E85 is great for forced induction. Even despite only having a 105 octane rating you will find it hard to get your engine to knock from a lean condition. Ethanol is just a different animal than gasoline. It also takes more ethanol to produce the same energy as gasoline so don't get too caught up in the price difference. For the same reason, you will need more pump and injector on E85 at a given power level.

If you aren't running forced induction don't use it. It's not worth the effort.

If you are going to run a crazy N/A engine, Methanol is the fuel you want.

 

Methanol is more corrosive though...not sure it matters for a car that sees little street time though.

 

Jdub, methanol is very nasty and corrosive stuff. I was thinking of a daily driver, in any temperature, not being used December to March when there is snow and salt on the road. The idea that you need more ethanol is not exactly correct. It is true you need more ethanol if you are running lower compression ( less than 10 or so ). But if you raise static compression past something like 13.5, then things have about evened out. But one cannot do 13.5 to 1 on street gasoline, on E85, it would seem that you can. LSG

 

Wideband gauges use a Lambda value of 1.0 to display 14.7:1 air/fuel ratio. When the Lambda value is 1.0 it shows 14.7:1 regardless of what fuel you're using. At 14.7:1 on the gauge with E85 you are really at 9.9:1. 13.5:1 is a Lambda value of around .920, or about 9:1 on E85. It is true that you can run much closer to a 1.0 Lambda on E85 than gasoline but you're still using a far larger volume of fuel.

I've run E85 in a performance application before. You always start by scaling your injectors by 43% from the gasoline setting and tune the maps from there.

 

I wanted to do something a little different than the normal throttle body set-up. I have not ruled out E-85 but could easily upgrade to a higher compression short block (haven't built it yet). My intake is from Hogan's using a long runner, single forward facing throttle body with a distributor-less coil near plug ignition. I had the intake built to fit under a stock hood on top of a stroked 351W aimed at a broad, flat torque curve. I have not purchased a controller yet but was leaning towards the Holley Dominator ECU for it's capabilities.

 

My God those welds are gorgeous!

 

I'm done with TBI and I'm lazy. I just installed the Edelbrock Pro-Flo 4. Unbelievably better out of the box than the previous FiTech ever was. No official E85 support, but that doesn't seemed to have stopped anybody. And it looks cool, to me anyway.

 

I thought of doing same thing for 5.0 and keep it under stock hood.

What throttle body?
What ignition system?
Can EEC IV ecm be adapted to distributorless?

I am going to run a 102mm single blade (03/04 cobra spec) or adapt a Coyote drive by wire setup (probably what I'll end up running)

As stated, the Holley Dominator ECU to control everything

The cam sensor is basically an Explorer part made to fit a 9.5 block. Since it was a part based on a production piece an ECU that will read it and fire the coils should work.

An 8.2 deck will be much easier to fit under a stock hood. You'll; have tons of room.

 

The green AEM 340 pump should drop right into the Spectra tank, it's E85 compatible.

 

MM,

I'm using a Holley Systemax II intake (had that for years and even used it when I had the old Ford EEC IV setup) with a 75mm Acufab throttle body.

Transmission is a T5-z.

-Shannon