Anybody have any experience of running a boosted engine on Bioethanol? I'm starting a race new engine build in 2007 and might consider this but have no idea what power output this fuel is capable of producing. I need to get into the 400 HP figures...
Anybody?





Power Curve

umm im kinda confused why you are asking here

J bodies dont run bioethanol so how would anyone on this site know?

maybe he is hoping that not everyone on this deals only with j-bodies?

I don't see any reason you couldint use that fuel in an engine in a j--body. you would just need good sized injectors since ethanol requires a significantly richer AFR then gasoline to make good power. same thing even for E85. that fuel is much less prone to knock then gasoline so you could run significantly more boost before having to worry about knock! it also burns cooler. there are quite a few advantages with the exception of gas mileage. this is true for straight corn ethanol and e85. you would of course need a standalone to control your fuel and spark since the tune for that fuel would be so totally different then that for gasoline.



99 Turbo Sunfire GT | Ram 2500 | International Rollback | Mr Hanky the Suburban

there were a few good threads on this a few months ago on www.ls1tech.com

i tried searching for them, but came up empty, or i would directly link you.

navycav3 wrote:umm im kinda confused why you are asking here

J bodies dont run bioethanol so how would anyone on this site know?

I'm kinda confused why you posted that. I think theres more than just jbody owners on this forum. 24,000 plus members im pretty sure we all have dealt with other cars and different setups. I'm thinking that if this guy is gonna run a standalone unit and can tune it on the dyno as long as all the fuel system is upgraded to handle the new fuel along with different oxygen sensors meant for this fuel i don't see why you could not achieve 400 plus hp. You may have to use more fuel to achieve the same power.


*2012 mazdaspeed3*

lol! Maybe the don't but they can!!


I'm building an Ecotec from the oil pan up and will be using a Emerald EMS for engine management. Details HERE

To deliver the extra fuel needed I'm planning an 8 injector setup, 4 for port injection (standard setup) plus an additional 4 injectors in the intake manifold runners. My additional fuel rail is shown HERE This will be attached to the manifold runners once I get the injector pockets installed.

My intake manifold is HERE Anybody any tips on injector placement.

Have to figure injector sizing once I calculated my turbo sizing. The Emerald EMS can manage a second bank of injectors (8 total) allowing me to determine how much fuel is delivered via the port or runner injection. Via it's software you can play with the cutover point, port or runner injector or both. The theory is the manifold injectors will give the best fuel ionization so when the engine is loaded the runner injectors should deliver most of the required fuel while during light loads the port injectors will deliver fuel for economy.

I'm planning to use the GM billet crank and billet con rods. I would like to achieve around 20PSI of boost and may drop the engine displacement to 2.0 (similar to what was done with the Cobalt phase 5 car).

Ethanol I'm told, by the fuel producer, will not have any issue with this setup though there are very few high powered applications out there at the moment.

Hopefully I can do this, if not I will have to default back to gas!!





Power Curve

I don't recommend using an auxilary injector set-up with an ethanol vehicle. You are going to sonsume roughly 30% more fuel so if you were planning on having the stock rail there to keep a good idle, you are SOL. You best bet is to find a set of ford flex vehicle injectors which run CNG. You can get a full set of 1600cc injectors very capable of running alcohol or regular fuel forever.... for under $400. Your best bet is a single set of injectors with a very good tune for any alcohol vehicle under 1000hp, where a single set might no longer be sufficient.
Long term effects might include corrosion inside of your intake head ports and intake manifold but it wont show for years. If fuesl happens to puddle anywhere, you may run into a corrosion issue there but with high boost, that shouldn't be a problem.
Just make sure your fuel and timing tuning are dead on.



Cardomain|Myspace

Thanks Minion. Do you reckon I should stick with the standard fuel rail and port injection setup then (with those large injectors)? No benefit from moving the injectors further away from the combustion chambers? I've heard of one ethanol setup that found an improvement by using 50% pre-compressor injection, giving the fuel longer time to vaporise, but they did have to modify the vanes on a Garrett turbocharger.



Power Curve

In all honesty, I'd stick with a single rail of injectors and maybe another injector before the turbo depending on how big your turbo is, how much boost you are running and your goal HP. Cosworth uses pre-turbo injection on some of their sub 3 liter, 1000+ hp turbo V8 endurance racers. Most of the gain is achieved not by atomization but soley by cooling in the compressor wheel.
A problem you would run into with 50/50 injection would be excessive lag due to the innability to compress a liquid. You may also have unequal power distribution to one cylinder or another unless you spend some time on a wet flow bench (a regular flow bench wont help you) when designing and building your intake manifold.
Pre-compressor injection is a good idea, but I highly recommend tuning without it first, then adding one or two additional injectors after everything is tuned. Keep a close eye on your EGTs from EACH cylinder if you plan on more than a 10/90 split.
You also mentioned modifying the vanes of the turbo. Variable geometry?



Cardomain|Myspace

Hi Minion,

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

I going to build with injector pockets installed for various injector configurations. As you suggest I will run the initial tune with the standard setup and move on from there. Currently my design is giving me the standard 4 port injectors, an additional 4 injectors on the intake runners plus 2 injectors placed before the turbo. Thats 10 in total but my EMS can only handle 8. So, I will need to talk with my engine management system's supplier to see if they can alter their software to handle the 2 pre-turbo injectors. Having the ability to manage all 10 injectors via EMS should give me a very flexible fuel delivery system... though tuning it will be fun!!

VGT (variable geometry) is something I never considered so thanks for getting it up on the radar. Reading a wiki I see the 2006 Porsche 911 Turbos do have a VGT set-up running with good effect but it indicates that outside of the world of diesel this set-up is unusual (in standard production cars anyway). Any race teams using this technology? It does appear to offer part of the solution required for handling turbo-lag.

The vane modifications I've heard about seem to target the specifics of fuel delivery. I need to do a little more research into this as I did think the vanes mods were designed in some way to help with fuel atomization.

- Steve



Power Curve

After a little research it looks like a VGT is going to be too difficult to setup and run... Feel free to set me right if anything below is off the mark!

It looks like there are no off the shelf engine management system available that can run a VGT setup on a gas powered engine. Aside from a few gas installations like the Porsche 911 the technology is primarily in diesel powered vehicles. This fact means that 99% of VGT units available are for diesel engines and these units may not be able to sustain the heat a gas powered engine generates, though I'm thinking of running on ethanol which does run cooler. The theory behind VGT doesn't appear to be complex but to put together a basic controller I'd need some of the theory's logic and maths.....!









Power Curve

Ethanol is also hard on all rubber components like your o rings and so forth. I would have to say in my opinion its biggest down fall is it wear on the motor. It washes the cylinders down and wears you rings out faster. If you were to run it i would recommend adding a top end lube with it. I know you didn't say anything about price but unless you have a hookup for the fuel your going to spend a lot of money on it. Like stated above you more ethanol than gas if i remember correctly it almost double that of gas.


2nd Place is the first loser

Do not inject fuel pre turbo. The fuel will wear down the leading edges of the compressor wheel and greatly reduce the life of your turbo.

Honestly for the effort involed I would just run some 1600cc injectors and call it a day. 400 whp isn't really that much, and 1600cc's should be more then enough. Also depending on the octane rating of the fuel you will be running you might want to raise the compression a touch.

I believe ethanol is 110. Someone correct me if i am wrong.


2nd Place is the first loser

Speedster wrote:After a little research it looks like a VGT is going to be too difficult to setup and run... Feel free to set me right if anything below is off the mark!

It looks like there are no off the shelf engine management system available that can run a VGT setup on a gas powered engine. Aside from a few gas installations like the Porsche 911 the technology is primarily in diesel powered vehicles. This fact means that 99% of VGT units available are for diesel engines and these units may not be able to sustain the heat a gas powered engine generates, though I'm thinking of running on ethanol which does run cooler. The theory behind VGT doesn't appear to be complex but to put together a basic controller I'd need some of the theory's logic and maths.....!

VGT isn't too bad to run. I work on Heavy duty diesels for a living and the only down side is most receive a signal from a VG control module which is seperate from the ECU which opens the VG actuator with compressed air from the air tanks. The new HE series from Holset have VG option and are similar in size to a 20g. The system behind it envolves a lot of factors like gear,speed, and throttle position.

A lot of the VGT turbos used in regular diesels cannot withstand the heat from a normal gasoline turbo engine. Even though you will be running ethanol, you are still going to be hitting similar temperatures because you are going to tune the timing to the edge of detonation anyway. That's how the higher octane fuel can make more power. I'm unsure about pure ethanol but E85 (what I'm using) is 100 octane.
Back on VGT, the whole reason I brought it up is beacuse you mentioned vanes. There are barely any vane-style turbos that are not VGT or VNT. (VNT is the same thing with a variable A/R compressor instead of the turbine.) The technology was found to be outdated a long time ago, a standard housing is a lot more efficient. You will be able to find VGT or VNT turbos which are purely mechanical and do not use a computer to tell it when to widen or narrow; these turbos strictly use a pressure diaphragm with an adjustable rod to adjust the boost curve.. but... good luck finding one. A lot of the newer cars are coming with some form of VGT turbo but they are not calling them VGT or VNT, they are calling them "electronically assisted." Only turbo luxury cars come with these like Porcche, BMW and even the new Nissan GTR. Some peole have had success using the control module for powerstroke electronic-actuated VGT turbos. I don't remember how they used it but it has been done.
About pre-turbo injection, people do water/meth pre-turbo injection all the time and I have never heard of a problem. Not to hang on Cosworth more, but they also use an 18-injector set-up using two injectors per cylinder in the intake manifold and then two injectors spraying before the turbo. As I said before the gains are achieved by a cooler compressor wheel. The wear that the ethanol may cause on the turbo is going to be terribly minimal if at all.
Feel free to ask any more questions.



Cardomain|Myspace

Ok.... thanks people!

BlackRL, what standalone are you using on those diesels?

Minion, E85 is available over this side of the pond and it's cheaper than gas!!! I'm thinking of using a L850 as the donor for this engine build. The Saab 9-3 (luxury?)uses this engine but as far as I know the turbo version isn't electronically assisted. Be great if it was.



Power Curve

The newer LLY Duramax's use a VNT style turbo which is activated by a solenoid,but have also been told that oil pressure does play a part as well. I had looked at doing this and devised a way to manipulate it using HP tuners Enhanced I/O. i haven't seen the standalone that your going to work with and would have to look into it further to find out what would be needed to make it work properly. Using a Power Stroke module would be something to look into.

Minion: As far as a diesel turbo not being able to handle the heat. I have seen a number of Dodge 2.3L guys running Holsets and 1600cc alky with superb results. I am very partial to Holsets as they have been the most reliable i have seen. The Holsets have had 360 deg thrust bearings for a number of years when some company's charge extra for it.

Quote:

The newer LLY Duramax's use a VNT style turbo which is activated by a solenoid,but have also been told that oil pressure does play a part as well. I had looked at doing this and devised a way to manipulate it using HP tuners Enhanced I/O.

BlackRL, could you give more details on how you setup the HP Tuners I/O...









Power Curve