Well I'm finally settled here in Denver. The worst part about moving here is there is no 93 octane anywhere!! I had to go to the 91 map on the accessport because that is the best gasoline I can get, and I am hating it. There is a guy at my work that tunes all of his cars for e 85 because it is very accessible out here. my wrx is stage 2 (dp + intake) would it be worth it to go with larger injectors/ fuel pump and tune for e85? Would I need anything else? Would it decrease the reliability of the 2.5? Thanks
You should be fine with injectors/pump with your current setup. I personally will never use E85 again in a car that wasnt designed to use it. I am not sure how your fuel lines are in your Suabru but I had a very bad experience with e85. The newer VAG cars have an ethanol sensor so the ecu can adjust for timing and fuel. Plus they beefed up the fuel system to handle ethanol based fuels.
Gotcha. Thanks for the input. I was reading up about it a bit where a guy ran e 85 in his 2011 and he was saying that the gas lines were totally fine after 40k miles.... It would probably be worth changing out just to be safe. What was your experience? What happened?
I feel like it would be worth it for me as long as there is not huge reliability factor, just because I live at 5,280 feet and I can only get 91... Bad combo. I'm assuming because e85 is so high in octane that I would be higher power here with e85 than 93 in atlanta.
it's not THAT bad for you... as long as you have the 91 octane tune, you should be fine. Look at all the other turbo cars west of the mississippi where you can only get 91 octane. It's not like they're out there blowing engines left and right. I think you're a little too paranoid about 2 octane.
I'm not worried about the 91 octane, I'm just disappointed in the power loss. It's noticeable. That's why I am throwing around the idea of going with e 85. I do admit I'm really not sure if it has more to do with the tune/octane or the altitude
You will use ~30% more fuel with e85 to be stoich on the mixture. since your fuel tank stays the same size, you can do the math on the complete destruction of your mileage. I agree with superhawk on the daily driver advice, if it was a weekend car sure. this is one of a few reasons I haven't gone to it in my car which really would tremendously benefit from it. Also e85 isn't highly available enough still for my taste here in atlanta. Welcome to the "mile high club" haha, the denver car community is a strong one, especially subaru's, and they ALL deal with the altitude.