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Old 02-24-2012, 07:28 PM   #26
KIrbstermcgee
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Thanks for shareing the chart Dirty. Good information.

I have somewhat of an update. Talking to a local shop that does TONS of E85 cars, they've seen this before on cars with blowby or poor oil catch can set ups. Basiacally the oil mixed with the fuel and causes the sludging. My car was just running one Cusco can, at the same time the motor was built a little on the loose side, It did see some blowby. So that scenario is plausible.

I dont mean to scare anyone away from E85. Out of thousands of people running it theres only a handfull of people who have expirenced this sevre gunking. So its still a risk i think may be worth taking.
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Old 02-24-2012, 09:20 PM   #27
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It could be too much blowby but I think someone earlier in the thread pegged it pretty good as being a localized gas station issue. I know of no one in south dakota or Iowa who has had anything like this in their car.
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Old 02-24-2012, 10:49 PM   #28
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if its blowby there should be the same gunk through the whole intake tract and not just after the injectors.

if its just after the injectors, then its coming through the injector.....or being cause by e85+oil.

should be really simply for some of you guys to take some e85 and mix it with oil and let it sit and see what it turns into.....
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Old 02-24-2012, 11:22 PM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Phatron View Post
should be really simply for some of you guys to take some e85 and mix it with oil and let it sit and see what it turns into.....
Tried this earlier, nothing really happend. Heat probably plays a roll, but im just letting it sit. Did test the fuel that was in the tank(basic water with sample test) its definitely at least 85%. However dosent really show what kinds of additives might be in the fuel.
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Old 02-24-2012, 11:35 PM   #30
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So my friend with an EVO who lives by me had some gunk build up in his fuel filter (Central IL). Because of this, I relocated my fuel filter under the hood. The 05 STi puts them it in the backseat. I have checked my fuel filter several times and it has been clean. Granted, I have not been running as long as him, but wouldn't the fuel filter be an indicator that something wasn't right? This is assuming it's not oil in the injectors mixing with e85 but just figured the filter would stop anything before it makes it way to the injectors? Not sure but now I'm curious if I will have an issue.
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Old 02-24-2012, 11:39 PM   #31
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I have a 2003 WRX, so the fuel filter is under the hood. But i have looked in the fuel lines on the manifold and the ones off the fuel filter and i dont see anything that would be concerning.
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Old 02-24-2012, 11:42 PM   #32
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Dang. What lead you to believe you were getting a build up? Did you lose power or have hesitation from fuel starvation?
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Old 02-25-2012, 12:09 AM   #33
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That build up is horrendous.
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Old 02-26-2012, 12:43 AM   #34
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so is e85 corrosive or what?
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Old 02-26-2012, 12:46 AM   #35
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Quote:
Originally Posted by maxpowr View Post
so is e85 corrosive or what?

E85 is corrosive to certain materials yes. Its hard to tell if you're particular car has a fuel system designed to handle high alcohol fuel or not.

Brazil has high ethanol % fuel, so any car that is also sold in Brazil is likely to use the same globally homologated components in the US market or whatever your market is. But there are no guarantees.

Basically the 1st generation of people to convert their cars to E85 were very bold and stepped into unknown territory. Now everyone just reads online and looks back and finds out if anyone has converted their particular car to E85 and find out what problems they ran into.
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Old 02-26-2012, 12:58 AM   #36
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Old 02-26-2012, 10:37 AM   #37
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^I better explanation than I gave, but I dont agree with everything in there.
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Old 04-11-2012, 08:33 PM   #38
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Oh boy.
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Old 05-25-2012, 01:56 AM   #39
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I've done a lot of reading about this, there doesn't seem to be an exact answer yet.

I don't have any noticeable amount of oil in my intake tract, so I can rule that out. However, I have been having trouble with the buildup. My stock motor setup had next to none... built a motor, put in id1000's, different pump, lines etc. Now I'm having trouble.

I have been running the Lucas Ethanol injector cleaner lately and it appears to have helped a bunch. I'm still getting a little, but it's not nearly as bad. It was covering the end of the injector completely.. now there is just a bit around the outside of the injector (shouldn't be effecting the spray pattern now). (Fill at the same station) More time will tell, but it seems better!

Anyone else tried this additive or any others? results?
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Old 05-25-2012, 09:54 PM   #40
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Saab had a flex fuel turbo engine. They published a paper discussing the deposit issue a few years ago.
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Old 05-26-2012, 07:38 AM   #41
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there isn't some kind of badass injector/fuel system cleaner that will clean/get rid of this stuff?
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Old 05-28-2012, 08:51 AM   #42
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I went ahead and posted this on EvolutionM in their two big threads on this issue.

I am an engineer, and I have been following industry developments in alternative fuels. As I mentioned in an above post, GM had a production port injected turbo flex fuel engine all the way back in 2007. It was a Saab variant of the Ecotec engine family. Saab did extensive testing on a lot of boosted E85/Flex fuel issues and published some work on it. See Bergstrom, "The New ECOTEC Turbo BioPower Engine from GM Powertrain," 2007 and Bergstrom, "Alcohol Based Combustion Engines - Challenges and Opportunities," 2007. Deposit formation is one of the dirty little secrets of E85; another is pre-ignition.

GM found the exact deposit problems many of you are experiencing. I have read a lot of different ideas on here about the nature of the problem and I have read a lot of speculation about solutions for it. Here is what we know for sure about the deposit issue, based on GM's internal research.

Chemical Origins of the Deposits

The deposits primarily consist of "Poly Iso Butylene," or PIB, a cleaning additive in the gasoline portion of commercial E85 blends. As far as we know, the ethanol itself doesn't directly cause this type of problem with injector and valve deposits. This PIB additive was never designed for use in high ethanol concentrations.

PIB is designed to soften engine deposits, but below a certain concentration (by total fuel volume) it is actually counter-productive. What happens is that with insufficient PIB by volume, the normal valve deposits don't soften. The PIB actually combines with these normally occurring deposits and makes build up worse.

Running PIB-free E85 is basically impossible in a practical sense. GM engineers ordered special batches of PIB-free E85, but in the real world the E85 still becomes contaminated with PIB because the entire fuel refining and transport infrastructure has traces of it. Still, with this very low PIB concentration E85 deposits can still occur at similar rates.

A lot of people on here have speculated something along these lines.

Effect of Drive Cycle

Deposit formation is highly dependent on vehicle use and overall drive cycle. This whole issues is complicated, but aside from the makeup of the actual E85 blend, drive cycle is the #1 factor in these deposits.


Bergstrom, "The New ECOTEC Turbo BioPower Engine from GM Powertrain," 2007, Internationales Wiener Motorensymposium 2007, p. 29

On the left is a multi-hole type (not pintle type) fuel injector after 15,000 km running a GM in-house designed drive cycle to simulate major stop-and-go city driving. On the right is the same type of injector after 60,000km in a high-speed (mostly highway) drive cycle. Both engines were running the same commercial E85 blend in Sweden, consisting of 95 RON fuel and denatured ethanol.

Drive cycle variations may not explain absolutely everything but it is a reasonable hypothesis for why two vehicles running the same E85 blend can have such variability. This can also partly explain why somebody doing a lot of highway driving (rural driver or suburban commuter) who always runs E85 may never experience noticeable deposits.

Using Fuel additives and Normal Gasoline blends

There are a lot of fuel additive blends out there and they change all the time so I can't speak for all of the various formulations. What we do know based on GM's research is that PolyEther Amine or "PEA" , which can/used to be found in Techron products, cleans valve deposits but does not clean injectors with this problem. In fact, too much of fuel system cleaner could make the problem worse.



So how do we clean up the deposits if an engine is prone to them for whatever reason? Put "normal" gasoline blends in the tank and it will go away within 1 tank. You don't even need to pull the injectors.



Most of you already knew that. It's not really news; it just confirms with reliable sources what has been widely understood.

Conclusion

So yes, I didn't have any earth-shattering solutions to present, but I did clear up some of the mechanisms for this deposit formation. The deposits are caused by the gasoline portion of E85. The two biggest factors in deposit formation are the additive mix in the fuel and the way you drive the vehicle. Fuel system cleaner products are innocuous at best, counter-productive at worst. The type of injector or fuel system you run might matter some but they are not part of the mechanism of deposit formation.

So if you figure out that your engine is prone to these deposits, be mindful of stop-and-go traffic and put gasoline in your engine sometimes to clean it out.

Hope that helps.

Last edited by arghx7; 05-28-2012 at 11:49 AM.
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Old 05-28-2012, 09:27 AM   #43
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big thumbs up/thanks for that post^
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Old 05-28-2012, 02:00 PM   #44
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Great info, thank you.

Has anyone determined if the Lucas Safeguard E-85 product has PEA?
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Old 05-28-2012, 02:27 PM   #45
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I drive 85% highway with my car.... I live 35 miles from the nearest e85 station around... My buildup has been terrible... So I'm not sure I buy into that theory just yet... Why exactly is it worse in stop and go driving??

I'm going to continue running the lucas additive... If the buildup continues to be far improved, or not, I'll keep you guys informed...
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Old 05-28-2012, 05:17 PM   #46
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^ I have not seen data on this issue of why city driving tends to build up more deposits. I don't know the exact drive cycle they were using in their tests, and how much idling or cold starting it included. On the other hand, we don't know much about the E85 you have available to you either. Perhaps a lot of idling or cold starting increases the problem.

Another thing to keep in mind is that this GM engine was an actual flex fuel engine with special ECU maps specifically for E85. So that introduces another factor in the discussion--tuning. It's difficult to find published info on this--all the research is being done on direct injection now, which runs very different fuel systems.

Is there anything stopping you from putting a tank of gasoline in there once in a while?
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Old 05-29-2012, 12:32 AM   #47
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Quote:
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Is there anything stopping you from putting a tank of gasoline in there once in a while?
Oh, you betcha. Massive detonation in my case.....93 wouldn't tolerate 25 psi from a VF-37.

Another Q in my mind is the possibility of using E-85 with DI. Are they doing that now? My Veloster isnt E-85 "compliant, but I wish it was.

S.
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Old 05-29-2012, 12:37 AM   #48
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^ switch to a low boost map? Lol. U can't run pump on an e map anyway.
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Old 05-29-2012, 12:41 AM   #49
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Quote:
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^ switch to a low boost map? Lol. U can't run pump on an e map anyway.
Were you addressing my post?

Thanks for the help of course, but I'm aware that you could create a separate ROM for 93, and it's a costly mistake to run 93 on a E-85 map.

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Old 05-29-2012, 12:44 AM   #50
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Yes.

The way u said it made it seem like You couldn't run pump because u would knock at 25psi.

Open map. Multiply injector scaler by 1.3, zero the wgdc...boom 5 second pump gas map. No more dirty Injectors.
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