efiftyfizzle

are any of the tuners here looking into flex fuel options on these cars or are they trying to keep pushing $10k+ turbo upgrades?

amg guy

iTrader: (1)

Ethanol is a joke. So much politics and bs surround the entire deal. Meanwhile you get less MPG and it destroys fuel systems.

Exotic-metal55

E85 is a great race fuel if your car comes with the alky sensor or can be adapted to have one like the GTR`s have. MPG is less but so is the price, so if you add up the cost per MPG, it is like premium fuel cost. Since MB do not have the sensor, you would need to upgrade the fuel system to handle the 30% more fuel flow you would need to run E85, plus tune for it and that would mean you would have to buy E85 from a race fuel supply or risk pump E85 having variable Alky amounts (winter or summer blend).

After all this, it is just easier to pick your favorite race fuel and tune for it, since we have direct injection and injectors will be the limiting factor soon.

efiftyfizzle

The idea isn't to always run 100% E85. With the GTR, they have a flex fuel sensor available in the aftermarket and you upgrade the fuel pumps, injectors, and tune and you're good to go.

Most GTR owners run full 93 every few fill ups to keep things clean in the system. It's great to have flex fuel so you can pump half E85 and half 93 or all E85 if need be and let the tune adapt itself. The E85 stations here are practically cheaper than 87 octane.

PeterUbers

$2000 and you're at 700/800 at the crank is still pretty impressive ... But it's amazing how much you have to spend to get into the 10's... I agree

Fairbird

I don't see the problem to use E85 mix in our cars if tuned for it . The ecu has so much room to adjust it self

efiftyfizzle

bumping this thread for the sake of discussion

gaspam

from my experience with the amg crowd, it doesnt start getting creative (beyond bolt on's) until respective amg car is under $30K in the used market.... until then you wont see much other than bolt on's asides from a few uber-rich guys on other side of world doing custom builds...

for stateside, maybe we need to convince JCART to get a M157 (if he doesnt already have one) since his deep pockets seem to be what pushed the M156 deep into the 9's knocking on 8's

efiftyfizzle

There's nothing that creative about E85. If you can tune for race gas, it doesn't seem like much more for tuning for E85 other than perhaps upgrading injectors and fuel lines / fuel pumps.

If you ask me, upgrading to red colored turbos seems more creative than tuning for flex fuel.

gaspam

not really... red turbos come with everything you need including the tune= bolt on kit (no research needed by the buyer)

e85 conversion means piecing together Fuel Pressure Sensor, Ethanol Sensor, bigger injectors, bigger fuel pump and of course custom tune since none exist yet = not bolt on kit (research by the buyer and trial and error in getting it running correctly)

my point is that anything that is not off the shelf and ready to go, usually doesnt start happening until the cars get cheaper and they become toys

also havent seen anyone running it on DI engines (so you would be creative) and one of the major "convert your car to e85" companies said this :

Will your kit work with my Direct Injected engine?
Unfortunately we do not offer a direct injection kit at this time. Direct Injection is also known as Gasoline Direct Injection (GDI), Petrol Direct Injection, Direct Petrol Injection, Spark Ignited Direct Injection (SIDI) and Fuel Stratified Injection (FSI). One of our overseas competitors did release one several years ago but it was unreliable and caused vehicle damage. It was discontinued. Hopefully in the near future we will offer a Direct Injection kit.


also not sure how much you followed the e55 forums but its been tried and done over there with lots of problems along the way (not exactly bolt on and go) go look up some of Chawkins issues with e85... here is one of many e85 threads from e55's:------> https://mbworld.org/forums/w211-amg/...s-doing-2.html

if you think you are going to just slap on some bigger injectors and tune it, fill up e85 and run fine right away, good luck..... NO2 or meth would be a better option than E85 conversion on our platform at this point in time if your looking for cheap power

efiftyfizzle

I get the fact that there will be more aftermarket support once the cars become cheaper, but we as customers should not be the guinea pigs. A lot of these big tuning companies have shop cars, and they do the R&D for their upgraded turbos on them. Nothing is holding them back from doing Flex Fuel R&D on them as well.

There are some cars that use direct injection and support flex fuel... look at the new ford focus for example:

https://www.ford.com/cars/focus/specifications/engine/

gaspam

e55 has been around for 13yrs now and still no e85 kits from tuners.... wonder why? because there is no margin in it for them... they gonna make a $600 kit and sell it to a few guys and make a few bucks?... risk reward not worth it

subis and evos have e85 kits for $600 because there are 100,000 kids willing to buy it.... amg guys willing... maybe 100 = economically not worth it for tuners... that's why you have to do it yourself

efiftyfizzle

If the results are proven, I wouldn't say only 100 or so to buy it... first of all there would be AMG tax so a flex fuel kit would probably cost $2k considering upgraded turbos cost $20k. We are currently spending around $3k for a software tune. Some here even spending upwards of $5k for downpipes. Yes, the demand is low, but people are buying whatever is out there. For the tuners, they are producing products with the lowest risk on their part as long as we keep supporting what they put out.

If you go ask the people who have upgraded their turbos and ask them if it was worth it (and to prove the worth), most will say it wasn't; but because we're playing the guinea pig for the tuners, they are entertaining us.

gaspam

i dont even think there are 100 tuned guys on the M157 forums lol, so i doubt 100 are going by flex fuel kit.. also the fact that you bumped your own thread due to lack of activity kinda answers the question about amount of interest in e85

plus tuners make tunes because they are cheap to do, no parts like a e85 kit would have.... tune=3K to them, they just take your ecu and mod it, then you get your ecu back,,,,, now for e85 kit, you say send in 2K and they send you a bunch of tangible things back that cost the tuner to buy like injectors , fuel pump, Fuel Pressure Sensor, Ethanol Sensor, and a tune.... so their margins would be way lower on that e85 kit than their canned ecu tunes..

as for members that got bigger turbos on m157 and saying not being worth it?? can you please elaborate on this because i have only seen 3 guys on mbworld that have upgraded turbos (david, goletiani, and vasily) and they all seem to love their turbo upgrades.

and as for downpipes, they are easy to make so of course tuners are going to offer them and there's really no tuning involved or trying to get them to work right like there would be with e85 conversion (again go look at chawkins issues on the e55 forum- and he said after 2 yrs of it he would never do it again)

with all that being said, im not against e85 conversion, im just saying you will have to piece together a kit on your own and be prepared for working with a tuner near you and trial and error(this is the kinda thing i like to do with my project cars, not my daily driver that's still under warranty).... personally, if i was going to do a custom power adder for my car it would be no2 or meth injection

efiftyfizzle

Like you, I was judging the amount of owners for these cars from this forum, but there's a much larger platform of people with tuning interests in these cars in the social media world. There are Facebook groups, Instagram profiles, and even other forums (less of a population here) that have interests in alternative modding solutions as well.

I get that it's less profitable for tuners to provide E85 kits, but why do we, as consumers, care about their profit? You're speaking to the business side as if we care how much profit they make per product. From our standpoint, we would like quality products, that substantial positive gains, that preferably don't cost an arm and a leg.

There are a few people that I follow on Facebook and Instagram that have upgraded turbos and I know of a shop that has installed them on a couple different cars and said they are straight up not worth it. They said as of right now, downpipes and tune are the only noticeable gains on this platform. Everything after that is irrelevant and meniscule and track times will prove that.

Maybe I'm biased because there are 3 E85 stations within 10 minutes of my house (and the fuel is cheap too), and I'm coming from the GT-R world where flex fuel provides substantial gains to the platform; but if you notice a lot of high horsepower street cars have this capability and it seems like a more feasible option than housing MS109 drums in your garage.

I'd just like to hear if there is any research being done into this or not... and I'm hoping our discussion can spark some response from one of the major tuning companies.

gaspam

like you, i dont really care what the tuners make in profit either, im just saying that's what drives their interest in creating something.

even though i know people want coca-cola on the private beach (amg tuning crowd) and i know i would sell a few, im not pushing a cart and selling them on the beach because i know the per unit profit isnt worth it as i would have to sell 1000 per day to make a living.... now on a uber crowded public beach on spring break with 100,000 kids (say honda tuning crowd), it would be worth it....plus, BOOBIES!

b0kix

I am testing out the stock fueling system on my E63 amg M157 motor.

So far i have been running E40 mixture of E85 with no problems, i think the stock fueling system on stock turbos will support at least E70 mix. I can feel much faster on the E85 mix with any tuning. I will strap it on the dyno and do some testing soon.

Fairbird

140 mph you'll see system pressure to low , mod turbo completely out of range

gaspam

i had this come up on my car when doing a testing run up to 165mph.... at first thought it was spark blowout/misfires as car started to stumble and went into limp mode... pulled over checked codes, restarted went home and talked to renntech and they said they needed to adjust my tune as MB has a electronic limit built into the fueling and it just limits pressure to a certain amount even though the system can pump more.... they removed that limitation in my tune and no more low fuel pressure at extended high mph runs

its odd that i never heard about that before as its known to renntech, but then again I guess it only shows up on very high mph extended runs on and off the throttle so i guess not a lot of people are doing that or reporting it.... just odd they dont change their tune to remove that limitation in the first place

efiftyfizzle

Good work! Let us know what you find!

Fairbird

was it on pump gas ?

gaspam

yep

Fairbird

on E85 mix or what ever it happens way sooner and engine runs lean at high speeds or limp mode

gaspam

yep, exactly! That was kind of my point that it was already happening to me on regular fuel at 165 mph so on e85 or whatever it will definitely happen way sooner but then again that was happening to me not for mechanical limitations of the fuel system but because of electronic limits put in place to by mb which can be lifted as renntech lifted them on mine

b0kix

So far 8 gallons of e85 and rest of 93 oct, car feel strong I did many high speed runs no code or anything AFR is on point, car feels real strong,
I don't have downpipes just filters and tune, I will strap her back on the dyno and do some timing adjustments for e85 . Post results soon.