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Old 08-05-2018, 06:32 AM
djfourmoney djfourmoney is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2016
Location: Los Angeles
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Default Re: RX7 rotary power, meth or water?

Quote:
Originally Posted by dlheman View Post
After looking at the do and don't do of using E85 I came to the conclusion of E85 produced many hassles in maintenance.

It drinks like a mofo.

It requires earlier oil change intervals.

It will be difficult to start the engine in cold weather if there is a high Ethanol content.

It isn't particularly kind for the fuel line and injector.

If left for days it may be difficult to start the car.

But more tuner prefers it than water methanol injection (including my STI engine tuner). Is it easier to tune an engine using E85 than WMI such as Aquamist?
Lots of WRX/STI tuners are hostile to WMI for some unknown reason.

But you see similar fights all over the internet when the people that can afford to spend the money have a problem with people that find affordable solutions to the same problem.

There are camps on both sides of three debates I see -

Clutch Slip vs No Slip
Nitrous + Turbo vs Turbo Only
E85/Methanol vs 50/50 Water Injection

Clutch Slip saves parts and you'll run faster but you can't get people to grasp that.

Nitrous and Turbos work great, better than either on their own. But too many add a level of complication that most people aren't comfortable with.

E85 is easy if you able to upgrade your fuel system to compensate. But as you say none of the negatives are ever talked about.

This is because water-methanol injection is generally affordable, but the days of burned up pumps and burnt pistons are fresh in the mind of many people.

Ironically it's because the majority of failures are linked to easily solved things and I can think of two instances.

Guy runs 100% methanol, can't afford to upgrade his fuel system properly so he increases the amount of methanol injected into the motor. The pump isn't designed for 100% methanol, it dries out the seals and the pump fails just at the time he needs the power (during a race) and boom.

That has given rise to Rodney's company Alky Injection actually and other companies that modify pumps to handle 100% methanol.

But just as that happen, E85 became widely available because of incentives from the Federal Government. As E85 pumps started to dot corn country lots of people said the F with methanol injection, not many people were running 50/50 that E85 took off. Then people started posting more impressive numbers made with E85 that were nowhere what most single nozzle methanol systems are capable of.

So when you say you want to run 2000cc direct port + (500cc) 5th nozzle post intercooler or pre-turbo people look at you like you turned green all of a sudden.

The Tuning School did a series of videos and articles on Engine Labs and tried all the popular racing fuels and water injection.

50/50 beat all the unleaded racing fuels and it wasn't really that close. 100% methanol beat everything but VP C85 alone. Ironically VP C85 with 100% methanol made the most power overall. This was done only with modifying the ignition map and fuel trims. Boost was kept static (supercharged Corvette C7)

A turbocharged car would have made huge numbers because of the easy boost adjustment.

I plan on doing some similar testing and sharing it online.
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