Colorado B.S. Thread

Anyone coming to Houston or Texas in general and want to TW express some items?

 

This guy just posted that he is driving through on his way home to Texas.

 

My buddy mike, I will give him a ring

 

is this one that can have a wireless data plan? what do you want for it?

also, ive been wanting an m&P 15-22 if you see a steal on one of them id be interested

 

Ventura county area. 2.5 hours north of SD

 

Just because it's Friday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOgd9hitEAE

 

Curious where you get your figures from. E85 has roughly 30% less thermal energy than petroleum based fuels. This means that you need 30% MORE just to make up what you're missing out on. In other words, you will get roughly 30% lower MPG's which means that you have to pay 30% less at the pump just to break even. When it was first introduced it was quite a bit less expensive than that to make it a worthy option even with all the other short comings. The uneducated populace clamoring for a domestic solution when hog wild and before long the cost per gallon had exceeded that of petroleum based fuel. On top of that people were just running it in any old vehicle because 'The computer would adjust for the different mixture' as most thought. Yes and no. Mostly no. Sure it can retard timing and back of boost (if not N/A) to compensate but this is in place purely to avoid catastrophic failure of critical engine components and shouldn't be used as a regular method. On top of all of this most vehicles have rubber based fuel components (pump seals, lines, injectors, rings, etc) and solvents and rubber based components do not mix. This leads to costly repairs down the road which most didn't realize at the time because the effects aren't immediately apparent.

Did I mention that this also adversely affected the cost of corn overall which has lead to our recent food costs soaring in many segments (priced beef lately? What do you think cows are fed?) and other unexpected consequences as a result of pushing this 'miracle fuel' onto the uneducated populace? Ethanol is nothing new and when manufacturers were considering the best option for fuel it was an option then and was decided against. What makes it so good now? Still has the same short comings. Like it or not petroleum based fuel is still the best, most efficient at a price-point, option available and until something major happens will continue to be the most efficient fuel available.

Back to wondering where you get your information... is that 20% increase in power dyno-proven? E85 is NOT going to make your 6cyl output the same as a V8. It doesn't work that way.

Adding everything up in terms of actual miles for dollar considering decreased fuel economy and increased fuel system component replacement interval and even possibly major engine component failure the costs associated w/running E85 aren't a bargain.

 

Like this?

 

Great post. The only thing I have to add is that e85 will make more HP for certain vehicles. My dad had several different tunes put on his car a few years ago and the e85 tune with e85 fuel made ~20% more HP (yes, dyno proven). But, you're spot on - the gas mileage went down pretty considerably.

 

Being able to tune your vehicle to take advantage of any octane improvements is the key and most people don't do this and most vehicles don't even possess the ability from the factory to account for this so I hear lots of people claiming 20% from E85 but it's rare that you actually see someone who is getting 20% more power from E85 and it usually comes with lots of supporting mods to be able to do it. In other words, too many people think they put E85 or even Premium gas in their vehicle and Bam! More power and it runs better. Today's vehicles just don't work like that. Too many compromises made to run on both to reach maximum efficiency on either one individually. Most who get 20% increase in power have gone to great lengths to optimize their particular vehicle to run on ONLY E85. Like I said, I'd like to know where he gets his figures from.

 

So I just did a tune up on a 2012 1gr. Pulled 3 denso plugs out of passengers side and 3 ngk out of drivers. Is this from factory or was someone just lazy?

 

Stumbled across an Extang solid trifold bed cover for $275 in Ft. Collins. It's local pick-up only or i'd keep this deal to myself. I'm in Oklahoma but figured a deal like that was worth passing along to you guys!

http://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/auction/view?auc=1180301

 

He had a Subaru Legacy GT. He did a few mods (ie: downpipe, injectors, and fuel pump) and had a couple of different tuning maps that he could load via access port. He had a tune for 91 octane and for e85. He actually had his car dyno'ed after the tunes were put on and the e85 gas made about 20% more HP and torque than the 91 octane gas.

 

This is common.

Legacy GT = Turbo Charged so it's REAL easy to take advantage of increased octane by increasing boost. This is similar with 'chips' as upping the boost is the easiest way to take advantage of additional or better fueling. NA vehicles don't have this same flexibility and most use timing advancement to take advantage but there are a LOT of other factors that come into play here and it's not always just as easy as advancing timing until you reach optimal power output and even then it pales in comparison to the power #'s realized from increasing boost in a forced induction application. For instance, in my Typhoon I had a larger turbo & methanol injection. On 91 oct I would start to get knock activity around 15psi or 14.5psi on denser air days (cooler temps for instance) but with methanol injection I could run the turbo out of breath at about 24.5psi before it just started super-heating the air and not making any more pressure. The key here was that I had full control over my turbo boost and could take advantage of the methanol injection with the turn of a knob. Put simply, with methanol injection and a turbo you increase boost until the turbo has reached the end of if efficiency range and then dial in methanol and dial out fuel until you hit stoich. That's how to tune that setup in a nutshell. Just adding methanol injection won't net you much (if any) more power and could actually decrease power depending on how all your parameters are to begin with. Generally you gain a slight amount of power from additional cooling w/o any other adjustments. Same thing with running E85... w/o adjustments your gains are nill and in lots of cases you actually lose power.

One way you can lose power is a figure I mentioned earlier: 30% less thermal energy which translates to 30% lower MPGs. The other side of this equation is the fact that your fueling system is pumping 30% MORE liquid to meet fueling demands a the same power level. Depending on your injectors you may be exceeding 100% duty cycle to do so which means a couple of things. The first is a more long term determent and that's that your injectors running static the whole time will likely fail much sooner. The other is more immediate and that's that even at full blast you're not getting enough fueling to meet your engines demand and you will start getting knock activity. A computer controlled car's natural reaction to knock activity (also known as 'ping' or 'pinging') is to pull or retard timing. In other words... lost power through decreased timing and meanwhile knock or ping creates a dangerous situation where your air fuel mixture gets hot enough to ignite when the piston compresses it ahead of the spark igniting causing the piston to violently slam downward ahead of the time it's supposed to which can cause damage to connecting rods, bearings and other related bottom end engine components. To any degree this isn't a good thing. At a lesser degree (read: when your knock sensor senses and starts to pull timing t save the engine) it only slightly lowers the expected lifespan of your engine. Prolonged operation in this zone will noticeably shorten the lifespan of your engine.

I had a feeling when you were talking 20% you were talking about the ideal situation which is a turbo charged application w/supporting mods. I noticed you said he did larger injectors & a fuel pump. In other words his stock injectors and fuel pump wouldn't come anywhere near this 20% figure and damage would be happening well before this figure. So 20% is an optimized condition and anything less of several thousand dollars invested in supporting components & tuning will yield substantially lower than this figure at best. Simply filling up with E85 or 91oct or race gas isn't going to do that and in some (read: most) situations will actually HURT performance and reliability. That's my point I guess.

 

Another good post, Ost.

I agree with your point, you need to make sure your car is capable of handling e85 before just throwing it in the tank. We spent probably around $1k in supporting mods and another $500 on the tuning maps. The only addition I was making was that with the same supporting mods, e85 will increase HP over regular 91 octane. My 20% figure was referencing his gain of using e85 over 91 octane with the same level of supporting mods, not over baseline. It was actually quite a bit more than 20% over stock. But, you're right, you want the supporting mods if you're going to run e85.

 

No data plan, it's brand new bought it before we moved and used it a handful of times it just sits on my counter. $200 has a ballistic case I'll post a pic.

Skimmed I prolly agree.. I buy grass fed beef so screw the corn prices... Although I like corn so damn I must agree again. Although my WRX had a lot more Tq and was considerably faster on my e85 tune than my 91. But as you stated it was tuned, so alas I must agree again.. Damn.

Stop agreeing with him, his door ways can't take it!!

 

My 2007 was that way from the factory as well.

 

He also added a downpipe which can significantly increase your peak HP levels depending on how restrictive your stock downpipe is. These are generally quite restrictive so when a RPMs are high and the exhaust flow requirement is increasing to beyond what the stock downpipe can handle back pressure is created. Since a turbo badly needs that exhaust gas out of the way as fast as possible to continue spinning at max efficiency it can fall on it's face. Look at a stock power output graph and you will likely see a plateau midway through the RPM range which is exactly this. Simply swapping out a downpipe can net some pretty high power gains especially in the higher RPMs. A free-flowing downpipe, cat (or test pipe) and cat-back alone can yield 15-20% power increase across the RPM range in a turbo charged application just from the nature of how it affects spool up and peak power #'s. This is a different word from an NA engine which actually needs some back pressure to create low-range torque and you will see this plain as day when people start putting in higher flowing exhaust components on an NA engine. They may net a few HP at max RPM (where you spend exactly 2% of your time) at the sacrifice of many ft lbs of torque down low. Turbo charged applications don't suffer from this as what's lost in engine torque is more than made up in increased power from the turbo being able to come online sooner in the RPM range.

Point is, your dad's tuned turbo charged car w/supporting mods isn't even remotely close to an NA pickup but too many people hear stories like this and their only takeaway is 'E85 will get me 20% more powa!' and gloss over the most important factors.