tschaid, No reason to get mad at consumer reports for telling the truth about foriegn cars.I admit i have owned fords, chevys and dodge and have never been particulary happy with any of them. I will admit i have liked my F-150 so far but i have only owned it for 5000 miles. IM a true believer that the only really good engines made in the usa are bigger v8's and some v6's. Most people that own hondas enjoy a excellant re-sale value and rarly have to do much work to thier cars except change oil. Sure whens ome thing does break on them its a bit costly but not that much more costly that fixing certain things on our 150's. I just wanted to write this because i think consumer reports does a good job with thier ratings and didnt think you should bash them for rating foriegn cars higher.
Please dont think im not a huge fan of my truck , i love it so far, but i am a bit upset that by 80k certain things like manifold bolts are breaking off on multiple trucks and there is no recall and the spark plug issue we read about in these forums, those are both costly things to fix and replace and shouldn't be happining on so many peoples trucks.

 

I was looking through my Off-road adventures magazine and there was a question from tschaid asking about e85 compatability on an 04 f150. If I had a scanner I would put it on here. They basicly replied that there is a kit out there to convert it to run as a ffv.

 

well at least invading texas and nebraska for the corn deposits , we won't have to leave the country..lol, but we will cut into the dadgum moonshine production. but in all realliaty here in the texas panhandle we have ethanal plants going up as fast as the wind power generators, i don't see were all the corn will really come from?

 

The United States produces so much produce/veggies/etc such as (rice, corn, wheat) that we have more than what we know what to do with it. I was watching the History Channel the other day and basically they said that one state (I can't remember which one) produces enough corn for the entire country.

 

You never hear of any shelling, handling etc. company saying, "gee, we have too much *(insert commodity here)*! We're not buying anymore!

 

Good question. No. Yesterday, I went past 20,000 miles. I will absolutely put this truck, tuned to run on E-85, against any similarly equipped and tuned F150 running on gas. I know this will draw challenges; but, at 108,600 miles, this truck continues to run better than any I have had. With a 6" lift, 35" tires, it can still run away from a stock Dodge Hemi and I have yet to see any non-blown F150 that will stay beside it.

It runs so good, I will never put anything except E85 in this truck. This summer, when I finally start producing enough of my own to actually use, I will blend to E90.

As for what it takes, SCT sells the Pro Racer Software Package. You need this plus a XCAL2. I added a LM-1 Wideband and a Pyrometer gauges just to be sure what I thought was going on was actually going on. Mike Troyer made this recommendation and it has proven very useful ever since.

It has been awhile since my last Dyno so I am going to go again. I fully expect to hit 285 Hp & get real close to 350 ft/lbs of torque, in 3rd gear, at the rear wheels, when compared to my last dyno which was a 2nd gear pull only. I advanced the spark more, tweaked the MAF tables, and switched to an Air Force One intake since my last run.

As for the fuel economy question. Yes, lifting and running big tires will absolutely destroy your fuel economy. Prior to the 6" lift and the 35s, I was running in the 15-16 range easily. This was with gasoline and troyer's 93 Tune. When I lifted the truck and installed the tires, fuel economy dropped into the high 11s and low 12s. Depending upon my driving, I achieve the same numbers with E85. If I am largely stop and go, I will dip to near 11. If I am 50-50, I will be in the high 11s to low 12s.

In regard to Consumer Reports, a pre-determined agenda can be satisfied with any data. I can go all the way back to the mid 80s and consider a T-Bird I had. This car ran for 10 years and I finally traded it at 195,000 miles. All I did was maintain it. The real issue is people are followers. If they are told repeatedly American made and engineered vehicles are not as good as foreign, most will not take the time to verify accuracy themselves. They will simply follow whatever they are told because to do otherwise means effort.

The same has been true with this project. Repeatedly, I was told these trucks could not handle the "caustic" properties of 85% Ethyl Alcohol. My research showed otherwise so I continued the project. At 88,500, I put my first full tank into my truck. I haven't looked back since to question this decision. Yes, I asked a lot of questions of a lot of people. I even had one of my questions posted in off-road magazine. His answer was vague and his thoughts about the use of the flex tech flawed; but, he never once said the truck can't handle it. For anyone interested, none of these devices will work on these trucks unless the fuel pump is re-programmed to deliver more fuel under load. At WOT or when pulling a heavy load, the fuel pumps in the 04s simply will not deliver enough fuel. They have to be reprogrammed or you'll trend lean.

Lastly, I had some real fun with this truck during the first week of this month. We received a heavy snow fall of around 15". My son-in-law was on his way to meet my daughter and ran across a car that had gone over an embankment and was planted firmly in a farmers field. He called and told me the situation. A young couple had screwed up and skidded on icey roads. It looked like a real good challenge. The only way I could get the car out was to go into the field, hook up, and pull it about 100 yards to an entrance. What fun!. We had received a good bit of rain before the snow, and while it had frozen somewhat, the field was still real soft. My son hooked up the strap to the front axle of the car and off we went. Everything went real good until the truck slid off the earthen entrance into over two feet of blown snow on the edge of the road. I had to disconnect the car just to get myself out. The lockers did their job pulling the truck out. My son re-hooked the car and out it came. This was easily the most challenging pull I have ever done; but, what fun. Two days later, my son-in-law decided he was going to play with his 2001 Expedition and buried it in the ditch. He was completely hung up. Didn't matter. This truck continues to deliver and with Alcohol running through its systems, power has never been an issue.

 

"When I lifted the truck and installed the tires, fuel economy dropped into the high 11s and low 12s. Depending upon my driving, I achieve the same numbers with E85. If I am largely stop and go, I will dip to near 11. If I am 50-50, I will be in the high 11s to low 12s."

How is that possible? Its well known that e85 has less engery per gallon than gasoline. Everyone that has an FFV takes a huge MPG hit when they run E85, did you do something 'special' to keep your MPG from falling?

Also, please post your next dyno run, I'd love to see it!

-NCSU

 

NCSU,

I will absolutely post the next dyno run. As for the fuel economy.....

You are absolutely correct. E85 does contain less energy when compared to E10 (the common blend of 90% gasoline, 10% ethanol in the midwest). I think E85 is somewhere around 74% of the btu(s) when compared to e10. Alcohol; however, has a couple of characteristics not found in any fossil fuel. First, it burns much cooler. Second, it burns much cleaner.

Before we talk about either; though, let's talk about stoichiometry as it pertains to internal combustion. Mike Troyer has accurately posted stoich as approximately 14.1 for e10. Stoich for E85 is said to be 9.85. When I first began this project, I spent a lot of time reading articles written by several universites that were involved in the Ethanol Vehicle Challenge in the late 90s and early 2000s. At least one of these articles documented where, in a chevy truck, they had to increase air / fuel to 10.8 to get the temps up properly for the cats to do their job.

Now, please understand. I did lose fuel economy for the first few months. In fact, I was running in the 9s during that time. I simply did not know how to make appropriate changes to handle this. This corresponds to the loss felt by FFV owners today. Through 100s of datalogs, comparisons, asking questions, and what not, I learned how to postively effect this.

So, I began toying with my 04 F150. Troyer had recommended I install an EGT (Pyrometer). This was likely the best suggestion I had heard from anyone and it came from a man who opposed this work. The pyrometer showed just how much cooler E85 burned when compared to gasoline (depending upon load as much as 200 degrees cooler). So. I was able to adjust the MAF table (maintaining a nice curve up) and the fuel injector slopes and breakpoint to run leaner than I could with gasoline(I tweaked the O2 Sensors somewhat as well; but, the range here is narrow). Of course, I only leaned the truck out during specific ranges that would correspond with typical highway driving (I have a 60 mile trip to work each day that is 50/50) In a gasoline engine, this would cause higher emissions violating the emissions standards and would likely cause the truck to run very hot. This is not the case with E85. I think if you read an earlier post you will see my hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide were significantly below even California levels while running E85 lean.

Interestingly, data logging show reduced calc net engine torque when cruising as well. This is likely where Ford had to draw the line. Remember, Ford has to tune the truck for all uses. As such, leaning air/fuel resulting in lower power and torque would never work for the common joe who isn't interested in changing their tune every time they want to use the truck in a different way. With this tune, I would never hook up to a trailer and tow it. The reduction in torque would easily cause plenty of issues if I were trying to move anything other than the truck itself. So, I obviously have another tune that doesn't lean the air/fuel and contains different shift points that I use specifically for towing.

 

I don't know how relevant this is, but the other day I received a notice from Ford that my wife's 2-valve 3.0 liter V6 (Taurus) could have a simple PCM flash accomplished if she was experiencing hard starting conditions while burning E85. The car IS NOT labeled as a FFV, so I wasn't aware that it could burn E85, but the VIN shows it is E85 compatible. Apparently, according to the bulletin we received, 3.0 liter 2-valve V6 engines are capable of burning E85, and the PCM flash is only needed to help if the car experiences hard starting....

Maybe Ford is making all of their gas-powered engines E85...and if you want it labeled FFV you can pay the extra $$$.

Just an interesting side note to this ongoing experiment by another F150 Online member...