[JohnE]

Thought I'd share my experience upgrading to E85...

I bought the E85 sensor kit from Skidmark garage in the spring but didn't have the time to install it until recently. The kit wasn't too bad to install. There are a few potential gotcha's though.

I figured the fuel connection part would be the difficult part. It isn't. The fuel line is pretty easy to disconnect. What I did do before disconnecting it was to pull the fuel pump fuse and then run the car until the engine stopped. This depressurized the line. I remember changing the fuel filter on a VW and having fuel piss out everywhere. This avoids that.

The difficult part of the install is in adding the sensor wire to the ECU pin #38 connector. I thought the pin was seated, but it must go into the connector a lot deeper than I thought. The best way to verify if it is seated (it wasn't clear in the instructions) is to pop off the blue plastic mating shield to the connector. When you pop it off, you can see the actual pins and if they are seated correctly. The pin should be flush with the other pins.

If the pin is not seated correctly, the HP Tuners Scanner tool will return a constant value of 40% ethanol.. I trouble shooted everything by verifying voltage to the sensor (12 V) and also voltage from the white wire.. I was reading (0.3V) on the gas I had in the tank. The white wire reads from 0V to 5V. 0.3V is probably 7.5% ethanol or so. I ended up emailed Jeremy from Skid Mark and he helped me narrow it down to the pin not being seated correctly.

Anyway, once I got the white wire seated correctly the sensor finally returned a valid value.

Note. I did pay $499 for the HP Tuners suite. I can do a separate review on this later. As someone who is new to Chevy products, I'm not a fan of HP Tuners credit based model. So I paid $500 to tune 2 vehicles. Kind of a rip off.

But.. on to the good part.

E85 is awesome on this car. The basic tune I used which is a derivative of what I found on this board provides a noticeable increase in power.

Let's face it, the Camaro is somewhat of a gas guzzler. The MPG is good for a V8 engine for sure, but still.. I have averaged 20.5 MPG on premium unleaded. Typically premium unleaded for me has been about $0.70 - $0.90 more per gallon than regular unleaded ($2.85-$3.20).

My first tank of E85 from last week cost me $1.88 per gallon. I expected the E85 to be about 70% as efficient as regular gasoline. So far, I have averaged 17.2 MPG on E85 which would imply an efficiency ratio of 17.2 / 20.5 = 83.9%. I'm going to be conservative and call it 80%. If you use that number, I am paying a gasoline equivalent price of $1.88 / 0.80 = $2.35 per (100+ octane) gallon. Each tankful of gas I am saving anywhere from $10 - $15 per tank plus gaining 25+ hp and torque. So the mod will pay for itself after $750 / $12.5 = 60 fill ups (or roughly 20,600 miles of driving).

Once you do this mod, you will probably want to install the "GasBuddy" app on your phone. This will let you find the lowest priced E85. :-) Today I fueled up at $1.75 per gallon which is $2.18 equivalent! After lighting up the tires, I joked with my son about how we are "Green" now.

-John