I'm pretty new to the community, so any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. I hear about a lot of people on the forum here running ethanol blends in their stingers, but I have been wondering how high of an ethanol blend can a completely bone stock stinger tolerate?
I've been doing some research into the current gas prices in SoCal (FML), and the amount of ethanol in pump gas from stations around my house, and and this point, it might be financially beneficial to run an ethanol blend, despite the decreased fuel efficiency that comes with ethanol.
I have researched this a bit, and I won't pretend to be an expert, so take it with a grain of salt, can't be responsible if you do something bad and break your car.
Supposedly, our cars can do well with up to a mix of E30. This would be combining regular fuel with E85 in the correct proportions to get up to E30. The main limitation is the HPFP, which starts to run out of steam above E30 (higher ethanol blends require more fuel to be delivered). Keep in mind that it can be tricky to get exactly E30. What is shown as E85 at the station may be more or less by some amount. In addition, straight pump gas usually has some amount of ethanol. The station I go to (Unocal 76) says up to 10%, so that has to be figured in as well.
Testing the actual content is important, otherwise you are just guessing. There are two main methods I know of, one is to use chemical sticks, sort of like what you would use to test pool chlorine and PH. The other is an inline ethanol sensor. Fuel-it (
www.fuel-it.com) makes a flex fuel kit for several cars, Stinger included. I just installed one on my car, but haven't gotten to the station to put E85 in yet. It seems to work, my pump gas is registering 9%, which is inline with what the pump says.
Most people use E30 to get more performance when coupled either with an ECU tune, or a JB4. To take advantage of the higher effective octane rating you get with E30 you need to have some sort of tune. This does not, however, substitute for low quality fuel, it just enhances it. Mixing E85 with 87 octane regular fuel will increase octane, but in order to approach 100 effective octane will probably put you over E30, and you will have the HPFP issue. Here in California, the best pump gas we can get is 91, so I probably can't run higher than map 3 on the JB4 at this time. Nice thing about the JB4 is that the fuel-it kit has a wire that plugs into the JB4 and can be setup to help trim the boost levels to avoid problems if you end up with lower E rating than you wanted.
If you want to run higher than E30, then you need to look at a CPI (Charge Pipe Injection) kit. This taps off the low pressure line to the HPFP, runs straight to a seventh injector in the charge pipe, usually right after the intercooler. This is controlled by an FSB which also connects to the JB4 to meter in additional fuel when needed. The LP fuel supply is not limited like the HP side is. Nice thing is that the BMS intercooler (I have one) has a bung on the cold side all ready for the injector if I decide to add it later.
Lastly, if you want to get more radical is to put in a WMI (Water/Methane Injection). It would use the same charge pipe bung and FSB, but it uses a separate tank (commonly mounted in the trunk, and a line piped forward) with a water/methanol mixture. The methanol provides extra octane and the water extra cooling. There are considerations though with this as methanol is toxic, and the line for it needs to be run forward past the cabin if you mount the tank in the trunk. You also need to maintain it separately, fill it up when it gets low, etc. Also, any leaks can be dangerous since it burns invisibly if ignited. I think it is better suited for all out race vehicles and not street.
Anyway, that's what I know. Good luck!
