e85

[Ducmarc]

I'm not a real tree hugger but has anybody messed with e 85 in bikes . we ran methanol years ago in our drag car and that was about a 2 to one ratio but this claims to have 20 to 25% gas .and around 105 octane thinking it might keep my 900 cooler if i can get big enough jets

[Woofentino Pugrossi]

Nope. Had a fun time replacing rubber seals in the tank and carbs for 10% which is starting to be common here. My fuel pump o-ring to the tank ate itself away with 10% gas. Is recommended right in the owners manual not to use more than 5% alcohol blend. But since my bike was built when most places used 100% gasoline, well you get the pic.

[Super Dave]

I'm not a real tree hugger but has anybody messed with e 85 in bikes . we ran methanol years ago in our drag car and that was about a 2 to one ratio but this claims to have 20 to 25% gas .and around 105 octane thinking it might keep my 900 cooler if i can get big enough jets

Well, 15% gas in E85.

Fewer Btu's than gas.  You'll loose power.

Why not just richen up your jetting with gas?  That will cool it off too without such a loss in power and the problems of finding fuel.  Not to mention the issues of water being absorbed into the ethanol.

[G-reg]

Well, 15% gas in E85.

Fewer Btu's than gas.  You'll loose power.

Fewer btu's but the air/fuel ratio for E85 is around 9.7:1, so you end up burning almost 50% more fuel and can make more power because of that.

[Super Dave]

Fewer btu's but the air/fuel ratio for E85 is around 9.7:1, so you end up burning almost 50% more fuel and can make more power because of that.

Well, actually, we're both wrong.

An item requires power to accomplish something.  If one relates the power need using gasoline as a constant, E85 has to be introduced in an amount to produce the same power to do the same work.  In comparison, it takes 1.4 more E85 to produce the same power as gasoline.  That already uses the appropriate stoichiometric ratio for each fuel. 

1 gallon of gas = 114100 btu's
1.4 gallons of E85 = 114520 btu's

So, the questions are: 
Does the Ducati have the space to carry that much more fuel?
What's the weight liability?

Either way, adding more of each fuel to the A/F will potentially increase power (gas is better at 12.8-13.5ish), and going further would cool it down.

[HAWK]

As G-reg pointed out it's all in the mix.

Yes, ethanol has less btu/gal but when have you ever seen an engineering team dedicated to seeing how much more fuel they can squeeze into an internal combustion engine. The power output limit of an internal combustion engine is it's volumetric efficiency and the big part of the air/fuel mix is the air. Since you can only get X gal of air into the engine and since you can burn 0.16 gal of ethanol per gal of air vs 0.066 gal of gasoline per gal of air you can get 76000btu*0.16gal/gal of air with ethanol or 12,160btu/gal of air where as gasoline will give you 116,000btu*0.066gal/gal of air or 7656btu/gal of air.

Dave, your richer mixtures equating to more hp with gasoline may hold water with oxygenated fuel (see above, the engineers can't get anymore air in so they send some oxygen with the fuel that they have no problem stuffing in) but you need to have enough air to burn the fuel or you won't make heat and you won't make power.

There are of course other issues to consider as well, you will need to carry almost 2.5 times as much fuel which shouldn't be a problem for a sprint race but will kill you in an endurance race.

[badmonkey]

ran straight vp methanol in superbike sv injected model. Made roughly 7 more hp over mrx01 and actually accelerated faster. With carbs you need to adjust float height to compensate for about 40% more fuel in bowl or you will run dry. Cant leave in tank will seize fuel pump... otherwise good shit

[Ducmarc]

hey thanks for the input, it seems though there is a variation on how much gas they add depending on which website you read and what time of the year it is. evidently they add more gas in the winter for cold starting of course this changes the octane level and since its not written in stone how much and what octane they mix it with i don't know how you would police what your getting. 20 years ago we tried to run straight methanol in the drag car but could never get enough compression in the engine to see a difference  plus it was backyard tuning since no one around had a dyno at the time.we did have good methanol carb and did have to drain the system after every weekend but dropped the project and went another direction. now that you can get some big injectors for ducati the idea popped back in my head.

[mattg]

Drucker used to talk about making 'poor mans race fuel' by making 93 octane / e85 mix. I can't remember what the ratio is, and i've never tried it.