Groundbreaking E-85 Fuel Test

Weeks ago, the horsepower guys stepped up to the challenge of building a solid 6 L LS motor for a bare bones budget of two grand. But phase one was just the beginning

after hitting our mark in the first stage and making 386 horsepower. Last week. In stage two, we added a hotter Cam

Beehive springs

and 185 roller rockers

pumping the power number up to 411.

So now we got a fresh motor with new internals and well even a upgraded valve train, we could stop right now and have a pretty stout street engine.

But we're not, you see in this phase, we're gonna see how much air and fuel we can cram into it. Yep, it's all about the intake.

The stock LSEF I intake was a major milestone for GM with good performance for the street,

but leave it to those gear heads in the aftermarket to make a good thing even better

before we install it though. We've got to replace the stock Valley pad boats with tall heads for the supply butt head boats. They'll give us a little more room

this fast LSX intake has a 92 millimeter throttle body opening more plenum volume and longer runners that are tapered for more power right out of the box. Now, this is on a compliment the comp cams cam shaft we already installed and any other components we plan on throwing to this motor. Later on,

we're gonna use these injectors from fast. They are a 24 pound just like the factory. 11 of the difference is it's taller

and they create better fuel atomization thanks to four holes in the tip compared to two in the stock injector

that like turning a hose into a pressure washer.

We're also using a set of their high flow build aluminum fuel rails. Now, these things have been anodized red and the main benefit is the larger internal diameter which has been designed to dampen the injector pulse and give you more fuel volume.

You know, it happens all the time in performance bills. One upgrade requires another. In our case. In order to introduce more air into our fast intake, we need a bigger mouth throttle body.

I guess that's why they call this one, the big mouth

it's made especially for our 92 millimeter intake. In addition to more throttle control, it's got thicker blades to eliminate deflection

and beefed up linkage for precise throttle control. And that's it for our upgrade

from Walmart. We salvation army hats

and our little pails.

Let's hope it makes a pail full of horse

p

I love fuel injection stuff. Plug and play plug and play.

We've got a half inch to go and I could always weld a little extension plate onto it when in doubt, drill it out.

Lamar.

Lamar close,

open

good. Unless you reprogram your ef I computer to work with your aftermarket parts. It's kind of like trying to drive a race car with square tires. Now, the guys at Howell programmed ours before last week's cam swap and that should work well with our new intake, but in case it doesn't, they also sent us this one which has a richer tune. Hey, you ready?

Ready?

Heard of

things moving?

Can you hear

after warming up with the motor and giving the computer time to get acquainted with our upgrades? We can see how our first date on the

dyno

goes.

Whoa, way down on power,

way down.

All right, here we go again.

It's going away fast,

the more you run it, the worse it gets

so far. It's kind of like getting the cold shoulder

bigger cam rock arms intake.

We lost 100 horsepower.

Maybe even like getting a slap in the face.

Damn it, man.

Hey, we don't take rejection easily

time to make a different move. Using the second computer.

It'll take our engines timing up about 10 degrees.

All right, I'm gonna make one.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. That's it.

All right.

430 horsepower. 405 ft pounds of torque on the first pole

and with the computer it's just gonna keep learning those parameters and get in sync and really, really get tuned in here by itself. That's exactly what happened, run after run

until the motor and computer got thoroughly friendly.

514, 481 consistent. Very nice.

It should be a fun little street motor.

Yeah, you heard it right. 514 horsepower. And that's 100 and 28 over our baseline a few weeks ago.

Money wise,

well, about five grand for motor parts, everything

the other way to look at it, about 10 bucks of horsepower. And that's a good deal. Any day.

You happy.

We just made 514 horsepower with our LQ four on the

dyno on premium pump gas.

Now taking its place is our trusty 383 mule motor

for a first time fuel test with E 85.

We use this 383 to test bang for the buck benefits of everything from carbs and cams to intakes and headers and today for its baseline 459 horsepower on premium pump gas.

But will it make more power burn in E 85? Well, that's something we're gonna find out here in a few minutes now, as you know, E 85 is 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline. Now, while there's a lot of talk going on these days about its pros and cons here are some fast facts that may get you back on track. About E 85

ethanol

blended gasoline has proven to reduce emissions while enhancing engine performance

for weekend racers. E 85 is a less expensive version of high octane, clean burning race fuel

for high compression street machines, fuel mileage will be lower but so is the price per gallon at the pump

right now. Our goal is to make this small block of motor that runs on E 85 by making a few cheap modifications to this Haley 750 carburetor

to get us there. We ordered this conversion kit from Rob Mix services and E 85 carbs.com now because the 85 burns faster, more fuel has to flow through the carburetor. So all the little pieces in this kit were designed with that mission in mind like larger jets,

needle and seat power valve and billet metering blocks.

The first thing you wanna do is remove the balls and metering blocks from your car

if you have jet extensions on the secondary block, which we don't go ahead and remove them so you can reuse them. Otherwise the entire block is history.

Next. Remove the four screws that hold the accelerator pump

carefully, peel the old diaphragm off and keep the spring,

making sure the mating surface is clean. Install the new diaphragm using the spring from your old pump and tighten the screws in a cross pattern.

I replaced the diaphragms in our carburetor because they came new in the kit. But here's something to check out. The new diaphragm is made up of a GFLT alcohol resistant rubber. Now, if you have an older style carburetor, you could have a black rubber diaphragm like this, which the alcohol will eat right through

and you don't even need to take it apart to find it. All you need to do is look at the gasket overhang.

Now, even though it's hard to tell the new needle and see is a little larger.

Now, remove the rubber gasket and replace it with a nylon one,

reinstall the needle and seat

and the lockdown screw, which also gets a nylon.

After following the same steps on the other fuel bowl, you're ready to convert the metering block over to E 85 which only involves four steps and the first one is installing the power valve,

the new jets are next and you can actually see how much larger they are than the stock.

Try to use a jet tool to install the jet. If you use a flat blade screwdriver, you can actually damage it.

We need to change the idle restrictors to larger ones from the kit

and change the position of the emulsion programming plugs since the block was set up for gasoline,

remove the stock shooters

and replace them with the higher flowing ones from the kit.

Now you can reinstall the metering blocks

and the fuel bowl back onto the main body. Now with the fuel bowl, make sure the actuator arm is above the pump lever,

the carburetor is done, but you're not to complete this conversion in your vehicle. You may need to make some modifications to your fuel system

like having a pump that's compatible with the 85 and can flow up to 30% more fuel. Plus the lines need to be either stainless steel or rubber with a liner that's compatible with the E 85.

After setting the floats, they recommend sending the idle adjustment screws 1.5 turns off the seated position.

You ready?

The motor not only fired right up, it ran noticeably cooler

and surprisingly required no tuning before our first full run

pretty good.

After giving the motor a total of five degrees more timing. We were making 12 ft pounds of torque and almost 18 horsepower more than we made with gasoline

4 77/4 59.

Pretty impressive.

Here's a graph that compares E 85 with the solid lines to gasoline, with the broken lines, green, it's torque whites, horsepower and notice how those power curves are identical except for the performance gains with E 85. And down here, this is fuel consumption and well as expected, we consumed about 24% more with our E 85.

Yeah, a little bit of water.

Our kit from E 85 carbs.com set us back $295 and they've got kits for any size carb, got to point out that E 85 absorbs water quickly. So it's only recommended for vehicles that are driven on a regular basis. Modifying a fuel injected engine is a little more difficult. There's a few extra steps and you have to get the computer recalibrated. 01 more thing when we went to get our E 85 fuel today, it was less than half the cost of regular gas at 86 cents a gallon.

Hey, welcome back. As the oldest kids on the power block horsepower is now into its 13th year, believe it or not,

of day one heads up. Grassroots racing has been part of our game plan now. That hasn't changed. But

what has is the amazing speed quickness and record times of some of these race cars

they called it the N MC A has a

street car series back in the late nineties

and the top dogs were post street icons like Tony Christian and his 1957 chef.

I look to go uh

hopefully goes to the 470 area somewhere that equates to about a 730.

Here's a 1997 race in Bowling Green, Kentucky where Tony wins with a 479 at 100 and 51 miles an hour.

Same here at Rockingham. Tony's longtime rival, Pat

Yi sets a series record with a 471 in his old green Camaro.

You must feel pretty good right now. Real good. Yeah.

Hey,

let's see. Him beat me. That's all I got to say.

Pat beat his old pro this time.

But the winning run times of street car racing would change dramatically during the years that followed

year 2005, the place Huntsville Dragway,

Horsepower's first TV, taste of eight F

racing courtesy of the outlaw street car racing association.

But we were impressed with the bad burnouts. The wow, real stands

and the close heads up shootouts.

It was also an historic visit.

Outlaw hit five racer, Terry Robbins unloaded his nire Camaro and became the first in his class to break into the 440

one year later, Tim Lynch brings his turbo

charged Mustang to the Horsepower

Orsa

finals and runs a remarkable 436.

We knew it was possible. We, we weren't sure

the track is there for it and the conditions were here for it.

Well, here we are in the 08 finals, several racers run in the four twenties. But as they say, wait, there's more

same event round two of qualifying

and Chuck

s in the left lane runs an unbelievable backed up et of 418.

They've, they've definitely set the bar for outlaw 10 5 ra

and far none

in outlaw racing. The quest for quickness will be a never ending endeavor,

build on a budget horsepower projects that save you time and money.

You know, we're pretty fortunate to have a big collection of Matco tools here in our shop. But

hey, let's be real. Unless you do this for a living, you're not gonna have every tool for every job that comes along.

So we've come up with some ways that

you can make do by making it yourself. For example, most of you probably don't have the special tool needed to install the radiator hose adapter onto an electric water pump. So what you end up doing is using a pair of channel locks and scarring up the Anno

di finish. Like this one,

the manufacturer makes a tool to fit inside these little holes. But with all the different sizes who can afford that, you can make your own though. And it involves using a piece of half inch bar stock

and a couple of dow pins

first, insert the dow pins into the adapter,

then protect the part with a piece of tape.

Now hold the bar stock up to the dolls and tack them together,

add a little paint and you've got a cool custom made tool to install or uninstall radiator hose adapters and electric water pumps.

And best of all your new part stays nice and shiny under the hood.

Let's say your motor's got a weak cylinder here. You know, you're getting sparked to it, but you don't know where the problem really is. Well, you could spend 100 bucks on a professional leak down test kit

or make a poor man's version.

You take an old spark plug that fits the engine and knock off the outer porcelain,

then turn it over and pull off the ground strap,

then chisel out the rest of the porcelain, leaving only the outer shell.

Then after welding an air fitting to it, you're ready for a link down check

and this Firebirds motor is a perfect candidate. It belongs to the muscle car guys and

it let go in a big way during a recent road test. I think we killed it.

So we know this motor is hurt. We just don't know exactly where.

Hopefully though, with the help of our new homemade tool, we'll find out

we'll start here with the cylinder where we really suspect a problem.

Then we turn the engine over until the piston in question is at top dead center on the compression stroke. Then we attach the hose to our modified plug. Now, look and listen,

if there's air coming out of the valve cover, it's probably a piston ring and,

well, this cylinder is obviously showing the symptoms.

Now, if you hear air coming out of the exhaust outlet,

it's likely to be a leaky exhaust valve and well, sounds like we may have one of those too.

Now, if you hear air coming out of the carb,

it could be a leaking intake valve. And, well, that's one thing that isn't wrong with this motor.

Well, it looks like our poor man's lead down tester works at the cost a $1 air fitting and

one retired spark plug.

There's nothing worse than digging through a nasty toolbox looking for the right drill bit. And we all know that the drill bit, index boxes only last for a week.

So here's something I did in my own shop. It's easy and it'll keep you organized.

Get a piece of two inch square tubing and make a mark down one side,

lay out the drill bits for spacing.

Then using the line as a reference drill, a pilot hole,

let the bit find its home and drill deep enough to create a dimple to hold it upright.

You can paint it any color to match your shop.

Then you get creative and make some legs.

Either way,

you're repurposing a bunch of old parts for laying around your shop. Very cool. And we can call it the bit, buddy. I like it like that,

man. What a day we've had in the shop. 514 horsepower with our LS motor. We made a budget friendly E 85 conversion. Oh, and made some handy tools for next to nothing. What else could you ask for? Maybe another show next week? We'll see you then

the bit buddy.