Hi gentlemen,
Hope all had a great holiday… I was asked to comment on this thread.
E85 is 85% Ethanol… not methanol. E10 is 10% Ethanol. I believe everyone here knows that, but I wanted to clarify since I saw that methanol was listed in a post in the thread.
It is a good thing that the subsidies are ending... it's retarded to produce a fuel that cost more to produce then it sells for. The good news is that sugar cane produced ethanol takes about 7 times less energy consumption to produce ethanol than corn does. Perhaps this is where they are trying to steer it?
MTBE is an oxygenator that used to be in pump gasoline fuels. Now it is mostly used in race gasoline fuels. The EPA starting finding it in our ground water; this required a replacement oxygenator to be found. Enter Ethanol. It increases the oxygen content of the fuel for emissions. It is far safer for the environment than MTBE. It is more corrosive as everyone has mentioned, though far less corrosive than methanol. Pump E85 has additives that help reduce its corrosion effects.
As stated, the GT fuel tank is not compatible with higher percentages of Ethanol... this said, I don't believe there is a huge issue with pump gasoline with E10 mixes. Are you better off with E0 gasoline for your Ford GT?… sure, but that’s not practical for most of us. I have spoken several times with the lead engineer that oversaw the design of the Ford GT fuel tank... this began when we started designing the mechanical fuel system for the Ford GTs. I had to make sure I knew and understood all that was going on inside the stock tank. The tank itself is compatible, the stainless rib structure inside is, however, some of the vent valves and filler neck float valves are not. Ethanol compatibility was not specified as criteria by Ford when the fuel tank company designed and produced the tanks for the GT.
That said, we are on the tail end of producing a replacement tank for the Ford GT that is 100% compatible with ethanol, methanol, or pump gasoline. It increases the fuel capacity by over 5gal. We laser scanned the stock tank and the fuel tank tunnel in the car. Then CAD designed the tank from this information. It was designed to work with multi-fuel in conjunction with our flex fuel sensor that integrates with a MoTeC system... essentially making the GT a true Flex-Fuel vehicle. Its primary goal was to work with our mechanical fuel system like what is on Mark's GT but doesn't have to be tied to a mechanical pump. Its first integration will be with a customer's GT in Houston and will be completed sometime in the next month to month and a half.
The customer's desire and goal was to be able to run straight 100% methanol on the street. He has a 20k sqft private shop with a large car collection and a private crew that takes care of his vehicles... making M100 somewhat feasible. He calls, they prep the car, fuel it up, he arrives and drives off... brings it back, they clean it up, and store it away. 100% methanol limits your range as you can't fill up anywhere. If he switches the tune in the car to the Ethanol tune, then he can start at E100 at the shop and then if he starts to run low he can fill up at any gas station whether it's E85 or E10 or any mix in-between... the Ethanol sensor will pick up % of E in the fuel, feed it to the MoTeC, the MoTeC will make the changes to the tune on the fly and away he goes. For most customers, with regard to methanol, the new tank will allow them to run any mix of E on the street and then run 100% methanol at the track. Ethanol and Methanol do not readily mix.
We've had a similar customer that we did a street TT Ferrari F50 for… we installed an underground tank and a filling station in his garage for E100. Works great… the Flex Fuel sensor technology today improves on this for those interested in performance.
Placing "Targets" on the GT tunnel
Laser Scanning the GT tunnel
Laser Scanning the Stock GT Tank
Here is the tank with the laser scan tunnel and other car components around it.
Another view
Stock tank and new tank merged for ccomparison
New Tank
For those with any vehicle switching to E85, Be aware that high percentage ethanol or methanol fuels require a different oil to prevent oil sludge. The SAE oil specifications can be found online. Oil temperature is also important as this promotes "boiling off" any fuel contamination in the oil.
All in all, Ethanol is a better performance fuel than gasoline and Methanol is even better. Does fuel economy suffer? Yes. As many stated, E100 is a 60%+ increase in consumption under power and M100 can be 100%+ increase in consumption under power on boosted engines. Lower percentages of E will obviously have less consumption increase. Most do not run alch fuels rich enough under power… the increased oxygen content widens the “tuning window” allowing the engine to be run significantly richer without inducing rich misfire. Remember, the performance increase is from the oxygen increase and the cooling effects… richer fuel mixtures increases oxygen and more cooling allowing other things that produce power to be increased… like compression, boost, timing, etc. Capabilities of fuels for performance applications in order are Methanol, Ethanol, Race Gasoline, Pump Gasoline.
Can an E85 car be run leaner than a factory tune to recover some of this loss in fuel millage do to consumption increase? Sure, but understand that emissions is the leading target in factory tunes. Leaning out a mixture will almost always increase NOX. Don’t care about emissions?... then you’re fine. However, don't underestimate the ability of the major manufactures, especially Ford... they have some of the best research labs, calibrators, and calibration strategies in the industry. Their tunes are built with high precision for their goal at hand. This is why their tunes are the way they are; they won’t leave increased economy “on the table”. If a tune modification results in an increase in fuel economy, but leads to an emission failure, they won’t do it. This is why there might be room for our definition of “improvement” over a factory tune… It’s nice that those of us with other goals in mind are able to modify the tunes for different results. On this note: Increasing the fuel economy for ethanol, by leaning target lambda values out, to increase public demand of E is a moot point. The major manufactures can’t do it due to emissions with current technology.
If you are looking for performance though you cannot beat alcohol based fuels... they are heavily oxygenated which supports producing power and also have high vaporization characteristics that promote cooling which moves the detonation threshold higher. For example: A car on methanol will typically run 20 degrees cooler than one on gasoline. My methanol race engines that run 14:1 compression and 50+ psi boost, produce 800F exhaust temps. A gaoline mixture in these einges would probably produce over 1600F exhaust temps. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that engines have a thermal limit... reach that temperature limit and they start to come apart from either detonation or metal transfer. It's all about controlling temperatures. On this note: The reason methanol and nitro drag vehicles don't run water is because engine failures, of water cooled engines, typically lead to putting water down on the track and possibly under the tires. It's a safety issue. It is not because it is better to run without water or that methanol or nitro cool the motor equally as well as having "wet" engines. The engines would produce higher hp numbers with better cooling.
I know it’s a long post… and that the new tank is somewhat off subject of the first post, though it pertains to the fuel at hand and GT compatibility. Hopefully you guys find my post interesting and that it positively adds to the thread.
Cheers
