I commonly see posts on Facebook asking about the pros and cons of being tuned on E85. On almost every one of those posts in the comments, there will be people saying you can’t run E85 in the winter because the car won’t start or you can’t or you shouldn’t run E85 year round because it’s hard on the injectors or fuel system.

That information is definitely old and outdated. Fuel injectors and the OEM fuel system today are designed to run with some ethanol; At least here in Minnesota, almost every fuel at the pump contains at least 10% ethanol. Almost all of the aftermarket fuel injectors you can purchase are designed to run with ethanol fuels like E85. I personally have a set of ID 1050x in my daily driver 2010 STI. I have run E85 for years and have yet to have any issues with the fuel injectors and have over 30,000 miles driven.

The other outdated information being shared online is that you can’t run E85 in the winter or cold weather because it won’t start. I have done extensive testing on cold starts and E85. In fact, with the nice weather we get here in Minnesota, I have done cold start testing down to -40 deg f. If someone is telling you your car won’t start when running E85 in the winter, I will just say what all my friends say to me. “It’s in the tune!!”. It truly is in the tune. Cobb has defined all the tables needed to get your car to start and run smoothly on E85 at basically any outdoor temperature.

The video below illustrates what I have been talking about. My car sat outside all night with temps of -5 to -10deg f. It started and warmed up to operating temp just like the stock tune would have. The end user would be none the wiser that this car is running E85