Thread: Beating Ethanol with a RealTime ECU

First things first, this is just an idea that I think might work, or might just leave me with a darn good ECU

If you guys have noticed, there has been plenty of complains of lower MPG's lately. From what it seems like it is the 10% Ethanol blend in the gas.

I've been doing some reading on Ethanol. It seems like Ethanol burns cleaner and at a lower temperature.

What one theory suggested is, the ethanol doesn't give off as much exhaust gas. So the O2 sensor gets a lower reading and thinks the engine is running too leany thus dumps more fuel into the cylinders. This makes the car run richer and get worse gas mileage.

I was thinking about getting a RealTime ECU, buying or borrowing a wideband, then tunning the ECU to give a nice mixture, and not let it get too rich or too leany.

Would this be feasible?

sounds like you're on to something there...you gonna be the guinea pig?

Well if you ship over your wideband you just purchased

I probably will end up with one, but before I spend the money on a RealTime + Wideband I wanted to know if it's actually feasible

well i think the idea of introducing the wideband to the situation before the ecu is introduced will give you a idea of what air fuel ratios you are getting off the bat. this would give you more of a accurate idea of weather or not the theory is correct, by letting you read accurate air fuel ratios and if its running to lean then you could compinsate the air fuel ratios to boot.

but i think this idea is really obvious becuase the benifit of the realtime ecu is to do just that adjust and correct and tune the air fuel ratios for better performance and gas milage. be it idle,cruising or wide open, its ideal when having the realtime ecu.

however this is only evident to people that have a realtime ecu and wideband readily available.

i think the idea that will need to be introduced is not that weather or not the ecu is actually running lean or not and then giving too much fuel, but datalogging how much MPG you get now, and then how much MPG you get after the ecu and wideband tuning. then people can see weather or not the change in air fuel ratio tuning is actually worth splurging and getting the ecu and wideband.

those are just my thoughts on it.

Interesting thoughts

Well I wanted an upgrade ECU anyway, so thats why the RealTime is coming to mind

I guess I'm mainly looking at this thread, and how he billc did his tuning etc.

too bad you guys don't own VW's, you can adjust all that stuff with either Unisettings or Lemmiwinks (both free software )

Rub it in why don't you

who needs vdubs we can do the same thing with calumsult and tunerpro...I've got a calum basic and an extra set of chips, I'll see if I can get the consult cable from calum and work something out. Basically what you're wanting to do covert is what a lot of people are doing already. You tune your car with either a basic or realtime based on your set up, you lean it out or richen it based on your a/f ratios...

Doesn't this depend on what you mean by running cleaner? If the 02 sensor only reads oxygen levels in the exhaust gas, then the ecu isn't going to see any difference with cleaner gas, unless the gas doesn't burn as well and more oxygen is left over. And I think in that case that counts as running lean anyways so it should be richened up. I don't know I'm not really an expert on this but that's just what I thought of when I read it. Maybe I'm just missing something.

Of course, you can still always improve it by wideband tuning so its really a win/win either way!

Ive got an e-manage just waiting to get on the dyno to do some tuning. Im running super rich. Not all gas stations down here in sofla have ethanol. Only a few and it says it on the pump.