TimZ

Not necessarily. I just had mine anodized - it wasn't that expensive and they turned it around in just a couple of days.

Also, no brass and no bare aluminum in the fuel system.

Yeah, the user interface isn't very intuitive - kind of like setting the time in a 1980's VCR. Basically if you skip Step 2 and perform Steps 3 and 4 from the setup manual you should be fine.

I use the EVC-IV. I'd recommend bypassing the fuzzy logic stuff and doing the manual setup - it's a couple of extra steps, but much less frustrating in the end. Also - DO NOT mount the stepper motor upside down - if it gets wet in this orientation it will stop working correctly and you will overboost. Manuals: http://www.hksusa.com/info/download.asp?id=1644 http://www.hksusa.com/info/download.asp?id=1643#

Looks like Ron Beat me to it - I was going to suggest the same. Fouled plugs are very common on first startups with an untested fresh calibration (this is a programmable EFI, right?). You might want to back off on your cold start enrichments a bit just to decrease the likelihood of it happening again.

Thanks! Here's a link with some interior pics: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=112290 The intake in the pic that Phil showed above is a set of TWM individual throttle bodies on a Mikuni manifold - I made the plenum that is visible in the vid.

Not sure about Chevy sizes per se, but the general idea is feasible. Trouble is that you are now talking custom valve guides, custom keepers and retainers, and probably custom springs to make this all work. Plus, all of the required research as to dimensioning everything to come out right for the Datsun head/cam/valve train wll be on you. While you are at it, it would be nice to be able to go to beehive springs - when I looked into this I couldn't find quite the right combo of length, travel, id/od and rate without remachining the valve seats lower in the head and/or making custom retainers. Also for my application, going to a smaller stem size wasn't prudent, given the high EGTs that I was anticipating - especially on the exhaust valve. The intake valve is much heaver anyway, so you could just do this on the intake if you really wanted to.

I completely agree - the difference between a 4' fan and driving down the road is huge. If you don't believe this, go back and look at the fan used in the wind tunnel tests - that's what you need if you want to simulate real-world airflow through the engine bay. While I wasn't having coolant temp problems in my last set of dyno pulls (I've gone back to the mechanical fan), I was seeing very different manifold air temps - on the order of 150 degF peak vs 105-110 peak at max boost on the road. The intercooler simply heat soaks on longer dyno pulls. Next time I go back, I'm going to try a few pulls in 3rd vs 4th to see if that helps - 4th should be the most efficient from a drivetrain loss point of view, but 3rd would give the intercooler less time to heat soak, and might give more comparable performance to the real world. I know Jeff was being somewhat facetious here, but I don't think this would prove anything anyway. Everybody seems to think that there is such a huge difference between Mustang vs Dynojet to the point where a Dynojet is now "useless", how are you even going to begin to quantify the differences between these two completely different measurement methods? (JeffP - this is not directed at you - I believe I already saw others suggesting this or something similar as a method for verifying drivetrain loss). I generally don't even try to talk about how the power at the wheels translates to power at the flywheel - it just generates more confusion. Back to tuning - on gas, my EGTs did run cooler at 11.5 AFR than they did at 12, and there wasn't any additional power to be had at 12 for my setup. I think that what you need for AFR is very dependent on you setup - cam specs, turbo sizing, head design and CR all play into this too. Full disclosure here - my EGTs at 11.5 were still very high, probably considerably higher than what Jeff was getting - just wanted to point out that running 12:1 AFR vs 11.5 didn't help in my case. Also, somebody mentioned allowing a cool down between runs - this is very important. I generally monitor my MAT, and wait for it to drop back to the same temperature before starting the next run. I got the same crap the last time I posted dyno numbers, and it is very frustrating. I even got accused of fudging the dyno cals to get higher numbers, and one "genius" even claimed that there was "no way" that I was making over 300hp. I guess I must have changed the cal in the middle of each pull so that the off-boost numbers wouldn't look suspicious. Whatever:rolleyesg. The end result of that was that I don't post or try to help out nearly as often as I used to. Has anybody noticed that Jeff doesn't post that often, either?

Unfortunately I don't have a pic handy, but it looks pretty similar to the one in this post: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=119761 Another nice thing about running two pumps is I can stage them such that the second one only comes on when I exceed a preset boost level, so it's quiet at idle.

Hi John.. Those numbers look correct to me - if you are going to E85, you might think about just going to 150lb injectors - they seem to be easier to come by and should have plenty of capacity. I was able to get mine to idle on both gas and E85 in full sequential mode. For gas you can always drop the static pressure down, too - I was able to go as low as 29psi static rail pressure on gas and they still worked fine. I'm running 38psi static with E85 now. I did go ahead and modify my stock tank when I switched to E85. You will want to drop the tank and have it cleaned and internally coated with an alcohol resistant coating before running E85 (they used "red kote" on mine as I recall)- it appears that many of the stories involving E85 ruining fuel pumps have more to do with the E85 loosening old varnish and deposits in old tanks, which subsequently gets sucked into the pump. I added a rear sump with two -8 outlets, each feeding one of my two pumps.

kinda like the beard comb-over? ...sorry, couldn't resist!

Sorry I'm a bit late to the conversation, but I'm thinking that's a bit small, too - aren't the stock injectors bigger than that? Six 14lb injectors are only good for about 170hp, and that's assuming higher compression for .5 BFSC, and 100% duty cycle. Probably really only good for 140-150hp at the flywheel. 550cc might be a bit too big, but I'd think you'd want to at least be in the high teens or low 20's. What were your horsepower goals?

The Mikuni-tyle ITB manifolds have virtually no room for bolts, either - you can always use studs instead. It's an interesting thought - am I interpreting this correctly that the manifold plenum would actually be on the passenger side of the engine (US passengers, that is)? If so, you are going to want to incorporate some sort of quick release mechanism so that you can still get to the valve cover for things like valve adjustments, etc. Take a look at Monzster's Wiggins clamp arrangement on his manifold for instance - there are some less expensive options you could use, such a v-band clamps. One thing you might consider - since you are going this far out of the box, it might be good to think about using a symmetrical plenum design to get more even flow distribution to the cylinders - think 5 liter Mustang manifolds. Also, didn't somebody just do something similar with a diesel manifold? Sounds painful It would also give you less exposure to exhaust manifold heat - if you did the quick release thing above, you might be able to get by with something trick like carbon fiber for the passenger side bits. Monzter did a post in the early stages of his manifold development that looked into runner transition designs - that would be a good place to start.

Yes - I think I forgot that the original post was regarding a high compression n/a engine, not a turbo'ed one like mine. For my setup, if I really needed to go back to gasoline, all I would need to do would be to run the majority of the e85 out, refill with gas and load my old gas calibration. For a longer trip, e85 is really starting to be available in a lot of locations across the Midwest - the link I provided earlier would probably allow you to plan out a viable route pretty easily.

You've mentioned this several times now, and I have not been able to find information to corroborate it. As far as I've been able to find, synthetic ethanol production accounts for less than 10% of worldwide production, and generally used for industrial applications, not for fuel and not for human consumption, since they generally add benzene to it to eliminate the last 4% of water. http://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/Products-Markets/European-trade-association-to-promote-synthetic-ethanol http://cta.ornl.gov/bedb/biofuels/ethanol/Ethanol_Overview.shtml http://resources.schoolscience.co.uk/GreenerIndustry/pages/ethanol/ethanol1AP.html http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article-print.jsp?article_id=2077 http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/#A As far as being too energy intensive, it depends on who is adding up the numbers. The number that I have seen indicates that ethanol produced from corn yields 34% more energy than it takes to produce it, including tilling the soil and harvesting it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol#Production

There are a few in your area: http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/stations/find_station.php notice that you can find other alternative fuel station from this site, too...

What dyno do you require that you would accept as proof? Also, just to be clear (again), I wasn't saying that Baz was lying, but that others were taking what he said a step or two farther.

Interesting work to be sure. But just to be clear, I didn't see them actually say that an engine had produced 245 hp with that head. I read that to say that the ports now flowed enough to support 245hp. Not the same thing. I'm not saying they didn't - they just didn't specifically say that they did. At least not in that thread...

Well, buying E85 at the pump is a whole different animal than making and storing your own, and a carb'ed microbus running hydrous ethanol in the 70's probably isn't the best example for drivability in the context of this thread. The "85" part of E85 varies from 70 to 85% depending on the season specifically to address the cold start issue (normal gas blends vary by season too, btw). I have found that it needs to run richer than my gas calibration while the warming up, but now that it's tuned, my car is more drivable than it has been in years. And I'm pretty certain it's making significantly more power. Also, I think I mentioned this before, but I'm currently seeing close to 15mpg on the highway, which might not sound like much but I don't think it's really much different than I was seeing on gas (maybe 19). As far as the 7mpg comment, I'm seeing better than that (8 to 9) even when I'm doing mostly full throttle tuning, and this engine is making north of 700hp at the flywheel. Where the money "ought to go" is a political discussion that has no place in this thread - sorry.

EGTs with E85 generally run 2-300 degF cooler than gasoline, so I doubt that heat would be much of an issue with the liners. Also - to address an earlier question that I don't think ever got answered, timing requirements for E85 are very similar to gasoline - you can run the same timing map in most cases. If you have been having to dial out a lot of timing to reduce ping on gas, you can most likely dial some timing back in with E85 (assuming you are running proper AFRs)

Is E85 coming to your area, or will you be relegated to using it in small amounts? Last I checked, there weren't many places carrying it in California. I'm lucky enough to have three stations now within about 4 miles.

On the subject of power, here is a post I made to a similar thread: http://forums.hybridz.org/showpost.php?p=858154&postcount=85 On mileage, I do think your goal of getting 35mpg is very optimistic, even with 14:1 compression. With the higher CR, you should be able to come within 10% of a typical mileage for gasoline. Honestly, I think you'd be hard pressed to get 35mpg from gas on an L-series Z. I'm still doing a fair amount of tuning, which includes lots of time on boost, but I did try to check highway mileage - right now I'm seeing abouit 15mpg on the highway (my setup is a bit extreme, though )

No you've got it backwards - E85 is Ethanol with 15% gasoline in it. I'm pretty sure there is no power advantage for Ethanol or Methanol injection over E85. I wouldn't have bothered if it had just been 15% Ethanol. Plus - it's "pump gas" (more accurately "pump fuel"), so there is no secondary tank that will cause my more to run lean if it runs dry.

Just for the record, methanol is far more corrosive than ethanol. Most modern fuel lines are not made from rubber any more, and it's not too hard to find hoses that are compatible. For my E85 conversion, I ended up having the aluminum bits in my fuel system anodized, replaced the injector o-rings with viton rings and had the fuel tank cleaned and coated. So far I the only issue I have noticed is that the hardware store teflon paste that I used on a couple of fittings got dissolved by the ethanol. The higher quality teflon pastes don't seem to have this problem. As far as power goes, there is a noticeable difference (i.e., more ), and the flammability limits of E85 are wider, so I can cruise at considerably farther north of stoich than I ever could on gas. I'm able to run 11.5 to 12:1 AFRs on cruise, which is equivalent to 16.9 to 17.6 on gas. Also, while not good for fuel economy, e85 continues to make power all the way down to around 6.97:1 (like 10.4 on gas)

That's a good idea - I'd also suggest getting some measurements for similar pulls on the street, just to get an idea of how much your MAT climbs normally during a 3rd or 4th gear pull, similar to what you would do on the dyno (assuming you can find someplace to do that safely and without getting arrested ). What I have found is that even when you let things stabilize between runs (a MUST for consistent pulls), the temps climb at a much higher rate than normal for any given run when you are on the dyno.