as my project goes ahead, a friend brought over a dvd containing some episodes of fifth gear, I never liked tiff but the show is tongue in cheek fun, well in this episode tiff took a e85 fuel powered lotus exige for a drive and reckoned it was putting out over 270hp and enough torque to get from 0-60mph in under 4 seconds... without any mods, this got me thinking, if it can do that to a little anemic 1.8L 4banger... can this wonderful fuel do something similar on a rotary, you are all probably thinking this is impossible but I saw it with my own eyes, and unless tiff is lying, (which I don't think he does) e85 is the genie in the lamp we all need for the rx8, granted I opted for discarding the renesis, but I never heard of ethanol being used on a rotary, for that matter I almost wanted to see if putting straight race fuel could do something cool to the car, but alas I discovered race gas has lead in it, which ... hmmm.... I don't know how that would set in with the rotary engine, so I took my trans am and filled it up with race gas today....

what a beast, the car must be making an extra 25 HP or something, tomorrow I get to fill with e85, and I will update, btw I need to know so that when I finish my rx8 3 rotor I can maybe try this wonderful alcohol and see if it realy is as good as they say

 

Im wondering this as well since e85 is only $2.15 here in Dallas.

Wouldnt mind getting a bit of a kick.

The only issue is that I think E85 would require more fuel injected, and is the PCM smart enough to handle it?

Also, Ethanol being an alcohol, how would this affect lubrication of the apex seals?

 

Here is a link I found of a guy in a WRX running E85.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=803341

 

No, the ECU will not be able to give you the fuel needed, it would be far out of it's range and would run very lean.

Rotaries don't like very lean.......

S

 

100% alcohol fuels, as compared to race fuels, require about 2x the fuel volume as they have 1/2 the BTUs available in them. The reason that certain areas of the country use E-85 is not from a technological stand-point but a political one. The use of E-85 isn't because it is a superior fuel. It is inferior to standard fuels.

 

Yeah, if a little alcohol helped engines performance, we would not be bitchin' about our winter fuels.

It is not E-85, but when not tuned for alcohol, adding it does nothing for your engine.