Innovate/Spritex/Bullet... What I found searching the web.

[Carwhisperer]

Just as quickly as threads get thrown up. They get taken down!!! * dun dun dun*

[Xero-Limit]

Interesting findings, and it seems this car has had plenty of E85 to chew on for sure. However, it is one case, and there are probably over a hundred (if not hundreds) of these cars between all of the tuners. So while I don't discount the findings above, I would not make the case that E85 is going to do this based on one report. This is the only failure attributed to (but not definitely proven to be from) E85 that I'm aware of. With the DISI Mazdaspeeds folks jumped at E85 being the culprit of DI pump failure--but then it became clear the pumps just weren't great to begin with. So in the grand scheme of things, I'd say maybe slow it down a bit and maybe see what the filter media is made of, what can be done etc....

As King Tut said, it is not a flex fuel car from the factory, so it is at your own risk like any other modification...but I doubt this is a widespread thing. Only time will tell, but with just one report it could have simply been a bad filter to begin with.

[robispec]

Moto mike Finally a voice of reason. We replaced everything intank rorward and the car ran great over the race weekend again...
Robi

[Draco-REX]

I think there's more at play here than just E85. Don's filter literally sat in E85 for *months* with no appreciable degradation.

Ultimately there's not enough data to either support or condemn E85 usage on the stock pump module.

[sw20kosh]

Speaking of fuel additives causing problems...

Which ones are bad for the fuel system? I have researched Torco accelerator and it seems it really does work in detonation resistance. It uses mmt as a anti-knock agent. It is NOT high octane fuel. It is a chemical added to your pump fuel to increase its octane rating.

The bad: It turns your plugs orange which is said to foul them a bit faster than normal.

Anyone else have experience with this stuff?



[ame]http://youtu.be/goEzuP_ej7c[/ame]

[ame]http://youtu.be/EK7Xz6AkwWo[/ame]

[EAGLE5]

I believe the Torco stuff also plugs up your catalytic converters and fouls sensors. Who know what it will do to direct injection. For rare usage, I bet it's fine, but I won't put it in my car. Higher octane fuels are more highly refined. They're the best choice.

As for E85, the manual specifically states that the fuel system isn't compatible with anything above E10. I wouldn't be surprised if the stock fuel filter is only the first part to break. There are all sorts of other components that the E85 could destroy. If I worked at another performance house and had E85 in my system, I'd be pulling apart my fuel tank right now.

Heavy mods on this car just keep getting more and more complicated.

[mad_sb]

Originally Posted by robispec

Moto mike Finally a voice of reason. We replaced everything intank rorward and the car ran great over the race weekend again...
Robi

Is there some place you can send a portion of the filter and some of the goop that came out of the sump for analysis?

Is it kind of a jelly like consistency? Or is it bits of the filter media? We saw some evo's with the snotty gunk back in the day TedB's was one of them.

I'm wondering if it is a fuel contamination issue..... Did you pickup E85 from a different source around the time you started testing the innovate kit?

[xxscaxx]

All I know is i'm pretty bummed people had to go and ruin the other E85 thread Sportsguy started.

In my old Del Sol years ago I had a bad tank of gas and it caused the car to break up like that. I was too young to know what I was doing but the place my dad brought it to for me said it was a bad tank of gas alongside a clogged up fuel filter because of it.

Do you think it could possibly be from low fuel, which in turn caused that assembly to run too hot? Thereby it ended up destroying the filter? We all know @robispec puts this car through some thorough abuse on the track. Just a thought.

[industrial]

Originally Posted by Draco-REX

I think there's more at play here than just E85. Don's filter literally sat in E85 for *months* with no appreciable degradation.

Ultimately there's not enough data to either support or condemn E85 usage on the stock pump module.

I get the impression that Don's car is a bit of a dyno queen/drag car. Track (road course) use is as hard as it gets. Sitting static in the cold probably isn't the same as pumping as hard as possible in a moving hot environment. Perhaps you need heat, agitation and volume (and some starvation?) to cause the malfunction. Also, there is probably a reason why the people that have done the testing (car companies and filter manufacturers) don't recommend cellulose (if that's even what our car's fuel filter is, it's a common material) filters for e85. I agree that we need more data points though.

I'm not completely talking out of my ass either. I have close to 20 years in aviation repair and troubleshooting.

[s2d4]

Originally Posted by xxscaxx

All I know is i'm pretty bummed people had to go and ruin the other E85 thread Sportsguy started.

You mean Visconti and the other trolling each other over AEM? All that was needed was a warning, nevertheless that was pretty bad form for a vendor.

I doubt that warrants a thread close as there were ongoing technical questions Visconti did not answer. Someone else did post a testing method which was rather extreme but workable.

Until it has been proven that E85 will or will not destroy components of the fuel system, no one can claim unless they have weak moral fiber that it will or it won't let alone pushing a product/service under false assumptions.

[s2d4]

Originally Posted by industrial

I get the impression that Don's car is a bit of a dyno queen/drag car. Track (road course) use is as hard as it gets. Sitting static in the cold probably isn't the same as pumping as hard as possible in a moving hot environment. Perhaps you need heat, agitation and volume (and some starvation?) to cause the malfunction. Also, there is probably a reason why the people that have done the testing (car companies and filter manufacturers) don't recommend cellulose (if that's even what our car's fuel filter is, it's a common material) filters for e85. I agree that we need more data points though.

Yeap, submerged statically in cold weather is not the same as doing 5k miles at track temps/conditions.
Hence it was a long string to draw and claiming that no issue could exist against chemical material properties/reactions.

[industrial]

Originally Posted by s2d4

You mean Visconti and the other trolling each other over AEM? All that was needed was a warning, nevertheless that was pretty bad form for a vendor.

I doubt that warrants a thread close as there were ongoing technical questions Visconti did not answer. Someone else did post a testing method which was rather extreme but workable.

Until it has been proven that E85 will or will not destroy components of the fuel system, no one can claim unless they have weak moral fiber that it will or it won't let alone pushing a product/service under false assumptions.

Probably shouldn't mention that name here. I hope he avoids this thread altogether.

[Draco-REX]

Originally Posted by industrial

I get the impression that Don's car is a bit of a dyno queen/drag car. Track (road course) use is as hard as it gets. Sitting static in the cold probably isn't the same as pumping as hard as possible in a moving hot environment. Perhaps you need heat, agitation and volume (and some starvation?) to cause the malfunction. Also, there is probably a reason why the people that have done the testing (car companies and filter manufacturers) don't recommend cellulose (if that's even what our car's fuel filter is, it's a common material) filters for e85. I agree that we need more data points though.

I'm not completely talking out of my ass either. I have close to 20 years in aviation repair and troubleshooting.

I'm not saying E85 causes no issues, just that this might be an extreme case with other factors involved. There are many, many non-E85 rated cars running that fuel without any issues. So while this degradation is bad, it might not be a likely outcome for the vast majority of users. It's also very possible that this was a defective filter from the factory and it might have disintegrated using normal fuel as well.

Unfortunately, the only way to test this is to have a large percentage of the current E85 users dissect their filter. But that's not going to happen. Ah well.

[Visconti]

Originally Posted by industrial

I get the impression that Don's car is a bit of a dyno queen/drag car. Track (road course) use is as hard as it gets. Sitting static in the cold probably isn't the same as pumping as hard as possible in a moving hot environment. Perhaps you need heat, agitation and volume (and some starvation?) to cause the malfunction. Also, there is probably a reason why the people that have done the testing (car companies and filter manufacturers) don't recommend cellulose (if that's even what our car's fuel filter is, it's a common material) filters for e85. I agree that we need more data points though.

I'm not completely talking out of my ass either. I have close to 20 years in aviation repair and troubleshooting.

Don's car sat when the snow was too high for the drag radials that were on his car. But before that he drove it every day.. With the amount of power he was making on ethanol there was a lot of flow going through that filter..which I don't think proves anything... I don't think volume or how many miles you've driven makes a difference. How long the fuel system was exposed to the fuel would. btw Some octane boosts or fuel additives can be very corrosive , wouldn't surprise me if the car in question had used that while it was using its crappy 91 octane.