Do e85 cold starts damage engine?
 

Now that winter is here I'm having to do 2-5 cranks to start my car, does this damage the car in anyway? Sometimes it starts turns on for 5 seconds then dies if I don't use throttle.

You may need to check out your tune.

Add a gallon or two of gas and it should help out. Cold and e85 dont really go well together. It's very typical. You can modify your tune if possible to compensate for the cold temp. Or just keep priming the fuel system a few times before actually turning on the car sort of helps too. For the winter when I was using e85 I just switched back to gasoline until the temps went up again. I mean we live in so cal, it won't be "cold" for too long

as you were saying this, I just came back from watching Creed and it died as well trying to turn on :(, but as I'm writing this I'm home so it's okay now, but I was curious to this as well. Does it damage the car?

If it starts and dies...that doesn't sound right. An engine has to stumble really bad to die.

You need to modify your cranking tables for reliable starts on E85 you need to modify the cranking injector pulse width to inject considerably more fuel with e85 for cold starts ie below about 25C, the tables below have woked for me on E90 down to about 8C.

Below about 8C if your on high E content e85 like over 80% your going to have to start adding some petrol to get it started reliably on first crank, if your tune will cope (oft tunes fine down to e60) add up to 8 litres of petrol (good grade ie 93 is best) to a full tank just keep your e% above 60 that combined with tables here should have you going on first or second crank to below zero.

Ethanol just does not atomise at rearly low temps no matter how much fuel you add to cranking, that why you need a bit of petrol to get it fired up, just add say 4 litres and try if still no go add a bit more just be mindfull of you overall E percent

if your doing like 8 cranks to get it goiing it might accelerate wear in starter but the odd second crank will be fine :)

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1442118398

I meant stumble for seconds

it will do that on high e% e85 in cold weather wirhout cranking table mods generally it will fire on second crank though

but the mad question is aside from the starter, anything else I should know?

nope all good just mod the cranking ipw tables or get your tuner to do it if its not opensource.

E85 requires up to 100% more fuel to start that petrol one it gets cold if your using high e% fuel, some e85 is adjusted for winter ie they lower the e% some is not.

mine was first crank all winter (well what we call winter about 6C is lowest we get) and on 90% ethanol fuel did not have to add petrol with tables above

if you have not read this link already will probably answer most of your questions @azynneo
@jaorocks1

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67310

skimmed through that quite a bit, using 5w30 motul 8100 so think I should be good

Are you saying cranking table affects the "rev up" after starting?

to some extent ,if your cranking tables are not injecting enough fuel it will start to fire up then die.

also the maf offset after start tables effect e85 cranking as does idle speed tables dont dial these back to much tring to get the noisy cold start to quiet waynos mods here are pretty good compromise for e85 starting and fairly quiet

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1442115672



see wayno,s tread here on dialing in oft tunes

keep the idle at about 1400 initially on cold start


In rearly cold weather e85 starts wont be a smooth as on petrol and you can get a bit of roughness and maybe the odd splutter in the first few seconds then should be good once the fuel starts to atomise better