E85 is usually used in engines modified to accept higher concentrations of ethanol. Such flexible-fuel engines are designed to run on any mixture of gasoline or ethanol with up to 85% ethanol by volume. The primary differences from non-FFVs is the elimination of bare magnesium, aluminum, and rubber parts in the fuel system, the use of fuel pumps capable of operating with electrically conductive (ethanol) instead of non-conducting dielectric (gasoline) fuel, specially-coated wear-resistant engine parts, fuel injection control systems having a wider range of pulse widths (for injecting approximately 60% more fuel), the selection of stainless steel fuel lines (sometimes lined with plastic), the selection of stainless steel fuel tanks in place of terne fuel tanks, and, in some cases, the use of acid-neutralizing motor oil. For vehicles with fuel-tank mounted fuel pumps, additional differences to prevent arcing, as well as flame arrestors positioned in the tank's fill pipe, are also sometimes used.[citations needed]-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E85

 

there is a lot of information on the web about how e 85 will effect your vehicles if you want to look it up. i read some rubbers are okay some arnt i don’t know which is which. E 85 just doesnt melt plastic or rubber it causes it to become brittle and break so you could get away with it for a while and not have a problem. i also read that e85 will cause buildup of stuff left from running gas to dissolve and go into your engine. i would do my homework on this man i would do it just because a bunch of people say they know someone that has. just be safe and be smart man.

there are a couple of places that tell you what you need to do to covert cars to run e85 just to give u an idea whats involved

 

I see alot of people saying that, but I see more people running it in their stock fuel systems with no problems also. What is said in that article I think only applys to certain vehicles but also I don't think its so much that it can't be used in a stock fuel system, but maybe it will not hold up as long in a stock fuel system. Also, it shouldnt really be to hard to replace a few hoses and gaskets anyway.

I was thinking about this more today and unless you have some type of standalone EMS that allowed you to load new fuel mapsyou would not be able to run regular anymore. This could work if you installed an appropriately sized injector with the proper fuel pressure, however even with a power commander your bike would not start with regular gas because it would be way too rich when starting before the PC made any changes.

 

oh one other thing this i dont know if its true or not. but i have heard people say you dont get as good of gas mileage.

By the way not to insult any one or any thing but if you read on the net that you will see that there is a problem with plastics and rubbers and some metals. I think it is stupid to just dismiss that. I mean if im wrong and he replaces the parts or has them checked out and there okay to use no big deal. If im wrong and he doesn’t check and listen to you guys say he is set to go no big deal. If he listens to you guys and your wrong though and something does break or developed a small crack and sprays gas on the engine or exhaust and the bike catches on fire and he gets hurt or even worse killed wouldn’t be a good thing just something to think about.

its always better to error on the side of cuation. and i dont care if you guys think im a jacka** i just dont want to see any one get hurt.

hey man and for the ecu problem i would look into seeing how they do it with the cars. you also might be able to pick up a second ecu and just swap them out for the diffrent fuels



And no offence 01f4i guy if I told you I know some one who runs there camaro on Yukon jack would you go dump it in your bike?

 

Thanks for your concern for others on the forum. I hope anyone that actually goes through with this will research every aspect of it before actually implementing it. And yes it is true you won't get near as good of gas milage because it requires more ethanol per air particle for stoich combustion.

I have only delt with honda carecus so I'm not very familar with the generic tuning options and how they work, Megasquirt might be able to control it, FASTI think is another one? It would be cool to develop something like we use in the regular honda car ecus like Hondata, Uberdata, Crome, Neptune because you only change what needs to be changed which makes things more simple. Anyone with any experience in generic stand alone systems like Megasquirt and others? do they have options like cold fuel enrich? and are they able to accept any map sensor? We need something that we can input a customvoltage/throttle positioncorrelation

 

No, Id research it first!

I hope that anyone thats considering modifying their bike, in any major way like this, would do their own research first, and not just rely on what people say in forums!

And yes you will definelty get a noticeable decrease in mpg on e85, because it contains less energy per unit volume than gasoline does. So you will need to burn more.

But on the other hand you could tune it to run alot more timing, and alot leaner since E85 resists combustion more than gasoline does. (105 octane) And hopefully make more power. (I havent done this, so I cant say for sure if you'll get an increase in pwer or not)

And yes, it is possible that some of the lines wont hold up to the ethanols corrosive behavior. But you can easily test this by buying a gallon of E85, putting it in a bucket, and then placing all the components of the fuel system that you are worried about into the E85 and let it sit for some time and then inspect them all and see if they are still able to do their job.

If I find a way to tune the bike, and get fuel pump and injectors, for a reasonable price ill test everything. Since it doesnt sound like the PC can handle this task, it doesnt sound like it would be worth it.


I would love to see a bike run on E85, but it doesnt sound very plausible unless you feel like building a megasquirt.


Thanks guys!

-Charlie

 

it aint worth it. the computer is set up to make use of low octane ratings not the 105 e85 can be. also the fuel tanks are prone to more heat and dont have evap systems like the car does. thus making it evaporate quicker... the aluminum also has to be treated.