I have 1966, numbers matching, 4-door hardtop Impala. The 327 was rebuilt @ 66,000 miles and now has an Edelbrock hi-rise manifold with a Holley 650 carb.

The Impala, "Daphne", is my daily driver. I have to use premium gasoline or it runs terrible. At $4.30 per gallon and 18 mpg on a good day, I am seeking alternatives. I have used some E85, a 60/40 mix, but had cold start issues. I was concerned about the corrosive nature of E85 and what its extended use might do to the fuel system.

What can I do? Are there conversion kits available for this old of a vehicle? Is anyone on the forum fueling with E85 currently?

I love Daphne, especially as a daily driver . . . just having a tough with the fuel expense.

E-85 needs a conversion of your carb. It required two new metering bodies, brass (not neoprene plastic floats), bigger needle and seat with Viton tips, and bigger jets (you burn 30% more gasohol per mile than straight gasoline. Or you can buy a new carb set up and ready to burn E-85 from Holley.

You need to remove all plastic and rubber hoses and replace them with parts manufactured after 1982 (When the federal government told the parts manufactures to make everything alcohol compliant). This includes your gas filler tube, all neoprene hoses, paper gasoline filters (you have to use sintered bronze)and epoxy in the electric fuel pumps. Your gas tank should be modified to use a closed loop (return line) instead of it's current dead head of straight from tank to carb. This is to improve the flow of fuel, cool the electric fuel pump, and to seal the system to prevent the alcohol from absorbing water from the air.

E-85 is listed on the pump at 105 octane, but in reality it is closer to 120 octane due to the cooling effect of the fuel evaporating in the intake manifold. That low vapor pressure causes it to evaporate from the tank which is another reason to use a sealed instead of vented fuel tank. You can take advantage of that increase octane rating to raise the dynamic compression of the motor for free horse power (to make up for the reduced fuel economy).

Big Dave

Thank you, Dave. Does my Impala have an electric fuel pump? I only know about the one that bolts on the block.

I'll have to weigh out the savings vs. cost for an E85 conversion. I am in agriculture, so at least I would be burning what I sell!

If you are using the original mechanical pump the old rubber diaphragm is not going to be alcohol compliant. If you buy a new one made lately it will be. The concept of alcohol didn't surface until about the time of Jimmy Carter/Ronald Regan time in office caused by the early eighties gas shortage.

Government allows you to brew your own for fuel use. There are kits that will allow you to convert silage to fuel. No taxes involved and the only restriction is you must put some poison in the gas tank to keep any one from drinking your fuel.

Big Dave

LOL - that's good! I'd have to worry about keeping out of my own gas tank then! :)

On a side note about alcohol in fuels: Be warned!

One of my other cars is a 1967 Camaro RS Show Rod running a 6-71 huffer on a 355 LT-1 bottom end. About 15 years ago I tried running this new Road Pilot Hi-Octane fuel in it and found out how damaging methanol additives can be to fuel systems. Less than one day after putting that gas in I smelled a strong odor of fuel in the car. Pop the hood to find the bleeder hole in my pressure regulator spitting fuel right on my front header pipe. Nasty! So I wrapped a rag around it to get home and went to 'Super Shops' (remember them?) to get another diaphram for my Holley fuel pressure regulator. The old one had a big blister on it and split. Less than a day later the new one started pi$$ing the same way. G dammit! This time I had to order another one and had my car sitting in the garage for a week. A different guy at the counter asked what kind of fuel I was running. BING! It was that methanol crap that was trashing the rubber diaphrams. I had to drain the entire system and inspect everything else. What a bunch of crap! I complained to Road Pilot and they were clueless about the trouble this additive could cause. The pumps did have signs saying it was in the gas but no warnings at all. :mad: That crap could have burned my car to the ground!

Don't ever run methanol enhanced fuel in your hot rods!

You will not have much choce as the govrnment has mandated the switch to at least 10% alcohol conten. Older cars have compliance issues because they were all built to run on gasoline only. Newer cars can stand alcohol in the gas but unless you have a new dual fuel car they will not burn it (EFI cars require a new computer to remap the fuel distribution and ignition curves) caburetor equipped cars need only replace all plastic and rubber parts with metal or plastics that do not disolve in alcohol. Then they can burn alcohol but you will still need a new fuel tank and fuel lines to keep water out of the fuel (new cars are all air tight).

Big Dave

It will be interesting to see how much the 10% will affect an older car. I have a feeling that Road Pilot gas was far beyond that amount.

My Camaro has aluminum line all the way to the front and Aeroquip hose and lines anywhere in between. However it is a open vented system and there are a couple parts that use standard rubber and o-ring components. What about Holley float bowls that have open vents?

And the old Caprice is all stock. I hope I won't need to replace all kinds of stuff on that.

It will be interesting to see how much the 10% will affect an older car. I have a feeling that Road Pilot gas was far beyond that amount.

My Camaro has aluminum line all the way to the front and Aeroquip hose and lines anywhere in between. However it is a open vented system and there are a couple parts that use standard rubber and o-ring components. What about Holley float bowls that have open vents?

And the old Caprice is all stock. I hope I won't need to replace all kinds of stuff on that.
Bad news is the standard braided stainless steel line is rubber lined; it will dissolve with alcohol (rot). You have to buy Teflon lined high-pressure hydraulic hose to run alcohol (it is still that pretty stainless steel braided hose, just a lot more expensive). Aluminum is also at risk because alcohol once it absorbs a little water becomes acidic and it will then dissolve aluminum. That is why all of the aluminum alloy Holley carb parts are anodized green to protect the raw aluminum from attack (it also marks them as being different so that they are easily identified). Additionally the plastic floats that are standard on all Holley carbs now are replaced with the older style brass floats they used to use back in the sixties.

10% Alcohol is just the tip of the iceberg. It is soon moving to 30% content under federal regulation. The alcohol is being produced by commercial distillers under federal grants, offered for sale to the public at a reduced price ($2.00 a gallon cheaper than it costs to produce) just to get us to think favorably about the switch.

Personally I like alcohol from a purely performance point of view as with the addition of nitrous oxide you are now running nitro methane fuel, and we all know how that improves the performance per cubic inch of V-8 powered cars.

Big Dave

I have searched for a Holley 650 E85 conversion/rebuild kit and have not found one. I did find an e85 carb, but it was 600 CFM for $650. The next stop up was a 780 CFM! Way too much carb for my numbers matching 327. Grrrr! Kits are not nearly as plentiful as I thought. I have scoured the internet - seems you've got to have a computer to run E85. I've driven "Daphne" on 2 family vacations this year and found very few E85 fueling stations. I need a true "flex fuel" set up, but am quickly finding this to be nearly impossible or very cost prohibitive. I have not given up all hope . . . just not ready to spend $700 on a fuel that may cause more problems than what I am ready for.

Bad news is the standard braided stainless steel line is rubber lined; it will dissolve with alcohol (rot). You have to buy Teflon lined high-pressure hydraulic hose to run alcohol (it is still that pretty stainless steel braided hose, just a lot more expensive). Aluminum is also at risk because alcohol once it absorbs a little water becomes acidic and it will then dissolve aluminum. That is why all of the aluminum alloy Holley carb parts are anodized green to protect the raw aluminum from attack (it also marks them as being different so that they are easily identified). Additionally the plastic floats that are standard on all Holley carbs now are replaced with the older style brass floats they used to use back in the sixties.

10% Alcohol is just the tip of the iceberg. It is soon moving to 30% content under federal regulation. The alcohol is being produced by commercial distillers under federal grants, offered for sale to the public at a reduced price ($2.00 a gallon cheaper than it costs to produce) just to get us to think favorably about the switch.

Personally I like alcohol from a purely performance point of view as with the addition of nitrous oxide you are now running nitro methane fuel, and we all know how that improves the performance per cubic inch of V-8 powered cars.

Big Dave
Dave you seem like a pretty knowledgable guy around here but I cannot get into this mindset that my older cars are now doomed to be destroyed by alcohol additives in gasoline. Am I missing something here? Just doesn't make sense. This scenario sounds too gloom and doom for me. :sad:

-Scott

Dave you seem like a pretty knowledgable guy around here but I cannot get into this mindset that my older cars are now doomed to be destroyed by alcohol additives in gasoline. Am I missing something here? Just doesn't make sense. This scenario sounds too gloom and doom for me.

-Scott

It is a political thing that has been growing with our dependence on foreign fuel. With the exception of Canada (and maybe Mexico) all of our oil comes from someone who if not our enemies is not an ally. Most of the oil producing parts of the world are highly unstable due to the amount of cash that is changing hands.

When these cars were new we pumped most of our oil out of the gulf states and supplemented what we needed from the then British controlled middle east. Since then American oil companies have discovered, drilled and developed fields in Mexico, Venezuela, Niger, and even helped the Russians get their oil fields back into production. All of those countries are controlled by people we keep in power but the natives hate them and us for keeping an unpopular government propped up.

Alcohol was the first fuel ever burned in an internal combustion engine (invented by a guy called Diesel). In a diesel were everything is closed and pressurized and metered it works great. Mr. Daimler of Mercedes Benz fame invented the carburetor to make the Otto cycle work for more than a stationary engine. This new lighter flexible motor spurred the invention of the automobile (and aviation). As an aside German engineers are great at solving problems but it took American ingenuity to apply their solutions to something else and invent more problems for them to solve.

Alcohol was quickly abandoned as a motor fuel due to all of the reasons I have mentioned; plus one more. No one has brought it up yet. Alcohol when it burns is invisible, you can not see the flames. This means your car could be on fire and you would have no clue until something else was burning, by which time it is too late to stop and pull over to put out the fire before it spreads.

So why are we going back to alcohol? Because non-engineers are dictating that we use something that is expensive to make, impractical to store, and is a pain in the posterior for a carbureted car to use without a fixed percentage always being available. Those same people do not even own a carbureted car (they went out of production in 1985), and really are not interested in the problems of automotive enthusiasts.

Better fuels that are available but currently outside of the control of the oil industries that also control Congress are liquid propane (LP), and Coal Gas. During WWII when we bombed Germany into giving up the Balkans (now outside of Russian control but a former satellite country) they lost their access to the only petroleum fields in Europe. The engineers where asked to solve Hitler's gasoline shortage. So they converted coal to gasoline by heating up coal in an oven and extracting all of the hydrocarbons. They were then distilled like gasoline to form coal gas. We have a little bit of coal here in this country (about 73% of the world's supply, with Canada having a bunch as well) and the plans on how to build plants here. We have even improved on the process to remove all of the tars to increase the octane rating (this held the Luftwaffe back so much that they had diesel engine powered bombers and had to invent jet engines to burn the fuel they had).

As to converting over existing carburetors to burn E-85 there are only two Holley throttle body sizes (one for the 600-700 cfm, and the 750-950 size). The main body doesn't need protection from the alcohol because it is always "just passing through" not being stored as in the bowls (this is the limiting factor that controls the actual cfm of the carb). The bowls and metering blocks are all interchangeable but have to be anodized to protect them from the corrosive effects of alcohol. Brass floats are readily available as a repair part. Viton needle and seats that are 30% larger in capacity than the gasoline versions are available from Holley as well. All of these parts are also available from ProForm and Barry Grant.

Once you have made your carb alcohol proof, then there is the issue of adjusting it to run on what you have available to burn. Because alcohol is different than gas the jetting and the air bleeds need to be properly adjusted to match the fuel. This means a jet change for every fill-up of 10%, 30%, or 85% alcohol content. Dual fuel cars use a wide band oxygen sensor to tune the car on the fly by matching the O2 content to a computer program. You will also have to install a wide band Oxygen sensor and a gauge to tell you the same thing: whether you are rich or lean, and change jets accordingly.

The only alternative to carburetors is EFI. or [parking your car in a garage. By the way have I mentioned how the oil industry no longer makes oil for flat tappet cams?

Big Dave

Thanks for the info Dave. On the invention of the internal combustion engine that was a diesel, I read the first fuel was peanut oil though.

I certainly understand what needs to be changed to run alcohol in an engine and the whole density issue but I didn't think all of the components in the current fuel systems of cars going back a couple of decades would need to be radically altered just to run a small percentage of alcohol based additives blended into the majority of fuels today. I'm not talking about E85; yes that requires different systems and that fuel isn't exactly readily available right now anyway. Most fuels in the midwest already have some alcohol based additives with the percent being on the lower end. I read the tests were done using 5-7% and no noticable difference was discovered in typical gas burning engines or standard fuel systems.

I guess what I'm wondering is what kind of time frame are you speaking of here? A couple of years? 5 years? It's going to be a pretty slow transition into only higher concentrate alcohol based fuels. It's not like we will all be forced to burn E85 or higher alcohol based concentrates by 2010 or anything like that. :noway:

And there are a lot more modern products current being produced using standard gasoline engines like lawn mowers, weed whackers, chain saws, snow blowers, and motorcycles that still are manufactured with standard rubber fuel components. Wouldn't all these machines need the fuel systems altered?

Thanks for the info Dave. On the invention of the internal combustion engine that was a diesel, I read the first fuel was peanut oil though.

I certainly understand what needs to be changed to run alcohol in an engine and the whole density issue but I didn't think all of the components in the current fuel systems of cars going back a couple of decades would need to be radically altered just to run a small percentage of alcohol based additives blended into the majority of fuels today. I'm not talking about E85; yes that requires different systems and that fuel isn't exactly readily available right now anyway. Most fuels in the midwest already have some alcohol based additives with the percent being on the lower end. I read the tests were done using 5-7% and no noticable difference was discovered in typical gas burning engines or standard fuel systems.

I guess what I'm wondering is what kind of time frame are you speaking of here? A couple of years? 5 years? It's going to be a pretty slow transition into only higher concentrate alcohol based fuels. It's not like we will all be forced to burn E85 or higher alcohol based concentrates by 2010 or anything like that. :noway:

And there are a lot more modern products current being produced using standard gasoline engines like lawn mowers, weed whackers, chain saws, snow blowers, and motorcycles that still are manufactured with standard rubber fuel components. Wouldn't all these machines need the fuel systems altered?

When they say readily observable effect they are speaking about the performance loss due to the wrong fuel mixture, not to damage the fuel will cause.

The change is occurring now as we are transitioning towards E-85. (it is past due the intended implementation date as no one wanted to invest in the technology until major Federal subsidies were in place). Yes it will effect every gasoline burning engine including lawn mowers. I had to spent $1,767 at an RV dealership to get my generator repaired. they insisted it was an electrical problem and rebuilt the entire generator and control board circuitry before discovering the real problem. The fuel pump diaphragm was not compliant with alcohol and had turned into a black wad of Jell-O that allowed it to run at 75% power but not at full load).

My old Gravely tractor (circa 1969) had a rubber fuel hose that dissolved when I used alcohol in the gas. My two chain saws from Still had to have both of the carburetors replaced because of alcohol destroyed the gaskets inside the carb (no body rebuilds anything anymore). The only thing that hasn't complained is my 1947 John Deere designed to run on gasoline or kerosene (called tractor fuel) but it has no rubber parts all metal gravity fed fuel lines.

New lawn moweres are being made and sold with EFI instead of a carb (they also have catalyytic converters and HEI ignition). Do they cost more? You bet. No help for chain saws yet other than run them dry after use and store with out any fuel in the tank.

Big Dave

Ya I have to say this topic has me searching around the SAE website and reading the absract (free part) of the published studies over the past 10 years or so regarding the usage of E fuels in standard gasoline engines. I guess its a wake up call. Aside from the damaging affects of the fuel itself on non-compliant materials there are also reports of perhaps more hydro carbon emissions given off by running different percentages of ethanol in an engine tuned for gasoline. In effect our older engines will cause more pollution using E blended fuels until the timing and mixture adjustments are made to adapt to the fuel, aside from the expense and labor involved in converting the entire fuel system to handle ethanol.

A Comparison of Burn Characteristics and Exhaust Emissions From Off- Highway Engines Fueled By E0 and E85:
http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2004-28-0045

Development of New FKM O-Rings with Superior Fuel-Oil Resistance and Low-Temperature Properties:
http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2005-01-1743

Effect of Alcohol Fuels on Fuel-Line Materials of Gasoline Vehicles:
http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2005-01-3708

Wear and Corrosion Evaluation of Electric Fuel Pumps With Ethanol/Gasoline Blends:
http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2005-01-2196

Wow. I gotta give you credit Dave you know your stuff. Guess it's time to start planning for the future. :sad: