Quote:
Originally Posted by pokeybritches
Thanks for the reply! To clear things up - I can see the kit adding a bit of a safety margin and a bit of power at the expense of more fuel, should you run a pump gas tune. If your base tune's timing isn't advanced, then you won't be taking full advantage of the E85. You will certainly get some advantages from running E85 as the ECU can advance timing to a certain degree, but some will be lost.
I see the kit's merits if you keep a conservative base tune- and by "conservative" I mean you can run slightly more aggressive timing than stock. I can see it being a good buy for track guys and those that only have access to lower quality fuel (like California 91).
However, the maximum benefits of E85 are beyond this kit, simply because there's no way to adjust timing based on ethanol content. The only way to get maximum benefits from E85 would be to get a C85 tune on the dyno, and only run 85% ethanol. I was pointing out that this method is the only way to take full advantage of E85, and it's not really safe to do this.
Theoretically you could get a dyno tune on E50 and run this kit for significantly more power, as long as you only filled the car with pump E85 (which varies between 50% and 85% ethanol). But, you'd be limited to not running pump gas. I might be interested in doing this in the future though  |
This kit should only be used with a pump gas tune. It's the only true flex fuel solution. The reason being you can run your 91/93octane OTS or custom tune on pump gas and use any blend of e85 and not have to tune for it. Using this kit with an e85 tune will cause bad misfires and blow your motor.
You either use this kit with a pump gas tune or stock ecu software and enjoy the flex fuel capabilities, or you get a e85 tune only and if you want to run pump gas you will have to reflash the dme. I'm not new to this, I did this 2 years ago and paired my car with a VF engineering Alpha N tune. The car was a rocket.
This kit is used a lot of the E9x M3 platform which I'm greatly knowledgeable in. They're doing the same thing on every platform that the kit is running on, just changing the fueling via injector pulse. Running a custom e85 tune in my opinion is pointless and a waste of money imo. There's little to no benefits from the added stress and higher timing targets. On the e92 m3 the most power I've seen being extracted on a FBO N/A motor with e85 is using a Gintani pump gas tune and flex fuel kit. If you look at RKtunes custom e85 tunes and Gintani e85 tunes you can see they're barely touching 400whp. Most are in the 390s. I've seen the AFD get over 400whp consistently (406whp on e65 fuel) and that's running a pump gas tuning with lower timing targets. My buddy who works closely with gintani had his FBO e92 M3 custom tuned by them on ignite e98 fuel with locked timing, with the added locked timing and MUCH greater stress they made 5whp more.
AFD+pump tune= lower safer timing targets and more power. Just my .02 cents from experience! If you don't have a tune or already have a tune, just grab a kit and go! You do not need to worry about changing software. There is a member here with a VF blower who just picked up this kit. For supercharged cars you will need an upgraded in tank fuel pump. I'm going to be using this kit with my car and will be installing either a VF blower/ESS kit soon. I appreciate the great discussion. I would love to work together with everyone to push our Z4m's to a new limit and greater development on N/A and supercharged builds!
