blue, you could look at a Flextek if you have injectors, you could also look at increasing fuel pressure. If you have a carb, you'll have to change jets. Now, neverminding Torque1st's comment, yes, you may very well get the same or close to it fuel economy. But that depends upon how your engine is setup. The question is if you want to be able to use gasoline again in the future or not. A truck that is intended to be swapped back and forth between gasoline and E85 cannot be optimized to do the best ethanol has to offer. DF, @ his Dad's house

 

You won't get close to the same fuel economy.

Try the information in post #7 above.


Dino must have an economic interest in pushing alcohol fuels...

 

Wikipedia is a very reliable source

This argument has already been played out in every other thread about E85 and alternative fuels. There are far too many variables to say without a doubt what the difference will be in fuel mileage.

Oh, and Eric, what do you have against this Dino guy?

 

Not a thing. He just pushes alcohol fuels real hard.

 

There are a lot of misconceptions about ethanol and E85 on the internet, both in favor of and against it. Only time and further research will tell the full potential of ethanol as a motor fuel.

 

Alcohol is good stuff in a properly designed vehicle that can take advantage of it's properties. We really don't have that in the US yet. Maybe we will get some good supercharger designs that can take advantage of both fuels. Personally I think bio-diesel is a better "alternative fuel" but again that takes a vehicle designed to use it. I follow hybrid vehicle design fairly closely and I am looking forward to some innovative and viable designs in that area.

 

I agree and I can't understand why so many people want to defend E85. They should be promoting with facts instead of BS.

I was recently looking at new vehicles on GM's web site (sorry) and they list the expected MPG for gas and E85. The E85 was way WORSE then I thought it could be in MPG. This was for the 5.3

Vortec FlexFuel E85 5.3L V8 (gasoline) 14/18
Vortec FlexFuel E85 5.3L V8 (E85) 10/13

That's a HUGE difference! E85 would have to be dirt cheap for me to think about using it.

 

The current flex fuel vehicles are gasoline vehicles able to run E85. If that were reversed so that E85 vehicles were built that could also run gasoline, the fuel mileage story wouldn't be nearly as dismal for E85.

 

Now would you have any real world auto manufacturing examples to prove this statement? Is there a company making just an E85 vehicle not a flex fuel that we could compair?

 

Assuming that is true, it doesn't change the fact that this is not the way engines are being built today. And the fact that ethanol is an inferior fuel to gasoline for the engines as built today. Could an engine be built to match the characteristics of an engine running on gasoline? Perhaps, but that engine is not available today. Wishing that it was won't improve performance on today's engines or make ethanol blends a good buy for consumers.


Kinda like "If a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his butt when he jumped." Might be true, but doesn't change the reality of the current situation.

 

Yes, there aren't currently produced engines able to take advantage of E85. To do that would require taking away the capability of running gasoline. But it does give the enthusiast some very interesting possibilities. Now, we can build a 12:1 or more motor, for street usage, and actually be able to buy fuel for it! All while being responsible and not hurting the environment. Before E85, this was impossible, unless you like paying $5 per gallon for race gas, which is technically illegal to run on the street anyway due to lead content.

Also, E85 gives the guy that bought the "premium fuel" high compression motor back in the '60's a chance to take it out and run it without fear of pinging!

 

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/05/...opower-engine/

Saab has one.

 

Nope. That car will still run on gasoline. The base compression ratio is too low to take advantage of E85's octane rating, and will still get poor mileage on E85 compared to gasoline. It's flex fuel and they're using a turbo. That's it.

 

The turbo boosts the compression of a sort by forcing more air in, so it doesn't totally lack, but the fact it still runs pump gas means it isn't optimized.

 

You guys completely missed my point. I didn't say that anything you have said is wrong. I was just hoping to put a positive spin on the FUTURE of ethanol. The PRESENT looks just like you've said. Currently, vehicles are optimized for gasoline and E85 performance and efficiency suffers, just like was said before. Sometime down the road, maybe there will be a vehicle optimized for E85 where the gasoline performance and efficiency suffers, opposite of the current trend.

I am working on a vehicle that will be optimized for ethanol with NC State University and Lotus Engineering. It's a long ways from completion, but I will certainly keep everyone informed of how it works out.