Ethanol/E85... what would one need to do?

[Thor06]

So I was reading a thread here on 1600cc injectors and I saw the author of the thread was going to be running ethanol. That got me thinking... what would someone need to do to make their car compatible with E85/ethanol? I have thought about it a lot and researched for quite a while one night and found a grand total of nothing. E85 is cheaper (like $1.60 a gallon or something crazy low) and I know that you get way shittier gas milage, I'm not worried about that. The reason I am interested in this, is 1). E85 is 105 octane and I figured I could just run that instead of switching to race gas for race days and I wouldnt have to play with boost/dsmlink settings (still dont know jack about tuning ;)) when going from street to track, and 2). I am going to school for Mechanical Engineering, hopefully to develope cars to run on alternative fuels. Converting my Talon to E85 would kill two birds with one stone, being able to leave my tune alone between track and street, and learning something about alternative fuels and how to convert normal cars. Any input?

[Jed]

Here's a good read:

http://www.engr.unl.edu/~ethanol/unl-sae2.pdf

Seems VERY thorough.

[Super Bleeder!!]

there are like 5 threads on this, we dont need another.

[Kracka]

SEARCH is your friend, buy him a drink and watch all the good info pour out of his drunk lips.

[Thor06]

Of the threads I found only one had any remotely useable information and that was several years old and the guy wasnt exactly sure of what all needed to be done. Obviously some people know about converting if they are running E85/ethanol, but I just didnt find any current info on it. If you have better luck searching please help me out with a link.

I've been around forums a while guys, I did search, I didnt find what I was looking for, so I asked.

EDIT: What I did find... the fuel pump needs to be grounded, rubber that will touch the fuel needs to be switched out with teflon, and it will corrode aluminum. Is there anything else? Will the stock gas tank work ok? Fuel lines? Will I need replace any internals? Any other more current info?

[CVD]

You've pretty much got it. You need everything that moves fuel to be bigger/flow more, and everything that touches fuel to be ethanol resistant. Annnddd we're done.

There are kids doing nothing other than running bigger injectors and having success, so I'm guessing that it isnt rocket science.

[Thor06]

Ok.... so how much bigger would you suggest on the fuel lines? I get really confused about the sizes. Why is the "-" always before the number? Is it like wiring when the smaller the number, the bigger the diameter?

[CVD]

I dont think the fuel rail or lines need to be bigger unless you need to make rediculous power, in which case I would think you would want to run real race gas and not corn juice. If you are worried about the durability of the factory lines just replace them with something that ethanol doesnt corrode.

*edit*
Just for the record I'm sure I dont know anything more about running ethanol than the very basic information that has been posted on Style in the past and here in this thread. I'm just playing captain obvious here. You should really be able to figure this stuff out on your own.
You should figure out how much more E85 you need to run as compared to regular gasoline. Now make it a percentage. Then figure out how much power you want to make and find out what power levels people are having to replace things like fuel rails and lines due to lack of flow. Now work your percentage that we came up with earlier and you should be able to solve all of your E85 related questions. Just remember to replace those lines with ethanol resistant material.

[Thor06]

Alright. I'll look into this a little more, I appreciate the help. If anything, I would be doing this almost just to say I did, but also for the ability to run higher boost all the time. I'm not aiming for huge numbers, this would just be kind of a fun thing for me to do. I probably wont do it for quite a while though, I'd need DSMlink to get a decent tune right? I think I remember reading to aim for 10:1 air/fuel ratio.

[Super Bleeder!!]

get an afc, a wideband 02, and tune for something safe like 0.9 Lambda.