Running a while on RE85 ethanol and relocating fuel filter

In winter 2014-2015 I had some spare time and I had seen an older K-bike converted to running on ethanol. In Finland the RE85 is being sold at certain gas stations and I figured I will try to save the world. At the same time the Finnish manufacturer of the ethanol conversion kits was quite a bit in the media. So I ordered their kit for four cylinder engines with the correct Bosch type of injector plugs.
The installation was not very complicated. The hardest task was to find a location for the control box, which is origianlly designed to be fitted under the hood of a car. There is usually a bit more space to fit the unit and not so much flying water than on a motorcycle frame.

Luckily LT has so much plastic fairings and behind them there are places to locate even the quite bulky control box.
At first I cut a plastic mock-up of the unit which I tried to fit in various places until I found the solution.

Here I was testing the location on the right side underneath the radiator behind the lower fairing.

And here it is in final position. Note the antenna pointing downwards.

In the engine block there is a ready made bolt hole for 8 mm bolt which I used for the lower fastening point of the bracket. The bracket material was my famous 20 x 3 mm flat steel.

For the upper point I had to weld a small extension to my fog light bracket or actually to the bike subframe.

This maybe shows the bracket installation best.

As the control box did not look like 100% water tight I opened both ends of the box and added some silicone sealant in the seams. This picture also shows the bluetooth antenna the unit has. This connects to your cell phone and it shows  some real time data of the fuel injection. (Today the control boxes look different and they seem to be small in size.)

From the control box there comes one set of cables to the fuel injector nozzles, one cable to the fuel sensor and one cable to the temperature sensor that is installed on top of the engine.

Here is the set of cables going to the fuel injectors on the left side of the motor.

The original fuel nozzle connectors are disconnected and replaced by the eFlexFuel connectors. The bike original connectors are hooked up to receiving connectors of the new set. Very easy connection although the picture is not very clear. In my hand there is the engine block temperature sensor. The idea of thi sensor is actually to give rough information whether it is cold or warm  and the ethanol injection is added when the engine is cold. Mainly helping engine cold starts as ethanol is known to have poorer cold start charasteristics than gasoline. 

The fuel lines need to be ethanol proof. So I changed all the lines and in addition moved the fuel filter out from the gas tank.

This is the starting point. The original fuel connectors in a quite tight installation under the tank. 

Here is the fuel sensor that must be installed in the ingoing fuel line.

Here the sensor is in place.

And here is the fuel filter in it's new location. 

Since the filter is now out from the gas tank, the filter and the famous tight U-shaped rubber hose were replaced by this single piece of ethanol proof hose. Now I do not need to open the large plastic nut in the bottom of the gas tank and have headache with the seal when tightening it. Unless my gas pump one day gives up...

There is an app that can show some real time data like the percentage of ethanol in current fuel, the engine block temperature and the efficiency of the injection. Current app seems different and has more features and seems to be available for iPhones as well. Back in 2015 it was Android only.

I was running the bike with this ethanol conversion for the summer of 2015, a total of about 6000 km when the bike had about 175.000 km behhind it. The fuel consumption with full RE85 was about 8-9 liters / 100 km while with 98 oct gasoline with only 5% ethanol the mileage was about 5 l / 100 km. I made a longer trip to Germany where I only used the best possible gasoline with minimum amount of ethanol just to see that the extra control box for the fuel injection was not "cheating" (i.e. feeding too rich mixture when it was not needed). It worked fine. However my wife did not like when I ran with ethanol as the exhaust smelled different. I did not bother me...

What bothered me was an incident in late July 2015. I was on a work trip on my way to a client 380 km away and all of a sudden on a motorway the engine stalled and then died completely. The starter cranked it but the motor would not start. After some 10-15 minutes I was about to give up and call a tow truck but I decided to try once more. And the engine fired right up! I revved it up and all seemed to work fine so I continued my riding and after less than one kilometer the engine died again! There I was again, stranded on the side of a motorway. I started undressing some of my upper clothing as I was getting hot and this took a couple of minutes and when I tried to start the bike it fired up again! This time I decided not to rev it up anymore but decided to continue my riding with as slow rpms as possible. So I rode on the curb of the motorway at a speed of 30-40 km/h at first and after some 20 minutes I gradually increased the speed up to 80 km/h so that I was able to come back on the right lane and out from the curb. This time I managed to get about 40 km until the bike stalled again.
This time I had no panic any more. I simply waited some 4-5 minutes and then tried to start and the bike started ok. My tank was about 40% full and the fuel that I had in the tank was not full ethanol and not pure gas either  but some mixture of both. I figured that this way my 350 km journey will take quite long so decided to visit the next gas station and fill the tank up with 98 octane gasoline which here in Finland contains 5% ethanol.
And this helped! No more stalling, no more stopping. The bike ran like an angel all the way to my client and then back home the next day.
What happened to my eFlexFuel remains a mystery. I called the manufacturer but they could not give me a clue of what happened. So I decided that for environmental reasons I will not take the risk of having the bike to quit again because there has been added a bunch of electronics to the already complex fuel injection system that the bike has. So I stripped the setup that I have described in the previous pictures.

The only changes that I did not return was the gas filter new location. It is still on the outside of the gas tank and the fuel lines are still ethanol proof, I did not change them back...