I'd be interested too, but I'm not sure that the E38 has any provisions for that sensor. Even then I would need to figure out what makes them break lol.

 

How often do they fail?

 

Often enough that I am swayed from using them. I spoke with one of the big tuners around here about it and he doesn't like using them for reliability reasons. And I trust his judgment above most people in the automotive world lol. His name is NicD on the site..

 

Damn that is discouraging.

 

If I wasn't running a turbo I'd try it, stock sensor and all. Lean with boost is a lot worse than lean without. In your situation I'd go ahead with it. Its just not worth the risk for someone running 15-20psi...

 

hmmm they are freaking expensive so if anyone sees one for a good deal, post it up here. I want to try this

 

I'm bringing this thread back up. I saw Dsteck's tutorial on adding the ethanol sensor to the GenIV cars and it got me thinking again. He used the following parts and the price on the sensor is only $50.

Ethanol content sensor (GM part number 13577429 is the cheapest)
Sensor pigtail (GM part number 13352241)
Swagelok part number SS-600-6-AN (best option) or Russell 644123/640863 TWO OF EACH

I checked the wiring in for my pcm and it looks like pin 56 is the input for the flex fuel sensor. If I wire the sensor up, add it to my return line so it isn't a restriction, and put the correct values in the stoich table, will everything work as it should?

 

I'm gonna try it on my turbo truck. Since there is only one 99-02 OS for FF and there is not a COS for it, I'm gonna have to get creative and run a 1bar MAF tune for my turbo. I have an idea on how to do it though.

 

From a performance perspective what's the reasoning behind doing this? To my knowledge there's no way to tune timing based on the fuel composition. So the tune will have to be set on the conservative end for the gasoline, losing some of the benfit of ethanol in the first place.

 

I'll be going back and forth with gas and E85 and I don't wanna worry about what percent of ethanol I have in it since there is not easy way to check. If I have the sensor it will adjust fuel on it's own and all I have to do is bump the timing If I want more for the track or something. Or, I can just up the boost, and leave the base timing in it and not have to worry about it.

Even with the same timing, I've noticed a fair bit more torque feeling when adding 25% e85 to my gas.

Also, I just got back from a 2500 mile trip to WY and ran into some places with crazy high gas prices and reasonable E85 prices when comparing it to the premium gas I have to run. Would have been nice if I could have just filled it up with E85 and kept on driving and not have to try and figure out just how much fuel I needed to add in the tune to make it right for the amount of E85 I just put in it and then switch it back the next time I got fuel. I really just want the option of being about to dump E85 in it when ever I want.