yes i was doing some reading up on the subject, regular is good, if i want it to burn cleaner ill just buy chevron or shell.

on the ethenol subject, yes its about 100 in parts, i am looking into it, tryin to read any downfalls this fuel has to an engine, especially if your building one

they DO increase your power, less heat doesnt mean less power if it is conserving all the energy, 70 percent of gasoline energy is sent through the exhaust pipe, so just cause it burns hotter than ethenol, doesnt mean the power is all being used.

 

Well, with stock 302s and 351s at about 8.5-9.0:1, they certainly aren't high compression. 13:1 is probably well beyond what can be run on pump fuel. Diesel is high compression, though they run lower compression ratios now with turbos compared to the old NA oil-burners.

A stock Lightening gets more HP several different ways over a stock 351. For one, it has better flowing heads, runs a supercharger, and throws more fuel at the engine (worse mileage). Some components may also be of a tighter tolerance which could lead to better overall efficiency, which can also mean a little more power. Remember, internal combustion engines don't do well in the efficiency department, getting only about 15-35% of the available energy in the fuel to the pavement. Improving efficiency can mean extracting more power. Lighter components also allow the engine to spin faster (and spin up faster), which leads to more power.

Jason

 

I should also add that in the '87-'96 trucks, unless they are MAF, just switching hoses won't allow them to run on E85 (or any significant percentage over E10), since the computer won't be able to handle the necessary fuel-air ratios, which are different in E85 from gasoline. Even MAF systems would be iffy.

Jason

 

Your truck engine won't benefit from higher octane fuel. The EFI system was not designed to take advantage of higher octane and advance the timing beyond the base settings. Newer vehicles with distributorless ignition and knock sensors are designed to continuously push timing to the point of detonation and as a result they do produce more torque with higher octane fuel.

 

Yeah, what Paul said. That's also why any "performance" chip you buy for these years of trucks will require 93 octane fuel--it's so they can push the timing advance (some of the engines have knock sensors).

Jason

 

link to where they have chips for my 88 f150 5.0?

 

Don't bother... get a timing light and turn your distributor a couple degrees until pinging is heard while driving under load with whatever grade fuel you are using, and then back it off slightly. Same results as the chip for free.

 

There is a lot of misinformation floating about in this thread! Simply running E85 or even E100 in place of gasoline will not net any additional horsepower, and will probably actually cause power to go down if all that is done is fill the tank with the different fuel. The air/fuel ratio for E85 is around 9.7:1 compared to the 14.7:1 for straight gasoline. For a given amount of air, more fuel is required to reach the stoichiometric ratio. From experience, it requires approximately 25-26% more fuel flow to reach E85 stoichiometric ratio than gasoline. Now, your fuel mileage might increase if you just fill the thing with E85 and don't supply the necessary fuel to achieve the correct fuel mix, but the engine will be running dangerously lean.

As mentioned earlier, ethanol has a smaller amount of stored energy than gasoline, but this can be overcome by the use of forced induction or higher compression ratio in the engine, but that requires internal engine modifications (first generation lightnings were not supercharged, btw). A higher compression ratio allows more of the fuel's stored energy to be converted into mechanical energy, or power output from the engine. If more energy can be harnessed from the ethanol than the gasoline, fuel mileage would actually improve over gasoline, simply due to burning more efficiently (more power for less fuel, or less fuel for the same power, whichever way you want to look at it). Ethanol doesn't have any magical energy conservation property that makes it different than gasoline. In the exact same engine, if 70% of gasoline's stored energy is expelled as heat, 70% of ethanol's stored energy will also be expelled as heat. That is, unless there are internal engine modifications (higher compression ratio) to increase overall engine efficiency.

Power output depends on many many more things than just the stored energy in the fuel, and as stated above, octane number has no bearing on stored energy or power capability--it is just a measure of the anti-knock properties of the fuel. Everyone says that as the octane number increases, the fuel burns slower, but this is not correct. A higher octane fuel has a higher auto-ignition temperature which takes care of any detonation problems due to heat. Higher octane fuels actually have a faster flame speed than lower octane fuels (it burns faster). In addition to the higher auto-ignition temperature, higher flame speed helps stop pinging because the flame front reaches the end gas region before temperature and pressure can auto-ignite the fuel mixture at that point.

Adding diesel to the fuel tank would most certainly NOT increase the octane rating of the fuel. The diesel engine relies on the fuel to auto-ignite at high temperature and pressure, so the carbon chains are longer than those of gasoline and are easily broken. Higher octane fuels have shorter carbon chains that are harder to split apart.

All of the newer "flex-fuel" vehicles incorporate a fuel composition sensor or a wideband O2 sensor to allow the computer to adjust fuel flow to match the requirements of the fuel with any percentage of ethanol, which are both things that our older trucks do not have.

NASCAR does not run any alcohol in their fuel -- shoot, they just now started using unleaded a couple weeks ago at Las Vegas. There's been mention of going towards E85 in the future, but no word on if/when that will happen. The Indycar series is about the only race series I'm aware of that uses ethanol. Funny cars and drag cars are methanol or nitromethane, not ethanol.

Also, just throwing more fuel to an engine will not necessarily gain more power output. There is a point where maximum brake torque is achieved, and any richer than that just wastes fuel. The only time that a production engine runs in that rich region would be at high loads/WOT. If the engine is forced induction, some additional fuel can help with temperature issues, but it isn't going to make any more power because of that additional fuel.

Ethanol supposedly doesn't get along with real rubber, but I have yet to see any evidence of that in practice (using E85 on a school research project and a Formula SAE racecar). I think that most of the corrosive attributes given to ethanol are a result of ethanol being hydroscopic. The moisture that it absorbs could then cause corrosion of metal parts in the fuel system.

 

premium gasoline is a waste of money if your not running a high compression engine!

everyone thought propane was a great alternitive fuel but it is hard on the engine and isn't efficient at all.

so i would wait to find out the long term results of ethanol before buying parts to change over.

 

exactly what i was thinking.

 

What makes you say that? Dual fuel, petrol and propane, are quite common in Australia...

 

propane burns way to hot most people run it to lean to get optimal fuel econamy burning holes in the pistons and scorching valves.

when running properly you get 1/2 the mileage you would get with gasoline.

 

So what are they doing differently in Australia?

 

The Yellow-Checker-Star taxi fleet of Las Vegas, NV is a well known propane user. These taxis are mostly production gasoline Crown Victoria conversions. When the larger propane fuel tank replaces the smaller gasoline tank, about 1/8 of the trunk space is lost. Maximum distance varies between 250 to 320 miles on one full tank. Fuel capacity varies a great deal with ambient temperature. In the coldest desert winter nights taxis might travel up to 400 miles or more. But in the hotest summer days taxis might achieve only 180 miles. When it is very hot, refueling requires extra time. This can cause long lines to form at refueling stations, particularly during shift changes.[citation needed]

It's a common rule of thumb in Australia that a dual fuel car will use about 20-30% more fuel than an equivalent petrol car, and has about 20-30% less power.[citation needed] Modern injection systems are making the gap smaller, however, as do dedicated LPG systems, since they don't have to be able to run both LPG and petrol.


from what i've read the only reson for propane in australia is that it is less than half the price of gasoline.

 

That makes sense. Seems like propane is similar to ethanol and ethanol blends in that the higher anti-knock index requires higher compression ratios to achieve the same performance levels. I'm surprised they can't just do exchanges with propane tanks like they do for grills, but I guess they have to work in road tax somehow or another. I appreciate the info...