Okay....this may sound stupid.

Is it possible to convert an 05 to run on E85? Just wondered.....we just now got E85 here in Tennessee and it's 30 cents cheaper per gallon than gas.

 

But your mpg will go down a bit.

 

Yeah....I've saw that in some research I've done. I guess it's just a matter of where the curves may cross each other in terms of if the ends justify the means.

 

Possible - I suppose - given that with enough time and money, nearly anything is possible.

E85 needs to be about 75-80% of the cost of regular full-strength unleaded to become a wash in fuel cost per mile. Don't know that $0.30 per gallon meets that criteria.

There are a lot of fuel system considerations - if your vehicle is not specifically identified as being FFV ready, then the engine management is not set-up to adjust properly, not to mention the corrosive effects towards a fuel system not designed for E85.

Short answer - yes, it can be done, but at least, IMO, is not economically worth it.

 

What he said is exactly right.

 

Guess I'll pass on it for now, but definitely looking to purchasing a flex fuel vehicle in the future. Especially since it looks now as if no relief is in sight in terms of the price of gasoline.

 

I have been told by a reputable source that if you were to purchase a tuner (XCALII or III is what we were specifically discussing) and get custom made tunes, this person (the tuner) could theoretically right a tune so that your non E85 vehicle could run off of E85. Makes sense to me since this is what we are doing already w/tunes...tuning it so that your vehicle can run off of a fuel source that it was not factory intended to do so.

He even went so far as to say that a tune could be written so that you could go to the race track and they could write you a tune for racing fuel and you could run racing fuel in your truck...

Untested to my knowledge, but it makes sense to me.

Do any of you vets here so any holes in this logic?

 

Moving this back to the top...

 

Can't say I'm a veteran of E85 or high performance tunes - I've just done a little reading about the pros and cons of E85.

Still have the issues of what the E85 does to the non-FFV-ready fuel system. Perhaps not as big of a concern if it's done in short, infrequent bursts, such as a tank here and there for a run at the track.

Suspect that the FFV vehicle has some kind of detection to know the blend, whether it be regular unleaded, E10, E85, or some other blend ratio in between that results from switching between the fuels. Again, perhaps not so much an issue if one switches to and sticks with that blend. The engine management should do its best to learn within the limits it's allowed.

IIRC, in a previous thread somewheres here - a member asked about running E85 in an early 2000s vintage 4.2L. He shared that it had been running fine on what was assumably the stock tune, so your question about a custom tune seems to be very possible although perhaps not absolutely necessary.

Suggest that the bigger concern is the reliability and maintenance aspects of long term use, as compared to the operational ones.