E85 full tune from the scratch

Hey guys,

how long does it usually take you, to tune a car from the scratch on pump and then E85? I figured that it might take as long as 2-3 cars on regular pump fuel.

But how much do you charge? 3 tunes for that one car? ;)

I'm just trying to get some opinions on that topic, as we were discussion it the past week.

thanks guys,

Andy

This is a problem we discussed at length at my old shop. You're right, it's essentially the same as three complete tunes depending on how thorough you want to be with the process. In the end we decided that if the job was charged at what it potentially takes to do, no customer would be able to justify the price. We ended up going somewhere in the middle and charged approximately the cost of two tunes. We did vary this a little based on exactly how long it takes.

One thing to mention is that if you already have a really good map for pump gas, I don't find it actually takes that long to tune for E85 - Depending on the ECU's flex fuel strategy the actual fuel map/VE map normally needs very little work and from there it's a case of adding some timing (predominantly under high load) and perhaps increasing the boost. The time consuming aspect is draining/changing fuel and testing at 2-3 different E contents.

I charge for 2 tunes i configure the 98ron map then drain the tank and tune the 85 map then drain tank and add 10lt of 98 fuel and start my blend table upto E85

on other ecus i use a 5d table and tune 98 then add small amounts of ethonal to the tank and blend up my fuel to e85 and my boost tables are also ethonal based to raise or lower boost to what fuel or mixture is in the tank