I think that talk about E85 being thicker is probably just the confusion about what's already been written, that it has less energy that petrol and you need a heap more of it.....hence the requirement for a much bigger fuel system from pump to injectors or carby......I'll be running a 1050 E85 Dominator.
The stroich
AFR for petrol is about 14.7:1 or 13:1 @ WOT. The stoich
AFR for E85 is way down to 9.8:1 (methanol is about 6:1)....so you can see it needs to have a lot more of it to keep the ratio right........as mentioned, that's the main reason you can't just filler 'er up and go, unless you have a new fuel map ready to go (for EFI). I'm running the carby so don't have the luxury of being able to change the tune quickly.....so that means the variable Caltex BioFlex is out (E70-85).....the United E85 is always at 85% ethanol, but being a limited street/strip car, I'll just buy a barrel of race E85. I've seen some cool ethanol sensors (as used in flex vehicles) which measures the ethanol % in the tank....so the EFI keeps up with E10 or E85.
I bought one of those Quickfuel E85 test tubes, but I ended up getting some 100ml measuring cylinders from a local scientific parts supplier....they are much more accurate. Just mix 50ml of distilled water with 48ml of E85. I'll see if I can attach the PDF file on how to do it.
Here's what it looks like when you do a test. You can see the ethanol goes quick cloudy with the water and the ULP separates out on top.
Here's a quick table I drew up a while back. It shows the decreasing
AFR as the fuel moves to the right......ie: fuels on the right, need more fuel!
