Well I've heard the naysayers and the doom and gloomers talk about all the bad aspects of running E-85. I've had people tell me it will corrode aluminum, ruin rubber fuel lines, eat plastic, eat carburetors alive.
After hearing all these predictions I decided to put it to the test. Last Sept. I drove my truck down to Interstate Dragways to see Don1 and JericoGTX. After I got home that night I parked the truck in the garage. That was the last time it was started or run until tonite. It had a 3/4 full tank of E-85 in it. I shut the electric fuel pump off and let the engine run until it died. The rear float bowl was almost full, I didn't touch anything, I didn't even open the hood until tonite.
I went out to the garage tonite, opened the hood, pulled the aircleaner. As I always do after sitting all winter, I started the fuel pump and let the carb fill and made sure the floats weren't stuck before hitting the key. I checked the accelerator pumps and found the rear one wasn't pushing fuel out the squirters. I pulled the rear bowl and metering block off along with the rear squirter. Everything looked as good as the day I screwed it together last summer. The needle under the squirter was stuck and a shot of carb cleaner in a can fixed that. I put everything back together let the carb fill and hit the key. The engine started instantly and ran as sharp as it did the last time I drove it in Sept.
The plastic fuel cell, 3/8" aluminum fuel line, no name electric fuel pump, rubber fuel line, inline fuel filter, and carb look and work as good as they did in Sept.
So much for the naysayers and the rest that said it wouldn't work. The only down side I can see is that the 105-110 octane E-85 is now only $.30 under 89.5 octane regular at my local station.Dave

Just out of curiosity, what kind of mileage are you getting? Better, worse or same.

Dave, nice to hear it is working for you. It is great to read storys about others that think outside the box a bit, and can engineer something to success. Good job! What power differance have you seen and how much compression do you run? I would think a motor built with optimum compression for E85 would reduce the loss of mileage some?

Greg; I'm running 11.2-1, I'd like to have had 12.5-13-1. The motor was junk off the garage floor and I didn't want to spend any money on it. 11.2-1 was as much as I safey dared squeeze it without having valves poking holes in the pistons.
As far as mileage goes, the last time I drove it going to the strip I was bucking a 25 mph headwind on the way down there. My mileage was 9.5 mpg, 1 mpg less than the last time I checked it on gasoline. I think it is probably as good or better than when the motor was on gasoline. I do believe most of the mileage issue can be made up by bumping the compression up as high as possible. Another point, I'm running it quite a bit on the rich side, for max power, I could lean the mixture down about 7%.
I haven't run it at the strip on E-85 but it feels as strong, or stronger on E-85 than it did on gasoline. Here's an example;
Last fall my brother and a buddy of his stopped by one Sunday. I was tuning on the carb. They decided I should take them for a ride. So the 3 of us piled into the truck, (650lbs.) I had the street tires and full exhaust on and the caltracks. We went east on a good hooking new asphalt road. I stood on it at 40-45mph. The rearend started to come around on me, we were at a 45 degree angle before it finally hooked up again. On gasoline it never did that before at least not at 80 degree temps.Dave

Sounds like fun to me !!

That 15% gasoline is enough to prevent the white chalk and the drying out of rubber and plastics that 100% alcohol does. You also have to remember our cousins in south central and south america have been running straight alcohol for years.

That's good news.
I need to learn more about the differences between methanol (race alcohol) and ethanol (drinking alcohol) used in E-85. Did you have to richen the carb jets when converting from straight gasoline?

Maybe this will be the bracket racing fuel of choice in the future?

Dave has spent a lot of time working oon this truck and getting the thing set up to run on the E85. I think that most of the horror stories on parts deterioration from the use of alcohol blended gasolines comes from back when they were first introduced in the 70'ss when vehicle components were not yet compatable with alcohol. Garentee yo that if you put a blended gas or E85 in an older steel gas tank you will have big time problems. It will clean out eery bit of rust and crap in teh system. And that is just what happened back them before plastic tanks were the normal thing.
Dave are you fighting water or are you high and dry?

Don; I'm high and dry but it's a headache getting to work as the shop is on the wrong side of the river. I'm hoping I'll be able to get across by Sunday or Monday.
Don, how are you doing? Are you getting over the pneumonia?
Jim; You have to richen EVERY curcuit by 27-35%. I went 35% to keep it safe. I think E-85 would make a wonderful replacement for race gas. You can keep your compression, it runs cooler, and it's CHEAP. Did I mention it's CHEAP? When is the last time you bought 110 octane gas for $2.00? When is the last time you could go down to the corner gas station and buy 110 octane fuel cheaper than regular? Dave

I plan on running E85 in my nearly done 493. I am going to buy a Proform 950 to modify because it is the cheapest carb of that size and some mods would be nonreversable. I should have the motor running in a couple weeks.E85 is $2.29 here.

Before you start hacking on your holley, take a look at the June 2006 Mopar muscle mag page 74. Quick Fuel Technology offers billet metering blocks with screw in idle feed restrictions,and changeable power valve channel restrictions. Both of which you will have to alter to run E-85. Dave

Dave; I would sure think so, I'd bet that lil' blown hemi would really like the stuff . Is it get'n warm down there yet? It was 76 degrees here yesterday. Dave

One thing to remember, all the bad juju is taken from those running methanol. It is NOT the same as ethanol which is far less corrosive.

So once you get a car to run on E-85 does it take major changes to run gasoline?

I'm interested in the stuff, but so far around here the prices are higher than premium gas.

here's a site that has a station-finder: www.e85fuel.com

Lou S.; The easiest way to switch back to gasoline would be to have a separate carb for gasoline. Just switch carbs and drain the tank of E-85 and fill it with gasoline. Dave

Humm this is interesting. My question is this, what kind of changes should I do to run it in my Coronet? 440 engine 750 edelbrock carb, headers stock everything else engine wise.

Mike

440JIM, the ratio for methonal is 2.2 times that of gasoline, or about double that of ethanol or E85.

MikeyT; I'd say a qualified yes. You could modify a 750 eddy for it but, you will run into problems you wouldn't have with a holley.
First problem, no one makes jets big enough that I'm aware of, you'd have to drill your's. To get your idle curcuit rich enough you'd have to drill the emulsion tubes in your boosters. If you go to far there isn't any going back unless you can solder the hole and redrill.
My 750 AFB #4327S test mule's emulsion tubes started out at .037 I increased them to .040 when I installed a 509 cam on gasoline to get it to idle. With E-85 I'd have to drill them to .043 to get it 35% richer over the .037 baseline. With a long duration cam it would be a bit more. Also you still would have to increase the squirter size and pump shot duration for your accelerator pump curcuit.
I'd do it to my carb if I had a spare 1407 eddy laying around but I hesitate to recomend it to someone else.
As much as I like AFB/AVS/TQ carbs there just aren't as many tuning parts available as there are for holleys.Dave

Thanks Quickd100

Here are the detail specs on my engine

440 engine (9:1)
230/236 degree cam from comp with .491lift
headers
750 Edlebrodck carb
edelbrock performer intake

Is this still too long a throw of a cam to run it? Also what size/style holley would you recomend to run e85?

thank you again for your help.
Mike

First let me stress I'm no carb expert. If it was my motor and was going to run E-85 though i'd increase the compression first thing. You have to remember, E-85 has less BTU's per gallon than gasoline. It's high octane fuel and will like more compression which will offset some of the loss.
The 750 double pumper carb would be tough to beat. Also I would HIGHLY recomend a LM-1 meter, it will speed the tuning process and keep you out of trouble.
IMO E-85 will be becoming more common all around the country in the next couple years. Currently Holley and the other big carb companies haven't done any work with E-85. I think you will see this changing as they get more calls about it.Dave

All of the common alcohols have lower heating values than gasoline components. So does nitromethane for that matter. The power gains come from the fact that you can put more fuel in the cylinder since the A/F ratio is lower.

Fuel Heating Value (BTU/lb higher) Stoich. A/F

Toluene 18,245 13.5
Iso-Octane 20,556 15.1
Methanol 9,770 6.4
Ethanol 12,780 9.0
Nitromethane 5,160 1.7

An approximation to the power potential (my terminology, not from the engineering text books) of the fuel is to divide the heating value by the A/F ratio. I'm a little fuzzy on all this since I took a class in college on internal combustion engines twenty years ago. I think it's pretty close to what is right.

Fuel Heating Value / Stoich. A/F = Power Potential

Toluene 18,245 / 13.5 = 1351
Iso-Octane 20,556 / 15.1 = 1361
Methanol 9,770 / 6.4 = 1527
Ethanol 12,780 / 9.0 = 1420
Nitromethane 5,160 / 1.7 = 3035

I think from this you can see why methanol makes more power than gasoline. And it should really be obvious that nitro will make twice as much power as methanol (assuming you could run 100% nitro).

I don't think the octane rating is as great as you seem to think, but results are results. The difference between the RON and MON octane numbers gives the SENSITIVITY of the fuel to changes in load, speed and temperature.

Fuel RON MON Sensitivity

Toluene 120 109 11
Iso-Octane 100 100 0
Methanol 106 92 14
Ethanol 107 89 18
Nitromethane not rated, but probably close to zero

I know guys that run methanol in their dirt track Shivies and they run less timing than with race gasoline. I think this is due to a relatively low octane rating, particularly the MON numbers which is the more severe test and gives a lower number accordingly for most fuels. I'd watch for signs of detonation closely if it was my engine. But for pump fuel, it's better than the 93 premium.

QuickD100: let me know how the optimum timing is for E85 vs. race gas if you have the data. I'd be interested in your test results.