E85 and Motorcycles

[Karaya One]

After reading this today -

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

Can a motorcycle safely run on E85?

[Woodsy]

based on the sheer number of plastic components (washers, seals, fittings) on todays sport bikes i would say no. I am sure if you went and replaced all those and then tuned the bike to run e85 than maybe. But my bike runs like shit on E10...

[Pigman]

Ethanol is the Devil................

[SRTie4k]

E85 has a different stoichiometric ratio that it burns at. Gasoline burns efficiently at 14.7:1 AFR, whereas E85 has to burn at 9.7:1 for a clean burn. What that means is you need to inject a significantly higher volume of fuel, but what you get out of it is a lot more power potential.

That said I believe it would take a lot of playing with the ECU to get the bike to run well on 100% E85. If the bike has an O2 sensor, the ECU input voltage needs to be rescaled (as an O2 sensor is nothing but a Lambda sensor) in order to account for the difference in stoic, and injection needs to be increased by a big percentage throughout the RPM range.

Also, as Woodsy said, E85 is caustic and will eat through fuel lines and gaskets much quicker.

[KingCast 650R]

Of course there was this, but it was specially engineered.
http://green.autoblog.com/tag/ethanol+bike/

[markbvt]

Can a motorcycle safely run on E85?

The short answer is no.

The longer answer is that it's certainly possible to design a bike that runs perfectly on E85, but the ones currently on the market are designed for pure gasoline or E10. Even E15 is only approved for use in cars and trucks MY2007 or newer and specifically disallowed for motorcycles and other small engines, as well as older cars.

In theory it would be possible to convert a current motorcycle to run well on E85, but you'd probably have to replace significant portions of the fuel system and would definitely need to remap the ECU.

--mark