Im seriously considering converting my 350 to ethanol, as a gas station in my town just started carrying it. Ive ran a few gallons of 30% and 50% in my 1993 chevy c1500, a few times and it runs no differently. I know you can build a pretty good engine around it as the e85 is 104 octane. i was just wondering how hard it would be to swap an engine to it, ive done some research and it seems to me that any car that was built after 88 will not have problems with the ethanol eating the fuel lines, and i have read that it takes roughly 40% more fuel than gasoline, so the fuel millage will suffer unless you have a recalibrated chip. With e85 at 2.30$ a gallon i would really like to build a high compression dd around this fuel.

 

nobody wants to share thier opinions?

 

That's not something you see often. prolly not a lot of experience with it here.

 

but i cant be the first guy thats wanted to do it on here , there has to be somebody that has some advice about it.

 

I did it, after swapping to carb. There is a lot of info in the carb forum about it. I love it so far. Have to watch out for the winter/summer blend changes. But otherwise I'm having good luck with it. Even improved my et alittle. Running it with the computer setup will take a bit of work as does the carb. But quick fuel has some nice e85 parts to swap a regular holley over. Or buy an e85 specific carb. I'm still using my demon with some self mods to make it work pretty well.

 

for just this srping and maybe summer i was going to try to burn a chip and use some bigger injectors and try to run it on efi without the power loss. Next winter though i was thinking about building up a 350, or maybe even carbing an ls1 and throwing it in there. I have 3 diffrent holley carbs i can run , a 850 with vacum secondaries and then a 950 and 1050 double pumper.

 

FWIW, they made injectors for use with ethanol for TBI. They where used in south america. Dont know how easy they are to obtain. But, for a 350, some 80 PPH or so injectors will suffice. The chip tuning will essentially be the same as what you would do when running on gas, except that the fuel dynamics with E85 will be different, as will the AFR. This will effect the AE and such. The fuel lines should also be changed. I wouldnt trust any sort of metal based line. Better off running some good SS or aftermarket fuel lines. Same with the tank and pump. Keep in mind that the stock fuel pumps are completely open and the internal armature and commutator are submerged in gas to keep them cool. E85/ethanol will attack the fuel pump internally and destroy it over time.

You also wont want to run it in the winter, as it does not vaporize nearly as easliy as gas does. If you have MPFI, then it would probably be better as the fuel is being injected directly into the cylinder intake ports, but with a carb or TBI, it will not run well when cold, and will require a good deal more fuel, possibly more than can be delivered.

As for the energy content, vis a vis your fuel economy will decrease as ethanol does not have as much energy in it as gas. Dont confuse this with increased ammount of fuel needed for E85. The richer AFR is due to the fact that ethanol is self oxygenating, so you need more fuel to compensate for the oxygen generated when the ethanol breaks down during combustion. This wont translate to a proportional loss in fuel economy. You can partially (or possibly completely) overcome the lower fuel economy by increasing the compression ratio. As it has a higher octane rating, you can increase the engines thermal efficiency by raising the CR. Also running some fast burn heads will help, too, as they require less SA than standard heads. Both of those will increase the efficiency, and will go a long way to reducing fuel consumption and increasing performance.

One final thing thats worth saying is that if you do this, you will need to consistantly run the engine on E85. Dont consider switching back and fourth, because E85 and standard gas are quite different. The newer flexfuel cars use sensors in the gas tank that allow them to determine the % of ethanol present, which allows the fuel air ratio to be corrected and such for the ethanol content. This way you can choose either E85, or the standard E10 at the pump.