- Joined
- Mar 19, 2003
- Location
- Denver, CO
I drank a little whiskey, and decided that if it works so good for me, maybe I should try it in the Volvo too.
I'm not quite as haphazard as I am about to sound. But the short story is this.
1. Add 25% fuel to the megasquirt fuel map, across the entire range.
2. Fill up the tank with E85 for $2.60 per gallon.
3. Drive and smile.
My car is running just fine on the corn fuel. It was really amazing to me that it was so easy, and just a simple richening of the maps made the car completely driveable. I think ethanol ignites nicely in a wide range of AF ratios. That probably helped the easy transition. I did allow the EGO feedback to work over a wide range of + and - 20% so that megasquirt could target the AF ratios on its own if the map wasn't spot on. But thats the only rear TRICK I did. I'm iterating through my normal VE table tuning procedure now.
Now the next step is going to be getting a proper "alcohol tune", and make some power out of the home grown fuel. If I can. I know I'm going to run out of injector flow, and maybe fuel pump flow if I get too crazy. But right now, at 15psi, I have a fair amount of room to grow. I have seen 70% duty cycle at the maximum right now.
Are there any other sour mash burners out there on the forum right now? Its fun!, I'm enjoying the experiment.
I am guessing that the general direction I should head is the same as with any High Octane fuel.
1. More timing advance.
2. More boost.
3. All while keeping the WOT Air/Fuel ratios at about 12:1 (not really 12:1 but 12:1 on my wideband O2 sensor readout). Are there any arguments for switching to Lambda units here? It seems like it might make sense so that the units make sense going from gasoline to ethanol.
4. Watch the fuel pressure and duty cycle as I creep up on the power to see how my "supply" is doing.
What should I expect?
I'm not quite as haphazard as I am about to sound. But the short story is this.
1. Add 25% fuel to the megasquirt fuel map, across the entire range.
2. Fill up the tank with E85 for $2.60 per gallon.
3. Drive and smile.
My car is running just fine on the corn fuel. It was really amazing to me that it was so easy, and just a simple richening of the maps made the car completely driveable. I think ethanol ignites nicely in a wide range of AF ratios. That probably helped the easy transition. I did allow the EGO feedback to work over a wide range of + and - 20% so that megasquirt could target the AF ratios on its own if the map wasn't spot on. But thats the only rear TRICK I did. I'm iterating through my normal VE table tuning procedure now.
Now the next step is going to be getting a proper "alcohol tune", and make some power out of the home grown fuel. If I can. I know I'm going to run out of injector flow, and maybe fuel pump flow if I get too crazy. But right now, at 15psi, I have a fair amount of room to grow. I have seen 70% duty cycle at the maximum right now.
Are there any other sour mash burners out there on the forum right now? Its fun!, I'm enjoying the experiment.
I am guessing that the general direction I should head is the same as with any High Octane fuel.
1. More timing advance.
2. More boost.
3. All while keeping the WOT Air/Fuel ratios at about 12:1 (not really 12:1 but 12:1 on my wideband O2 sensor readout). Are there any arguments for switching to Lambda units here? It seems like it might make sense so that the units make sense going from gasoline to ethanol.
4. Watch the fuel pressure and duty cycle as I creep up on the power to see how my "supply" is doing.
What should I expect?