How to read Ethanol w/ P3 Gauge?
 

Recently had a P3 gauge put in my car, and well when I scroll over to ethanol it reads E 0. I just had a flex fuel sensor installed as well so I assumed since i’m on 93 i’d at least see 9-12% ethanol.

My question is, am I missing a component which will enable me to read ethanol or is there a parameter when tuning the vehicle that has to be configured.

Reason I ask is because my local mod shop explained that this is a configuration that is enabled when tuning the vehicle which allows the P3 to then read ethanol.

But looking online I see things like needing either:
Ethanol sensor or a P3 signal inverter.

Thanks in advance.

No you're not going to see anything with just 93 in there. The sensor will only pick up any level of e85 in the tank. I assume you already had the tune adjusted to read the sensor so just drop some E in there and you will see the adjustments depending on your mixture.

Normal 93 octane pump gas has about 10% ethanol, and it's reasonable to expect that it would show up on the gauge.

I thought the same thing when I first installed my gauge but no bueno. Didn't see any real readings until I did dropped some in there.

You’d see 10% on pump gas because pump is e10 essentially. And a real alcohol sensor will read that.

Then that gauge must have some "clever" clamping to 0 feature, meaning it won't start displaying the real value and is stuck at 0% until alcohol content exceeds 10% or maybe 11 or 12%. The real value, read via a proper scan tool, will range from 0% to 100%.

Yeah my banks gauge reads 8-10% for pump 93. His should too I would think don’t know the purpose of defaulting to 0 until you’re above a range. I have seen some 93 that is ethanol free. Maybe that was it and it was E0.