Filed under: Ethanol
Guess who's back? The 30-minute E85 conversion kit from FlexTek
FlexTek's first commercial.
I know that converting your standard gasoline-burning into an E85-capable vehicle is possible. I even know people who've done it. But I don't think it's supposed to be easy, and so I get this wary feeling in my gut reading this message from FlexTek. We've warned about FlexTek before, and some readers took our side and some said that converting was a mostly positive experience. So when CarJunky put out a FlexTek release earlier this week, I thought it'd be a good idea to revive the debate on these conversion kits, and see if our readers had any updated personal stories on using them. The FlexTek kits are currently being tested by Minnesota State University, and hopefully the results will come our sooner rather than later so we can settle this. I suppose I should contact the folks in Michigan who are installing these kits and see what they have to say.
The release quotes Bill Smith, president of XcelPlus (American FlexTek seller) that "most cars can be retrofitted in just about an hour or less with this technology that was developed in Brazil." If anyone knows from ethanol, it's the Brazilians, so FlexTek has got that going for them. I'll stand behind our earlier post and embrace the skeptcism for now.
[Source: CarJunky]
I know that converting your standard gasoline-burning into an E85-capable vehicle is possible. I even know people who've done it. But I don't think it's supposed to be easy, and so I get this wary feeling in my gut reading this message from FlexTek. We've warned about FlexTek before, and some readers took our side and some said that converting was a mostly positive experience. So when CarJunky put out a FlexTek release earlier this week, I thought it'd be a good idea to revive the debate on these conversion kits, and see if our readers had any updated personal stories on using them. The FlexTek kits are currently being tested by Minnesota State University, and hopefully the results will come our sooner rather than later so we can settle this. I suppose I should contact the folks in Michigan who are installing these kits and see what they have to say.
The release quotes Bill Smith, president of XcelPlus (American FlexTek seller) that "most cars can be retrofitted in just about an hour or less with this technology that was developed in Brazil." If anyone knows from ethanol, it's the Brazilians, so FlexTek has got that going for them. I'll stand behind our earlier post and embrace the skeptcism for now.
[Source: CarJunky]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mobile_army_sugical_hospital 11:42AM (3/30/2007)
E-85 is not green enough at this point. It is corn based and is believed to require more energy to produce than it contains. Further there are less than 1000 gas stations that have E85 out of the 170K gas stations in the USA. Further again, GM et al is pushing E85 and asking the tax payers to give stations $30k to add pumps instead of them investing in viable alternatives.
In short E85 is a cheap fix for GM and others to comply with current regulations, basically it is a loophole that needs to be closed.
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Jimmy 2:55PM (3/30/2007)
Enabling existing vehicles to use available biofuels is a good thing. Vehicles are durable goods and modern vehicles last longer than ever. FlexTek's main competitor, Full Flex Int., offers a similar product and will be at the AFVI show.
In general I'm in favor of allowing and promoting the informed consumer choice of "alternative" fuels, be that biodiesel, WVO, ethanol, butanol, etc.
Ethanol is a great fuel and has a bright future. Ethanol is clean, non-toxic and complementary to other alternative fuels, suchs as blends with butanol, and efficiency techniques, like the small flex-fuel engine in the Chevy Volt concept.
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Fernando 3:07PM (3/30/2007)
Hi there
I live in Brazil and 6 years ago everyone was talking about theses kits because the price of gasoline was getting very expensive. Today nobody install it anymore because it drastically increases the car's maintenance due to corrosion. Also the mileage is lower than a factory-built ethanol car. i heard about mileages like 6 km/L (about 15 mpg) in the city with these kits installed in a 1.0 car. I have a GM's 1.0 flex car and it runs about 25 mpg with ethanol in the city, 30 mpg in the highway, with gasoline i run 30 mpg in the city and 38 mpg in the highway.
So I run with ethanol because it's cleaner and cheaper. It cost here aprox. US$ 0,70 and the gasoline is expensive for us (US$ 1,20).
So this is not a good idea, it's better to run with gasoline than with these money-guzzler kits. We can not forget that ethanol pollutes too.
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Peter 3:45PM (3/30/2007)
I agree with Fernando about engine corrosion. FlexTek says their system will plug into the ECU's fuel injection system to detect the percentage of ethanol and adjust fuel flow rate appropriately. This is only one of the changes needed to convert an engine designed for gasoline to run on E85. Ethanol corrodes the conventional seal materials used in gas engines and will severely reduce their lifetime. Also, running high percentage ethanol with a standard compression ratio will result in significantly lower efficiency.
Without rebuilding the engine with ethanol compliant seals, changing pistons/con rods to alter the compression ratio, and reprogramming the ECU, an engine originally designed for gasoline will perform poorly on mixtures of ethanol greater than about 10%. This is why 10% has been set as a limit in standard gas mixtures in the US.
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Smith 5:38PM (3/30/2007)
So what's needed to run E85 in a vehicle that wasn't spec'd for it? A stainless steel gas tank or a plastic one that is compatible. Make sure the fuel lines are compatible. Same goes for the injectors, pump, and filter. That's all there is too it right? The computer will maintain proper air/fuel ratio?
With a carb car the conversion requires compatible parts and potentially upping the jet sizes to compensate for the lower btu's of the fuel vs' gasoline.
All is not lost though. Have 1,000 hp with E85!!
http://www.turbomustangs.com/smf/index.php?topic=47094.0
Make E85 so we can burn it all up. Cheap fuel and more of it is required to be burned to get the same hp from it as compared to gasoline. How's the CO2 output compare?
Build a high performance fuel burner. Get about ~2mpg...
The amount of fuel that goes into a large jet aircraft just for one little flight is way more then all the fuel I will buy in 10 years...
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