E85 or 93+Methanol tunes for the track (road course)

B8 S4
#41

Thank you Jspazz, West, and Drob, I appreciate your contributions to the conversation. To clarify, I was sharing what information I had gathered from doing a survey of the field but I really don’t have an interest in going with the latter two options.

Jspazz, I am working on my suspension/tire/chassis setup as well, and I do appreciate that +30hp is nothing in the grand scheme. Good to keep in mind when making tuning decisions, no doubt. Reliability is a big issue, I’ve seen too many track weekends cut short by broken cars. Then yeah, chassis may be the better place to spend my resources on near term. The very first mod I did was a BBK, followed by tires. Just installed some suspension bits last week and am planning on coilovers and adjustable control arms soon. Just feeling the need for speed at the moment (so that may be next).

Drob, excellent to hear that heat soak hasn’t been a concern with your car, even with Stg II, I’ll keep that in mind. Ironically, in the Porsche I was seeing extremely high oil/coolant temps, I think part of that was due to a lot of time spent near redline (easy to do with a PDK transmission). I was on the edge with my temps but no heat related failures luckily.

I do track in super hot weather 90-100+ degrees a few weekends a year, but still, if that is only costing me 30-50hp, probably not something to be overly concerned about.

Good comments all, thanks.

#42

Have You tried freezing a gallon of e85?
In Brazil we used to freeze 10Lof ethanol and remove the frozen top layer (water) to achieve 100% alcohol. (Or at least what we thought it was since the water was frozen and removed)

With that said ethanol is a fuel in consumption there for decades with engines being developed for that fuel for many many years. Our ethanol content is 95% ethanol 5%water mix.

Removing that 5% always made a decent difference on the strip. For a race though? Idk how would that be possible…

But if you looking to create a proper mix I guess it wouldn’t hurt you to have a 100% ethanol content to create a proper mix.

Also, as a personal experience, once we started throwing 100% ethanol in the tank we started seeing stresses that were beyond race fuel. We blew a rod in a matter of weeks. Then it was the corrosion on the metal since alcohol is more aggressive than gasoline.
(It was a 2.0L saveiro - AP Volkswagen engine)

U have lots to consider if you go that route. Injectors going to have to be massive for a good strong output. Then there is fuel pump, fuel lines, electronics…

U better off running a nice mix or cashing out for proper race gas.

~Paulo

#43

I forgot to mention we added “Cal virgem” (CaO?) to the mix. So the cal virgem would react with the water and precipitate at the bottom. I believe it created calcium hydroxide?

Man I miss chemistry classes…

#44

Thats a lot of great information. first hand experience is always valuable

#45

http://www.amasci.net/misc/ethanol-distillation.php?lang=eng

I just did a little Google search for “ethanol purification calcium oxide” and first result was this link, which surprisingly enough it’s extremely similar to what we were doing in Brasil.

Only difference we would freeze the content and and finalize with a much much more rustic way of distillation to remove the calcium hydroxide completely. I guess it was redundant since we could just run the distillation and it would acquire the same final results.

With that said… It was cumbersome to some extent to go through that… But we were young and didn’t have bills and taxes and wife’s or girlfriends and our lives were filled with petrol fumes and who has the biggest turbo lmao.

#46

Thanks for the comments about your experiences Paulo, very interesting.

So I was at the track this weekend and I saw an Evo that was in my group parked with 4 jugs of fuel next to it. I asked and sure enough he was running E85. He recently installed a Zeitronix kit and said his last few fuel ups have been 82% ethanol. I asked him about cooling and he said he hadn’t taken measurents but that the car had been running fine and it was more about increased power for him though he was aware of the cooler running benefits.

Also, just some anecdotal data points from running a stock tune on a hot day. It was 99+ degrees out during my 3rd session today and my oil and coolant temps were surprisingly low. I think the highest oil temp I saw was 240 degrees Fahrenheit and coolant was hovering around 200 (at least right when I came off track). I need to go back and check my data logs to see if I got any coolant spikes during my runs but 200 isn’t bad. It looks like our cars are more prepared for hot weather than I anticipated. Anyone care to share there max oil/coolant temps from running with a tune on a hot day?

#47

Keep in mind that you are seeing coolant temps in the engine circuit, so not really indicative of the blower loop. Even though the circuits aren’t divorced, the mixing is probably minimal (at least most guys here claimed that was the case). Would be nice to get some logs while lapping, but without a wireless vcds setup, it’s always too much hassle from my experience. IAT logging would probably tell you a lot about how much heat soak you were dealing with.

#48

Ahh, interesting on the engine circuit and blower loop being somewhat separated. I’m logging OBD data with Harry’s LapTimer and a wireless OBDII dongle, though Harry’s doesn’t grab much. I do have coolant temps at least and it is showing slightly north of 200 (maybe 205-210) in the graphs that Harry’s provides (I’m still trying to figure out how to export the OBD data from Harry’s). Next time I am out I’ll try and get some IAT logs with my Android/Torque/OBDII-dongle setup, though it likely won’t be as hot as it was the last few days (absolutely blistering).

For reference: http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/604214-S4-Torque-App-for-Android-Bluetooth-OBDII-Monitor-Coolant-Temperature-and-Boost?highlight=obdii

While I’m at it, anything else I should grab from the list available sensors?

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y152/zmansoon/AvailableSensors01.png

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y152/zmansoon/AvailableSensors02.png

#49

IAT’s would be an excellent signal to log, will strongly correlate with how much power you are able to make. Truly measuring power would derive from boost, lambda and ignition timing I suppose. But the car generally heat soaks by overwhelming the blower intercooler loop, which causes ignition to retard and pressure to drop. I guess your E85 experiment wouldn’t show up in IAT’s though, aside from the parasitic heat transfer from combustion chamber to intake manifold (I could be wrong about that).

The reason I say you are only reading engine coolant is we’ve seen that a failed t-stat stays in the “stuck” position - where it never opens to the main radiator coolant loop. This leads the in-dash gauge to soar and tells the driver to immediately pull over.

I think the only person who ever had a real-time blower circuit temp reading was skywagon, and that was GMP installing an analog sensor in there and connecting to the P3.

#50

Got a recommendation on a obd2 dongle for use with Harry’s? I’m assuming there probably isn’t much difference between the many on Amazon? I probably won’t leave it on every day, will use p3.

Also anyone got a favorite mount compatible with a galaxy s4? I’ll run a power cord to the phone while connected fwiw.

#51

If you are planning to use it regularly at the track I would go with Harry’s recommendation and get an OBDLink LX Bluetooth (note this is only compatible with Android and not iOS).

http://www.gps-laptimer.de/compatibility/android
https://www.scantool.net/obdlink-lx.html

I have an OBDLink MX Wifi unit (iOS compatible) and like it but have had some issues with it having an intermittent WiFi connection. I’m trying to exchange it for a new unit now and think they will accommodate (I got a very early pre-order unit that may have still had some bugs).

Then if you just want to take some logs for fun with Torque on Android (or with Harry’s) I might go with a cheap ELM327 based unit from Amazon (I have one of these also). The OBDLink units are generally higher quality though, have better support (vs no support), and can read at faster rates, I think upwards of 100 PID’s per second for the pricier units.

#52

Thanks for the recs, just ordered the goods from amazon along with a RAM mount. Need to do an oil change and then pretty much ready to rock July 25 with Audi club at mid Ohio.