jetting the hawk for e85
 

hey guys,

I recently got my hawk running again (see my old thread re: crashing it) and I have decided to use it as my new track toy. It has an ignition advancer and a non-stock airbox and a different exhaust.

I got the idea for setting a bike up for E85 after my last track day, my current track bike is mapped for leaded race fuel (10 bucks a gallon!) and I want to try E85 for the next one.

Posts trying to dissuade me from doing this can go in another thread, I'm just interested to hear from anyone who has tried running E85 in their hawk.

The basic idea for running ethanol fuel is to supply 30-40% more gas

I'm not trying to dissuade you so please don't mistake it as that. I'm just curious as to why?

I ask purely because I'm curious if there is a benefit that I am unaware of, I know a buddy ran pure Alcohol in his drag car because it helped the engine run cooler, I just didn't know if there was any benefit of E85 over pump fuel or pure alcohol or pure gas

it's actually quite simple, E85 has the octane rating of race gas but isn't 10 bucks a gallon....to truly take advantage of it you need high compression and advanced timing or a turbo, but in this case I simply want to gain some experience with tuning a carb'd vehicle to use it, and also I could find a way to advance the timing even more later once the bike is running half decently.

the benefit of E85 is cost, if horsepower and detonation resistance were the only concerns you could run methanol or leaded race gasoline.

btw the whole "omg it's so corrosive and will destroy my fuel lines" is a common myth from people thinking E85/E100 is like methanol. Any vehicle that uses gasoline made in the last 20 years can use E85 without issue to seals and lines.