Historically, the first widely-sold flexible-fuel vehicle in the United States was a variant of Henry Ford's Model T intended for use by self-reliant farmers who could make their own ethanol. Surprisingly, it is capable even to this day of running on E85, or gasoline, as it was designed to operate on either ethanol or gasoline, at the user's choice. Henry Ford's subsequent 1927 Model A likewise was an early flex fuel vehicle. It, however, eased the driver's method of accommodating various blends of alcohol and gasoline through a driver's control on the dash with a **** that was turned to control air fuel mixture and pulled to choke the single-barrel Zenith carburetor. This dash-mounted control provided easy control of all the major adjustments required for easily burning alcohol and gasoline in varying proportions, including enough range for burning today's E85 blend of alcohol and gasoline in any mix of E85 and gasoline.

I read this off of a Flex-fuel conversion website, thought it was pretty cool.

 

/sarcasm=on
Oh but that couldn't have worked since they didn't have the rubber and materials technology, and it would have dissolved the fuel system!
/sarcasm=off



Sorry, but I just had to.

 

Yeah, with all of our high tech plastics, rubber, and computers, we've got to spend money to upgrade to run E85, but the model T was built to run on Ethanol, I love it.

 

Henry would be spinning in his grave right now if he knew how badly America is addicted to foreign oil.

 

I like how all the, "Anti-alternative" people ignored this.

 

it is interesting on that point, isn't it? all the negatives they tout for modern vehicles, but yet, here was the first vehicles without problems.... I'm sure they would say that these vehicles didn't last as long or such, not as many miles driven, all that, but whatever...

 

keep in mind that the model T had very little rubber in the fuel system. They used a lot of copper tubing with solder so it was able to take the abuse just fine. the carb gaskets were mostly made from compressed asbestos. New cars are way to high tech to work witout a lot of mods.

 

hmm, interesting.

Ryan

 

Model T's could run on a variety of fuels including Kerosene (Jet Fuel) which was commonly available then.

 

Thats pretty cool.

 

Yeah, and I've been told stories of people having to do a ring job on the side of the road in order to complete a 100 mile trip in a Model T also. It's great that model T's ran on ethanol but the good ole days weren't necessarily all that good.

 

yep average engine life was less than 3,000 miles . But heck a rebuilt one installed was 60.00. I have a whole bunch of old gas station signs from 1910-1929 gas .02 a gallon spark plugs installed for 3.50. Most of the early engines had no oil pumps and were splash lubed and had poured babit bearings and poor tension cast iron rings.