200 ci inline six on E85

[rbohm]

Are current gaskets and O-ring materials in a carb application able to handle the E85 fuel without a problem like swelling , leakage, drying out?

8) you need materials designed tp work with alcohol, including a steel needle and seat, and a brass float. no rubber in the system unless it is designed for alcohol use.

 

[primal1]

is there a way to build a 12 to 1 200 that will not detonate and last long.

 

[primal1]

also, when saying e85 needs 12 to 1 ratio. is that dynamic or static compression

 

[spartman]

Far as I understand that would be static.

 

[AZstang66]

Are current gaskets and O-ring materials in a carb application able to handle the E85 fuel without a problem like swelling , leakage, drying out?

I made the mistake back when I was younger of putting 110 octane AvGas into my Mustang.
It ran like you wouldn't believe, but about a month later every rubber part inside of the carburettor had practically dissolved.

 

[addo]

I can't see why either issue would occur! There is another root cause, I'm sure.

Can you imagine if it irregularly did that to aircraft?

 

[AZstang66]

I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it's the percentage of rubber in the seals. The AvGas evapourates a lot quicker than regular gasoline and doesn't have near as much lubricants in the fuel.
Another thing may be differences bewteen US and Aussie parts.
I know in Australia, the petrol is red and evapourates nearly instantly, where as in the US it is golden coloured and can take several days to evapourate. AvGas is similar to the higher quality Aussie fuel (blue though).
Don't quote me though, I don't know for sure. This is just speculation

I do know however (my Dad used to be an Aircraft ME) that aircraft engines and components don't experience accelerated deterioration from AvGas.

 

[primal1]

how much would a 250 hex head need to be milled to to achieve 12 to 1. a flat top piston, zero decked block, .030 overbore, a 46 cc combustion chamber, and using a .050 thick gasket only gets me a 11 to 1. the head originally has around a 60 cc combustion chamber. i'm guessing i need to get my combustion chamber to 40 cc. is this possible?

 

[Patrick66]

you stole my idea, only i was gonna use a turbo and run lots of boost.

 

[Hot 6t Falcon]

Primal and et al

I've been looking at e-85 for power for a while.

First, your 250 with .030 overbore, .005 deck clearance, and flat-top pistons 54 cc combustion chambers equals a 12 to 1 compression.

If you do a 46 cc chamber you'll get 13.1 to 1

I am using my web compression calculator at
http://falconperformance.sundog.net/compcalculator.asp
Try it out

North Dakota and Minnesota use 10% to 15% for ethanol/gas mixture. It is hard to find just gasoline. E-85 is plentyful. My '60 Ranchero has used it for 8 years. The only really irritating problem has been MELTING the paint around the gas filler neck. I had rebuilt the carb. I have not had ANY problems with the fuel pump. I had my gas tank cleaned when I built the car (Iit had been flooded to the inside rear view mirror in the great flood of '96) I still have to change the fuel filter each spring. I'm at about a 9.3 compression.

As previously stated by others, you'll need to run 20% to 30% richer.

You'll need to rebuild the carb with a kit capable of withstanding e-85.

The more compression, the merrier. BUT you can't easily lower the compression. Premium gas with 105 octance booster would get you home if you couldn't find an e-85 pump.

Good Luck

 

[LaGrasta]

Hot Rod (IIRC) did an article on how to switch to E85. it was really simple

And really impressive, more power for less money. After the initial set-up, it's like your car is running on racing fuel for a per gallon price less than regular.

 

[primal1]

Primal and et al

I've been looking at e-85 for power for a while.

First, your 250 with .030 overbore, .005 deck clearance, and flat-top pistons 54 cc combustion chambers equals a 12 to 1 compression.

If you do a 46 cc chamber you'll get 13.1 to 1

I am using my web compression calculator at
http://falconperformance.sundog.net/compcalculator.asp
Try it out

North Dakota and Minnesota use 10% to 15% for ethanol/gas mixture. It is hard to find just gasoline. E-85 is plentyful. My '60 Ranchero has used it for 8 years. The only really irritating problem has been MELTING the paint around the gas filler neck. I had rebuilt the carb. I have not had ANY problems with the fuel pump. I had my gas tank cleaned when I built the car (Iit had been flooded to the inside rear view mirror in the great flood of '96) I still have to change the fuel filter each spring. I'm at about a 9.3 compression.

As previously stated by others, you'll need to run 20% to 30% richer.

You'll need to rebuild the carb with a kit capable of withstanding e-85.

The more compression, the merrier. BUT you can't easily lower the compression. Premium gas with 105 octance booster would get you home if you couldn't find an e-85 pump.

Good Luck

i was only going to build a 200 with a 250 head

 

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

It would be an interesting project to engineer a flex fuel vehicle that would switch between E-85 and propane. As I understand it, they would both run well with similar compression ratios.
Also, an edelbrock carb would get rid of most of the gasketing and mixture issues as there are no gaskets below the top of the float bowl and they use metering rods that could allow you to experiment with the high speed mixture pretty easily.
I once put a tank of E-85 in a Dodge I had (225ci six). I was driving on the highway, and got the thing running ok at about 60 by adjusting the mixture so rich that it would barely idle. I could get a few extra mph out of her by pumping the gas to get the accelerator pump to thicken up the mixture a little more. It ran though, and even though it was running lean the whole time the engine ran as well as it ever did when I got it back on pump gas and re-set the mixture. I never did get MPG data out of the experiment because I changed variables too much during the experiment. It seemed like it took forever to get that stuff out of my tank as it held my speed down to 60, or about 62 if I pulsed the gas pedal constantly, but I am sure that the mileage would have been terrible if I would have actually calculated it...

 

[ludwig]

Alfred Lord Tenniscourt

Don't want to hijack the thread, but I saw you name on a list of spambots we were talking about a few days ago. It stuck out as being much more clever than the rest. I'm really glad to see that it wasn't wasted on a mass electronic fiction.

Now back to the topic at hand.

----> So E85 is 85% ethanol? So why is E90 90% gasoline?

 

[BaldvinE]

Yeah, this is what's confusing me, as well

E90 would be better described as E10 and E85 as E15, as far as I can see ...

And all this crap is really doing is raise the price of grain and bread while doing nothing to lower fuel prices ... woohoo :roll:

 

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

This is kind of interesting. this is the chemical reaction for combusting ethanol with O2:
C2H6O + 3O2 → 2CO2 + 3H2O

Here is propane:
C3H8 + 5O2 → 3CO2 + 4H2O

Gasoline is too variable to even nail down with a chemical composition. It just occured to me that oil companies can control demand for their product in some subtle ways by changing the blend and therefore the efficiency of their product. I doubt that they do, because the people who control pricing are probalbly not even aware of this, but it certainly could happen in theory.
That, however, is not the point of this thread. I have heard a lot of talk about fuel lines needing to be stainless, and similar things. I have also heard that you had better be damn careful with an electric fuel pump because ethanol conducts electricity much better than gasoline.

 

[primal1]

where is a good place to get a e85 compliant carb rebuild kit. i still am picking the parts out, watching ebay, and sales so i have not picked wich carb. i at least want to get rid of the load a matic dizzy. i'm leaning towards the 3x1 offy setup.

 

[Alfred Lord Tenniscourt]

I don't know enough about it to give you the name of a brand or specific kit that will work well, but I can tell you that any stuff for alchohol powered dragsters will work as the active ingredient is the same. I know you can find a lot of alchohol fuel stuff on the Summit website, and you could froogle the brands to find some sites that have more of it...