kel
7th June 2013, 16:07
I like these biofuels and I really believe they are the race fuels of the future.
So I decided to dyno the bike to compare Avgas and E85.
My bike is a 125 air cooled 2 stroke running 13:1 compression. We changed main jets and altered the igniton timing between the two fuels, nothing else was changed (except the fowled spark plug)
The results, well E85 was the winner by .2hp. I expected an increase in torque lower in the power range, if there was any it was minimal. E85 runs much richer than Avgas, my main jet jumped from 110 to 145 (power jet requirement didnt change). E85 runs cooler than Avgas but that wasn't obvious on the dyno. I had expected a shift in the power curve between the two fuels as the pipe would react to the change in temp, seems I got this wrong. The Avgas pulled 30 odd runs never dropping below 26.5hp on E85 the power did drop. Neal mentioned E85 goes lean as the motor heats up, would seem he was right. So you'd have to sacrifice a touch of top end and run E85 rich to keep the output stable, from what Ive read you can get away with a rich mixture much better than with Avgas.
The bike developed a miss at 11.5k which was making a mess of the graphs but I'll get TZ to pull out a decent overlay when he has time.
So the verdict - I like E85 for all the reasons I've stated before and would use it in a heart beat if it was legal.
I still need to get the bike dialed in properly on Avgas :crazy:, once thats done I plan to try E10.
So I decided to dyno the bike to compare Avgas and E85.
My bike is a 125 air cooled 2 stroke running 13:1 compression. We changed main jets and altered the igniton timing between the two fuels, nothing else was changed (except the fowled spark plug)
The results, well E85 was the winner by .2hp. I expected an increase in torque lower in the power range, if there was any it was minimal. E85 runs much richer than Avgas, my main jet jumped from 110 to 145 (power jet requirement didnt change). E85 runs cooler than Avgas but that wasn't obvious on the dyno. I had expected a shift in the power curve between the two fuels as the pipe would react to the change in temp, seems I got this wrong. The Avgas pulled 30 odd runs never dropping below 26.5hp on E85 the power did drop. Neal mentioned E85 goes lean as the motor heats up, would seem he was right. So you'd have to sacrifice a touch of top end and run E85 rich to keep the output stable, from what Ive read you can get away with a rich mixture much better than with Avgas.
The bike developed a miss at 11.5k which was making a mess of the graphs but I'll get TZ to pull out a decent overlay when he has time.
So the verdict - I like E85 for all the reasons I've stated before and would use it in a heart beat if it was legal.
I still need to get the bike dialed in properly on Avgas :crazy:, once thats done I plan to try E10.