Cal Club Autocross Forums

We're currently having our SSM S2000 tuned on E85 in Cali and wondering if anyone had experience on how the fuel might differ in different regions of the US. Should we have it tuned more conservatively and have it "touched up" when it gets back home to Minnesota? Or not bother. Thanks in advance.

Paging Marshall Grice to the white courtesy phone...

Maybe this will answer your question.....
We brought all the E85 we needed with us from Cali for nationals.
I would not chance getting fuel from other areas as they formulate it differnetly for different regions.

The problem is that we're from Minnesota (you announced for my wife in BSL: "HU-Ahng" ;)

So maybe we'll have it tuned and then rechecked when it gets back here.

I couldn't figure out the gas in Nebraska, and the minimum wagers behind the counter were no help. The mid-grade at several stations was cheaper than the low grade. Some of the mid-grades were labled 'Ethanol', but with no indication of percentage. I'm guessing it was E10, since it was 89 octane. If I had known it was E10, I'd have put it in the support vehicle.

Jay W

This is the main reason SCCA Club Racing has not approved E85 for road racing. The formulas are all over the place across the country.

Charles Kim wrote:We're currently having our SSM S2000 tuned on E85 in Cali and wondering if anyone had experience on how the fuel might differ in different regions of the US. Should we have it tuned more conservatively and have it "touched up" when it gets back home to Minnesota? Or not bother. Thanks in advance.

if it gets tuned on the cali e85 (which is pretty much always 85% or more) and then goes back to someplace cold and gets e70 it will run rich and thus add it's own conservative touch. The touch up tune for e70 would be to lean it out to get the power back and pull some timing out once it's leaned out and doesn't have as much ethanol in it.

John Coffey wrote:This is the main reason SCCA Club Racing has not approved E85 for road racing. The formulas are all over the place across the country.

i thought it wasn't approved because it fails all of scca fuel tests much like most pump gas is also illegal in scca road racing. Changing the tests such that e85 passes also allows many of the crazy race fuels to pass as well that the tests are designed to rule out.

Hey Marshall,

I heard some of the STU evos at nats were running e85. Is that possible with the stock injector and fuel pump capacity?

Thx,

Rick

Richard Jung wrote:Hey Marshall,

I heard some of the STU evos at nats were running e85. Is that possible with the stock injector and fuel pump capacity?

Thx,

Rick

The smell makes it really easy to tell.

Ranvek (from our home region) was 2nd last year and 3rd this year in STU. You can run E85 on stock Evo equipment. I wish that were the case on S2000s.

Marshall Grice wrote:if it gets tuned on the cali e85 (which is pretty much always 85% or more) and then goes back to someplace cold and gets e70 it will run rich and thus add it's own conservative touch. The touch up tune for e70 would be to lean it out to get the power back and pull some timing out once it's leaned out and doesn't have as much ethanol in it.

Brilliant! Perfect! Exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

Richard Jung wrote:Hey Marshall,

I heard some of the STU evos at nats were running e85. Is that possible with the stock injector and fuel pump capacity?

Thx,

Rick

on stock boost....it's possible i suppose. The stock fuel system has about 100hp margin over stock power levels on gas so there is some wiggle room.

Marshall Grice wrote:

John Coffey wrote:This is the main reason SCCA Club Racing has not approved E85 for road racing. The formulas are all over the place across the country.

i thought it wasn't approved because it fails all of scca fuel tests much like most pump gas is also illegal in scca road racing. Changing the tests such that e85 passes also allows many of the crazy race fuels to pass as well that the tests are designed to rule out.

Correct. Pump gas, even with 10% ethanol, passes the DC max limit of 15. Typically with 10% Ethanol you're 13 to 15 DC. That's the only real test run at the track (Di-electric using the SCCA approved fuel meter). Anything more requires a bond ($250) and a sample sent to a lab. I've done the DC test on the Spec Miata field and all were running local pump gas of some kind and all cars passed.