How Can you convert an older car to E-85 fuel?

Question

With gas over 3 dollars a gallon can an older car be converted to use E-85 fuel, and what would be involved in making the changes, also would it be cost effective?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

OK, here's how I did mine.
Assuming your car has a carburetor, either buy new main jets or drill out your old ones 25-30% larger. Advance the timing a few degrees. (you will have to experiment, my ford 5.0 was able to take 8 degrees more advance) Install a good quality fuel filter at the carb.

Install a new performance fuel pump that is designed for alcohol, and replace all your rubber fuel lines with ones designed for alcohol. (e85 will cause some types of rubber to disintegrate)

Your car will not start with e85 in cold weather with this setup. You can either switch back to gasoline with a spare carb & readjust the timing in the winter, or design a fuel heater in the upper radiator hose and something to spray gasoline into the top of the carb for starting. (if you live in a very warm climate this may not be an issue)

Expect around a 15-20% loss in fuel mileage, and a noticeable increase in power.
I installed high compression pistons & got some fuel mileage back, but it now has too much compression to run on pump gas, which isn't an issue for me since I did the changeover for performance & it is only driven in good weather.

I even run my lawnmower on e85, just open the needle valve a couple of turns & it runs fine.

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Asker's Comment:

This person was the only one to actually give me an answer and would like to thank him.

Answer 2

Trade it in for a FFV.

Answer 3

it is a timing issue. any car can run E-85 with an adjustment to the vehicles timing

Answer 4

The answer is no. The cost to do this safely and effectively is very expensive and none of the methods that you might find on line are approved by the EPA. Besides, E-85 is no cheaper and holds less energy than gasoline, so you will be throwing money away. Gasoline is an insulator, while ethanol is a conductor of electricity. This means that the fuel system could start a fire through the sender or fuel pump if you use ethanol. Buy a flex-fuel car if you really want to use this stuff, but you really won't save any money.

Answer 5

isn't it amazing, In Brazil the fuel is made from sugar cane thus Ethanol. All internal combustion engines burn volatile hydrocarbons In a 14.7 air to 1 fuel mixture. Here is what has to happen in order to get the correct mixture on a old car with carburator the jets need to be much larger. Fuel injecton cars the injectors need to be changed and engine control reprogramed. And once done you cannot run gasoline unless you change back.

Source(s):

30 year auto tech

Answer 6

technically almost anything can be done, but in this case the cost would not support it. e85 has less power (btu's) than standard fuel, so in vehicles already set up to use it they have sensors to detect what fuel mixture is currently being used and with e85 they adjust the fuel supply to meet the demand, since e85 has less power the computer will supply more fuel to make up for it, thus e85 capable vehicles will use more fuel when using e85. the main benefit of these vehicles is not the savings (since you mileage will go down when using e85) but the less dependent the us becomes on foreign fuel