E-85 And Forced Induction

[craig phillips]

Has any one out there converted a supercharged or turbo to e-85 to take advantage of it's 105 octane?

[Schmids5.3l]

I've seen one turbo'd Silverado on the forums who ran E85 for testing and fun. I don't remember if he got on the dyno or not. There's no real process to converting to E85 if your vehicle was made in the 90's or newer, plenty of people run E85 in non flex fuel vehicles. People seem to get Ethanol and Methanol mixed up and bring up the "It's corrosive to the fuel system" argument. I ran a few tanks in the old ladies 97 Camry in the past, so far so good.

 

Extra octane points obviously brings to play more compression, timing, psi, etc, but from what I've put together you would have to do some extensive tuning in anything high performance or forced induction. This is due to Altitude, and weather, but mostly Winter and Summer, if you have a cold winter. Since a E85 engine is supposedly hard to start in cold climates, I believe they sell an E70 mix for winter, kind of the same idea of winter blend gasoline. That would require additional tuning so you don't go max boost on 70% Ethanol mix instead of the tuned 85% Ethanol mix.

 

IMO if your looking for some higher octane for PSI, just buy a meth injection kit.