A few weeks ago, we put the blue ST back on the dyno at @nostrumhp for some R&D activities. Throughout our tuning journey with this platform, we've seen many different ethanol blends on record-breaking cars. This has led to questions like, "Will I make more power on my E50 tune if I drop to 40%?" and the perception that E60 will yield more power. However, that’s not the case.
For optimal power, you want to run the highest possible ethanol content. Most gains on the dyno occur up to about 40%, after which the gains start to taper off but you will still see minimal gains all the way to 85% ethanol.
Another significant benefit of higher ethanol content is at the track. Over the course of a ¼ mile, a blend of 30-40% ethanol may lose power on the big end of the track due to spark correction, while E85 typically holds the timing curve throughout.
For fun, I wanted to show you the horsepower potential of a bone-stock Explorer ST running on E85 with the stock fuel system. We also installed the Nostrum Stage X fuel system to future-proof the car. These dyno results show we achieved about 10 more horsepower on E85 than we did on E50.
Looking at the dyno chart, you will notice we had to limit the boost to what the fuel system could support. Since the fuel pump is a positive displacement pump driven off the cam, the actual fuel flow depends on the engine's RPM. To maintain our target fuel pressure of 3600 PSI, we had to sacrifice some torque. However, as RPM increased, this discrepancy lessened since we could ramp up the boost and still come out with a pretty good HP figure.
All in all, even on the stock fuel system, achieving 480 horsepower is impressive and comparable to what we typically see on a 93-octane tune with turbos nearly maxed out.
The key takeaway is that the higher the ethanol content, the better your performance will be. Aim for as close to 85% ethanol as possible, with the only reason to reduce the ethanol content being due to fuel system capacity limits.
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For optimal power, you want to run the highest possible ethanol content. Most gains on the dyno occur up to about 40%, after which the gains start to taper off but you will still see minimal gains all the way to 85% ethanol.
Another significant benefit of higher ethanol content is at the track. Over the course of a ¼ mile, a blend of 30-40% ethanol may lose power on the big end of the track due to spark correction, while E85 typically holds the timing curve throughout.
For fun, I wanted to show you the horsepower potential of a bone-stock Explorer ST running on E85 with the stock fuel system. We also installed the Nostrum Stage X fuel system to future-proof the car. These dyno results show we achieved about 10 more horsepower on E85 than we did on E50.
Looking at the dyno chart, you will notice we had to limit the boost to what the fuel system could support. Since the fuel pump is a positive displacement pump driven off the cam, the actual fuel flow depends on the engine's RPM. To maintain our target fuel pressure of 3600 PSI, we had to sacrifice some torque. However, as RPM increased, this discrepancy lessened since we could ramp up the boost and still come out with a pretty good HP figure.
All in all, even on the stock fuel system, achieving 480 horsepower is impressive and comparable to what we typically see on a 93-octane tune with turbos nearly maxed out.
The key takeaway is that the higher the ethanol content, the better your performance will be. Aim for as close to 85% ethanol as possible, with the only reason to reduce the ethanol content being due to fuel system capacity limits.
Sent from my SM-S938U1 using Tapatalk
