E85 is 85% gas 15% ethanol, if memory serves. That would make it a 15% blend.

 

E10 = 10% ethanol
E85 = 85% ethanol

 

lookin at the number, as long as the gas is about 2/3 or more, you're not going to see a drastic drop in mileage. Especially, as was said, when gas prices move upward, and ethanol holds relatively steady, or drops.

Ryan

 

Yikes. That should be about a 25% drop in "gas" mileage. Has anyone had personal experience with this blend on a carbureted truck? Did it required re-jetting? Any dyno or ET info to know how that changes?

 

We race with E85 in a Cuda, running a Demon carb. We had to jet the carb with the fattest jets they make, and have fine tuned from there. We are having excellent results with E85.

 

Around here (Northern KY), some stations run E10 (usually the cheap places) and some run other stuff. (I'm guessing MBTE or whatever). Anyway I always notice the difference in power and mileage with the Ethanol.

Mike

 

E10 has about 120639 BTU/gallon which is about 96% of a gallon of gas so mileage will go down only slightly, like the site Ken mentioned listed 1-4% which will also depend on the state of tune in your vehicle. 96% of 15MPG is only 14.4 so depending on what mileage you get it may not be real noticeable. It IS less tho which is one reason they try to subsidize the price at the pump with lower taxes or subsidize production which means we all pay.

 

Anytime we let the goverment make a decision instead of the market we all pay.

 

It seems to my meager memory that there was a study that came out last summer that it takes much more energy to create ethanol than what you get out of it. Back in the 1970's running ethanol caused all sorts of problems with the fuel system flex lines. But "Big Brother" says it is the thing to do...

 

GLR - You are correct. Ethanol is very costly to make. It's great that we're thinking of alternatives but this one is hurting us in our tax dollars and bad!

 

Let's not get too caught up in the idea that ethanol "takes more energy to make than you get out of it". That's true of hydrogen, too, and probably quite a few other potential fuels. Here's the point. Hydrogen and ethanol allow you to shift a non-portable energy into a portable fuel. You could use wind, solar, hydroelectric, coal or nuclear to help produce ethanol and hydrogen. With the direction gas prices are going, ethanol and hydrogen start to become viable because it makes economic sense in terms of the total cost (dollars and energy) to produce them over what we could end up paying for foreign oil.

Jason

 

Wellllllllll. You can't ignore that fact either. On a smaller scale, if we have to burn 10 gallons of ethanol to produce 7 gallons of ethanol, it's a losing proposition. Eventually we run out of energy.

And you are correct. It is true of hydrogen and other alterantive fuels. Which is why we aren't using them now.


This is true.

There is not enough energy in wind, solar, or hydro to meet the energy needs to do this. Coal, maybe. But then you have to contend with the pollution caused by burning coal. (You do know that burning coal releases radioactive pollution right?) That leaves nuclear. Good idea to go that way but a lot of public reisistance in this country at the perceived risks.

Some of the estimates I've seen indicate we would have to double our electric production to make this happen. With the grid running at near 100% now, how much would it cost to upgrade to be able to double production?

Maybe. It would be better if we explored for more domestic sources of oil. Off shore of CA and FL. Oil shale in CO and UT. Oil sands in Canada (as long as we can buy from them )

 

We are paying the price now for not developing our own petroleum and coal reserves and pipelines, and not building nuclear power plants and refineries, etc. Renewable sources should be developed also and shifting demand by shifting forms always develops flexibility.

 

That's amazing that some of you don't have any mileage change when running E10. I have switched between E10 and no ethanol many times and when I'm running E10, I loose 1-2mpg. That hurts a lot when I'm driving the Bronco and running E10, after about 4-5 fill-ups I could have had a "free" tank of gas if I was not using any ethanol.

 

I still don't understand the need for an 'oxygenator' in the fuel anyway. We have all the oxygen we need in the atmosphere. Just jet or program the fuel mixture to use all the available oxygen.

Burning oxygen doesn't contribute to moving the car. Heating the gas in the combustion chamber is what causes it to expand and move the vehicle. Wasting fuel volume to carry oxygen seems to be a waste and appears to be proven out in the fact that Ethanol has less energy than straight gas. The real world experiences showing a decrease in fuel mileage also underscore this.