e85 Black Death & Pressure Drop Revisited

[Xtrinsic1337]

I know we have come a long way on tuning using e85 as well as a solution found to the black death commonly found in higher blends of e85 in our fuel pumps being to swap to Royal Purple Dexos but after searching and reading for an extremely long period of time there is one thing I believe we may have missed. ( If all or any of this has been covered feel free to call me a dumbass.) I'm attempting the conversion now and this is my standpoint being an electrical engineer who can't spell or word things great.

"E85 ethanol is used in engines modified to accept higher concentrations of ethanol. Such FFV are designed to run on any mixture of gasoline or ethanol with up to 85% ethanol by volume. There are a few major differences between FFVs and non-FFVs. One is the elimination of bare magnesium, aluminum, and rubber parts in the fuel system. Another is that fuel pumps must be capable of operating with electrically conductive ethanol instead of non-conducting dielectric gasoline fuel. Fuel injection control systems have a wider range of pulse widths to inject approximately 34% more fuel. Stainless steel fuel lines, sometimes lined with plastic, and stainless-steel fuel tanks in place of terne fuel tanks are used. In some cases, FFVs use acid-neutralizing engine oil. For vehicles with fuel-tank-mounted fuel pumps, additional differences to prevent arcing, as well as flame arrestors positioned in the tank's fill pipe, are also sometimes used."

So to kinda ignite the flames again. Mixes of 50/50 e85 and pump gas may be doing better because the mix isn't as conductive to charged electrons.

Think about it.
Our spill valve - electrically charged
Our Hpfp - Grounded to spark plug harness
Rotella T6 - Shit tons of magnesium & zinc
In Tank Fuel Pump - Electrically charged and submerged in gasoline conductive fluid to heat but not electricity
Our Fuel Rail - Pretty sure it aluminum ?

When mazda developed these parts I don't believe insulation of the electrical components was a 100% must have or requirement and in some cases these components were used on purpose to ground out or discharge electrical current

The term arcing means - An electric arc or arc discharge is an electrical breakdown of a gas that produces an ongoing plasma discharge, resulting from a current through normally nonconductive media such as air.

Black Death is nothing but burnt plasma left behind and although we may have found a possible cure to prevent buildup over short term and for some even long term testing periods I don't think we have solved the issue.

Possible fixes
1. Royal Purple works great!
2. Drown Spill valve in redline SI-1 is working so far.
3. Move the grounding of our spark plug harness to a different location ( possible ? )
4. In tank fuel pump must be insulated in it's entirety to prevent electromagnetic charge of the fluids it pumps and is submerged in. ( anyone tried a pump like the wrx guys are using ? )
5. All conductive super conductive metals be removed from the assembly and replaced with non conductive or less conductive materials ... table of conductive metals and their properties below. ( the hard part is our fuel rail. Teflon coating or special surface protectant ? )
6. Deionization of the fuel and it's electrical conductors through filtration or purification before hitting the fuel pumps or injectors?

I know this seems like a drastic change in the fueling assembly but as a community we have helped other platforms benefit from our research yet I think the one thing we failed to look at as the root cause being our pressurized fuel rail ( converts fuel into a gas ) and that fuel rail being electrically conductive ( Aluminum )

Somewhere in the fuel delivery process it is being exposed to electrical current causing the substance to thicken in our fuel systems and during the delivery process increasing duty cycles, flow , and incorrect amount to each combustion chamber.
A link to various metals their resistance and conductive properties can be found at this link

Lastly has anyone suggested a FSG sensor for auto scaling ATR fuel tables as a plug and play USB input or additional controller ? Theres a market for that ... and a big one once you taste a full partial or full corn diet with you car.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...d_conductivity

[Mazdazilla6]

Interesting stuff.

I'm fairly sure it's already been concluded that RP by itself won't keep black death away though. The S1 has been pretty well proven to work just fine and it looks like the IE internals are also working just fine too.

What is this pump that the WRX guys are using?

Also, I'm not very familiar with electricity's effect on gasoline/ethanol but I'm not sure moving grounds around will really solve too much. It's definitely worth a shot to see if it changes anything though.

Lastly, I think you'll have a tough time completely insulating the fuel from electricity since most of the engine is Al and it will conduct through just about all of it so it's kind of hard to separate the whole fuel system from electricity.

I'd certainly be interested to see some results from testing OP.

[Enki]

You must have missed the part where I boiled a ton of E85 in a stainless steel pot, got no reaction, then did the same with a couple drops of Rotella and got death formation very quickly.

You've also missed the part where Redline and RP are required to be a long term resolution, not just one or the other. Redline doesn't work with Rotella.

[speedfreak44]

And as for the sensor, yes it is already being worked on.

[5doorsoffury]

Originally Posted by Xtrinsic1337 Possible fixes 3. Move the grounding of our spark plug harness to a different location ( possible ? ) 4. In tank fuel pump must be insulated in it's entirety to prevent electromagnetic charge of the fluids it pumps and is submerged in. ( anyone tried a pump like the wrx guys are using ? ) 5. All conductive super conductive metals be removed from the assembly and replaced with non conductive or less conductive materials ... table of conductive metals and their properties below. ( the hard part is our fuel rail. Teflon coating or special surface protectant ? ) 6. Deionization of the fuel and it's electrical conductors through filtration or purification before hitting the fuel pumps or injectors? Somewhere in the fuel delivery process it is being exposed to electrical current causing the substance to thicken in our fuel systems and during the delivery process increasing duty cycles, flow , and incorrect amount to each combustion chamber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...d_conductivity

The motor is aluminum and is grounded. Even the very hard resistive layer of oxidation that forms on all of its surfaces will not stop Current. I cant think of a metal that is 100 percent a insulator (excluding very exotic man made metals) so any way you go the engine will conduct Current in some way. The Current will flow equally throughout it as if it were 1 piece of wire regardless of where the ground is located. Moving grounds will solve nothing unless you are trying to fix a RF issue.

The spark plugs must ground at the head where it is screwed in so no changing that.

Also the high Voltage (low Current) of the spark plug coil will tend to make the Current to flow towards the surface of the motor and less in the middle where the pump internals are located.

The motor is grounded for the sensors and spark plugs so after this the majority of the cars Current flows through the main ground near the DR side strut tower.

As to isolating the HPFP the bolts can conduct as well as the timing chain, HPFP lobe, and follower which touches the internals directly.

As I believe from reading the main issue is the type of oil used and the clearances of the oil seal on the internal it self coupled with high temps causeing the Black Death.

[MSP6]

Cleaned pump with S-1 for the first time on 10/12/2014 following an RP oil change.

Pulled internals after 5k miles of full corn on 3/28/2015 just for pics and to verify.

Since then, and hel if I know another 15K miles, zero startup issues aside from an occasional long crank, zero FP dips. Haven't pulled the internals since (autotechs) then, nor added any S-1 to the SV.

3 E-85 stations in NY, 1 in MD and 2 here in VA. Only thing done is another RP oil change in the meantime.

Does it get more permanent than this?

[Enki]

Not quite permanent permanent. At some point in the next year you'll need to flush the spill valve with redline.

[MSP6]

10 minutes of maintenance every 2+ years is as close to permanent as a Speed 3 will ever be! Spill valve, end links, PMM you name it... At least in my case.

[shamie]

Originally Posted by Xtrinsic1337 Black Death is nothing but burnt plasma left behind

I don't think this a correct assumption at all. I'm betting its purely a chemical reaction.

Do RL & RP have some magic electrical/grounding formulation that other oils don't?

No - they just have a different chemical composition.

[Enki]

Everything is grounded; there's no reason electricity should be a factor *at all,* considering at no point is the fuel not wrapped in metal that's not touching other metal that goes right back to the ground side of the battery.

This thread gives me a headache.