Ford fiesta Bioethanol conversion

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Tue 25 Apr 2006 21:04
Ford fiesta Bioethanol conversion - DozyG
Hi,

I've been reading up about bioethanol and there seems to be some confusion about what is required to convert a standard fuel-injected petrol car to run on 85% bioethanol.

As far as i can tell the main thing is to replace any natural rubber seals/pipes in the fuel system with synthetic rubber equivalents. It also seems that some modification to the injector pulse widths is necessary, but i'm unsure as to whether this would be dealt with automatically by the closed-loop control of the engine management?

The reason i ask is that i have a crazy idea to convert my mk3 fiesta 1.1 CFI to run on bioethanol.

Does anyone out there have any experience of bioethanol conversion or know of any third-party conversion kits?

Cheers,

G
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Wed 26 Apr 2006 01:36
Ford fiesta Bioethanol conversion - andymc {P}
Sorry, don't know about conversion kits for bioethanol other than what you've already mentioned, but suggest you research on the net about the propensity for ethanol to absorb atmospheric H2O. Water in fuel is not a good thing. If the bioethanol being sold for fuel manages to avoid this problem, fine. Let us know what you find out as well!
--
andymc
Vroom, vroom - mmm, doughnuts ...
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Wed 26 Apr 2006 23:21
Ford fiesta Bioethanol conversion - Ruperts Trooper
Water in fuel is not a good thing.


Why?

Water injection is a proven method of improving engine efficiency.

Adding water to petrol doesn't work because the mixture isn't uniform but if ethanol is hygroscopic this may actually improve power output but only in closed loop injection systems.
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Thu 27 Apr 2006 14:18
Ford fiesta Bioethanol conversion - DozyG
Water is still an issue as bioethanol is 85% ethanol and 15% petrol. These mix nicely as long as the ethanol is nice and dry but if you get above about ~1.5% water content then they separate which is not great. Also, ethanol gets more acidic as you add water IIRC which is not good for the oil.

I've done some more research into this and it seems that cars made later than 1988 will have a fuel system that is not corroded or damaged by ethanol. I have found one after-market conversion kit retailing for around $240 for a multi-point injection system which extends the injector pulse-width by ~30% to compensate for the lower calorific value of ethanol.

Now i need to figure out how to achieve the same result on the CFI system (time to fetch the maplin catalog and my trusty soldering iron)

G
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