the fuel, the direct injection and how it sprays directly into the combustion chamber might not work so well with the different flame front characteristics of E85 and things like the wideband enrichment in closed loop operation could be another potential issue trying to run it. A tune could be developed but I don't think we can safely say it will run fine from a tuning and hardware standpoint on a stock car.

[Terminator2]

Originally Posted by blackbird

Ethanol is cheaper and has a higher effective octane rating/knock resistance than pure gasoline but also contains less energy per gallon so you use more of it. While E85 is nowhere near as corrosive as the methanol used in the older flex fuel cars of the '90s, it's still harsher on certain rubber seals and can absorb moisture and lead to corrosion. That can affect things like the in-tank fuel pump, electronic sending unit in the tank, etc., and I personally would be very careful about running it. Especially with the direct injection setup for a couple reasons.

One, GM says not to use ethanol in greater concentrations than 10% (E10) on the LNF and the high pressure pump and other components are awfully expensive items to risk if you're not 100% positive there won't be any long-term damage. Second, even if the entire fueling system was physically compatible with the fuel, the direct injection and how it sprays directly into the combustion chamber might not work so well with the different flame front characteristics of E85 and things like the wideband enrichment in closed loop operation could be another potential issue trying to run it. A tune could be developed but I don't think we can safely say it will run fine from a tuning and hardware standpoint on a stock car.

Agreed. It is not financially worth it. At only 80% of the energy content of gasoline even at $2.87 a gallon, it is like having only 10.5 gallons in your tank range-wise. It is definately not worth risking the seals on the fueling system to save the equivalent of $0.50 a gallon.

[TrevMo]

Originally Posted by Terminator2

Agreed. It is not financially worth it. At only 80% of the energy content of gasoline even at $2.87 a gallon, it is like having only 10.5 gallons in your tank range-wise. It is definately not worth risking the seals on the fueling system to save the equivalent of $0.50 a gallon.

That is the thing people don't understand...all kinds of engine parts need to be changed because E85 has a totally different friendship with rubber and plastic than does standard gasoline...

I'm sure you could convert it if you changed out all kinds of engine components and reprogrammed the computer...totally not worth it...

[SS4EVER]

Yeah just as Blackbird and others have heard, I've heard no for the LNF. While its CR is ideal for running E85, The high ethanol content can be corrosive for the seals, pumps, lines, etc.

[shabodah]

The 2.0L Turbo Saabs in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY are Flexfuel capable. I seriously doubt GM wants to do R&R on too many versions of basically the same fuel system, so, odds are doing the conversion with their official Saab parts should be relatively easy.

PS- The fact that you use more E85 than gasoline does not have anything to do with it's energy content, it has to do with the fact that alcohol's stoich is much richer. The direct injection fuel injectors are actually certified to work with more types of fuel than standard injectors, so I seriously doubt they'd be an issue. I do however, worry about the high pressure pump, and even the in-tank pickup pump for that matter. Not short term, but in 100k miles...

[Terminator2]

Originally Posted by shabodah

The 2.0L Turbo Saabs in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY are Flexfuel capable. I seriously doubt GM wants to do R&R on too many versions of basically the same fuel system, so, odds are doing the conversion with their official Saab parts should be relatively easy.

PS- The fact that you use more E85 than gasoline does not have anything to do with it's energy content, it has to do with the fact that alcohol's stoich is much richer. The direct injection fuel injectors are actually certified to work with more types of fuel than standard injectors, so I seriously doubt they'd be an issue. I do however, worry about the high pressure pump, and even the in-tank pickup pump for that matter. Not short term, but in 100k miles...

The reason the The stoichimetric of E-85 is ~9.87:1 vs gasoline 14.7:1 is because it takes at least 20% more E85 to carry out the combustion process. Hence 20% less energy per the same volume.

[PimpLay2]

som1 try it and show data

[El_diablos_SS/TC]

Do 50% 87 and 50% E85

But to be safe I usally put 70% 92 octane and 30% E85. But like said there is no reason to run E85 because your not going to run 25# boost all the time. I push my my Buick T-Type to 26# boost with no knock but I only drive that once or twice a week. Plus with out a tune to keep it at that certain pounds of boost its use less. Just stay with the 91+ stuff and be happy.

[car_guy_09]

New cars are built to handle e85, All you need is a tune. Do some reasearch,
/Thread

[TrevMo]

Originally Posted by car_guy_09

New cars are built to handle e85, All you need is a tune. Do some reasearch,
/Thread

New cars that are E85 compatible...for instance...my Uncle's 6 year old Suburban can take E85...but it says so in the manual...

Not every car can take E85...

[SS4EVER]

Originally Posted by TrevMo

Not every car can take E85...

Yeah definitely not.

And yeah it is true with the Saab 2.0T engine. I don't know about over here in the state's but I remember b4 E85% started becoming popular, like back in 05 when they were articles in the news about Saab doing testing with E85 I started being a proponent of it since around then. Although I still don't have an e85 compatible vehicle because I don't think GM has any of their engines compatible in any of their sport coupes in their whole line-up yet...

[blackbird]

Originally Posted by shabodah

The 2.0L Turbo Saabs in EVERY OTHER COUNTRY are Flexfuel capable. I seriously doubt GM wants to do R&R on too many versions of basically the same fuel system, so, odds are doing the conversion with their official Saab parts should be relatively easy.

It's not that easy because the Saab's are still using a port fuel injection setup that is completely different from our Bosch source direct injection setup.

Originally Posted by shabodah

PS- The fact that you use more E85 than gasoline does not have anything to do with it's energy content, it has to do with the fact that alcohol's stoich is much richer. The direct injection fuel injectors are actually certified to work with more types of fuel than standard injectors, so I seriously doubt they'd be an issue. I do however, worry about the high pressure pump, and even the in-tank pickup pump for that matter. Not short term, but in 100k miles...

The stoichiometric point of fuel (simply referred to as "stoich") is a simply the ratio of fuel to air where optimal combustion occurs, meaning that you have exactly the right amount of fuel to burn all of the oxygen in the air (which is great for emissions but for optimal safe power you usually run slightly richer than this under high load). The stoich of pure gasoline is 14.7:1 meaning you require 14.7 pounds of air to completely burn 1 pound of gas. For pure ethanol it is ~9:1 and E85 (15% gasoline/85% ethanol) is around 9.7:1. The more air you can burn the more power you can make, so as you can see pure gasoline can burn more air than E85.

The reason for this is that the energy content of the fuels are inherently different. For every gallon of gasoline it contains approximately 115,000 Btu of energy while a gallon of ethanol only contains 75,700 Btu of energy. That means a gallon of ethanol only has ~65% of the energy content of gasoline which is why you have to burn more of it to produce the same power.

Here are some of the energy figures and this article is an interesting read on a university that did a conversion on an older Chevy Silverado. It covers a lot things including material compatibility, emissions, and performance testing data. There's a lot of other SAE and tech papers available on the subject.

Originally Posted by car_guy_09

New cars are built to handle e85, All you need is a tune. Do some reasearch,
/Thread

While some new cars are built to be flex fuel/E85 compatible not all cars are built to those specifications. There's a lot of changes that may be need to not only the fuel system but also emission system changes for a flex fuel car. Ethanol isn't nearly as harsh on materials/components in modern fueling systems compared to other alcohols like methanol, and most of the fuel system components in the Cobalt shouldn't have a problem with occasional ethanol use, but the key word there is "most". There may very well be components that are not compatible and GM specifically states not to run over 10% ethanol in the LNF cars. That could be because of emission reasons, drivability reasons, potential engine damage issues, of fuel system component compatibility reasons. You're more than welcome to try it on your car but I'm not so comfortable about testing it on mine. Even if the car did run fine we don't know the long-term impact and I don't want to be the guinea pig at this time.

[shabodah]

Originally Posted by blackbird

It's not that easy because the Saab's are still using a port fuel injection setup that is completely different from our Bosch source direct injection setup.

The stoichiometric point of fuel (simply referred to as "stoich") is a simply the ratio of fuel to air where optimal combustion occurs, meaning that you have exactly the right amount of fuel to burn all of the oxygen in the air (which is great for emissions but for optimal safe power you usually run slightly richer than this under high load). The stoich of pure gasoline is 14.7:1 meaning you require 14.7 pounds of air to completely burn 1 pound of gas. For pure ethanol it is ~9:1 and E85 (15% gasoline/85% ethanol) is around 9.7:1. The more air you can burn the more power you can make, so as you can see pure gasoline can burn more air than E85.

The reason for this is that the energy content of the fuels are inherently different. For every gallon of gasoline it contains approximately 115,000 Btu of energy while a gallon of ethanol only contains 75,700 Btu of energy. That means a gallon of ethanol only has ~65% of the energy content of gasoline which is why you have to burn more of it to produce the same power.

I give up on trying to explain anything on here anymore. It's big waste of my time.

My point is that you can make equal power with a 35% smaller motor (1.3L) on e85 as on a 2.0L engine on gasoline, using the same volume of fuel on both. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to grasp. /shab's input.

[Razz2o4]

What most people dont realize is the fact that if we could run Comp ratios closer to 11:1 or even 12:1 we could actually do VERY well with E85 fuels. The only thing different I remember from my Ride and Drive event when E85 was coming out in the new trucks, was the fuel lines are different Eveything else is the same, but I'm not saying change your fuel lines and your set, its been a few years.

[Maven]

Originally Posted by shabodah

I give up on trying to explain anything on here anymore. It's big waste of my time.

My point is that you can make equal power with a 35% smaller motor (1.3L) on e85 as on a 2.0L engine on gasoline, using the same volume of fuel on both. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to grasp. /shab's input.

What youre missing is that all of these figures and ratios that you are using cant be used the way youre using them.


Not to mention that youve got your ratios backwards. How could you possibly figure that the fuel with lower energy content could power a smaller engine to make the same amount of power as a larger engine with a higher BTU fuel?

If your theory was correct that would mean that a 2.0L gasoline engine would make the same power as a 2.0L diesel engine and use less fuel , and thats not the case.

Your also not taking into account that for a 1.3L engine to make the same power as a 2.0L its going to have to operate at higher rpms and higher functioning pressures, higher pressures requires more air, more air requires more fuel. SO the smaller engine, running a less powerful fuel would actually have a significantly higher BSFC(brake specific fuel consumption) that is the amount of fuel it has to burn to create x amount of power.


Regardless of the octane of the two fuels, gasoline has more power per gallon than ethanol and ethanol blends. You simply CANT make more power with the same volume, its not physically possible.

[The Sunburst Kid]

By no means am i an expert, nor do i know what GM intends for their engines, but i know a whole lot of 4G63 cars that are currently running E-85. All that had to be done was a different tune. And we are talking about an engine that has been around for the better part of 2 decades. I would think that if a 20 year old engine can be tuned to run E-85, then the newer engines would be the same. I dunno....just my 2 cents.

[shabodah]

Originally Posted by Maven

Not to mention that youve got your ratios backwards. How could you possibly figure that the fuel with lower energy content could power a smaller engine to make the same amount of power as a larger engine with a higher BTU fuel?

Regardless of the octane of the two fuels, gasoline has more power per gallon than ethanol and ethanol blends. You simply CANT make more power with the same volume, its not physically possible.

The amount of BTUs in a fuel is a great theory to use for how much power you can make. Unfortunately, There is no known means of getting 100% (or even close) of the energy out of a fuel when converting into mechanical energy. So, in practise, the conversion (efficiency) percentage ends up being MORE important than how many total BTUs are theoretical possible.