What's the current E85 prices in your area?

 

I think it is about a 1.59 a gallon.
Regular unleaded is down to 1.89 a gallon, about time it gets under two bucks.

 

Man we're still paying $2.09 here in Northern Illinois. And I'm not it Cook County either.

 

Here in Wa. state we are still around $2.69 and am not sure if we even have E-85 of course we have the highest gas tax in the U.S.!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

wow we're paying 1.87 FOR 87 Octane here in Indianapolis

 

Gas prices finally dropped down to 2.16 a gallon here in fayettevill, nc. Around this area i havent even seen any E85 i would like to run a tank or in the truck to see if there is a difference

 

There is a difference less power and worse gas mileage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

E85 was $1.82 last time I filled up. Less MPG is a fact. The power is the same and maybe slightly better at WOT since the knock sensors don't retard the timing. The E85 has higher octane.

 

There is no significant difference in the power the engine will make using either fuel.

Fuel economy will be measurably less, sometimes up to 30% lower on E85. This means you have to do your math to determine if using E85 makes financial sense compared to E10 or straight gasoline.

Steve

 

I do not have the link now but I read a dyno test on E85 and they said less fuel economy and less power??? I predict E85 will be a complete flop even if it gets off the ground as I also see deisel users in the light pick up market take a signicant drop with the new low sulphur fuel and the increased cost of diesel and increased cost of the deisel engine just does not make financial sense for 90% of light pick upusers. IMO

 

As long as the engines are built to run optimally on gasoline, they won't run as well on E85, but build the engine to run on E85 best, you would find they do as well if not better than the gasoline counterpart. Trick is, right now, E85 isn't as readily available, as petro has a 100 year head start on infrastructure...

 

My 03 Explorer runs well on E85, but less MPG. It has only been 30 cents cheaper, so financially it doesn't pay off. E85 needs to be significantly lower to pay off. If you are towing something long distances, you would actually probably end up spending much more on E85 vs unleaded gasoline.

 

I didn't mean to say the engine won't run well, as in performance. the performance is fine, it just doesn't efficiently use the properties of the E85 with the lower compression of a petro gas engine. It would be like trying to run kerosene in a gasser, just won't work out the same as one that is built for running kero. On a smaller scale, it is like running an engine that is designed to run optimally on 87 octane on 93 octane, the fuel properties are wasted, as it isn't necessary or useful to do so, or even running a street engine on 105 racing fuel, it will run fine, but the fuel is not being used to it's capacity, and much is wasted. If the engine is designed to run on 105 octane, it will run it much more efficiently than one that is designed for 87 running 105 octane.

 

It's $1.77 in Hudson, Iowa.

Guys, E85 is a different fuel. It is not a direct replacement for gasoline. The stoichiometric ratio is different. If you run it in your non flex-fuel gassers, you'll probably notice less WOT power. This is because the computer goes open loop after a certain throttle position and does not use the O2 sensor to correct the fuel mixture. It will run lean when you need it to run rich. To do it right the crude method is to proportionally size up your fuel jetting or fuel injectors to match the fuel. Even then you're not fully utilizing the fuel, read on.

The analogy about kerosene is a good one, but not entirely correct. If you had a 4:1 compression kerosene motor and were running it on gasoline, that would be like a 9:1 compression gasoline motor running E85. Note that this includes all current flex fuel vehicles. They are simply not using the fuel to it's full potential. When you start seeing 11:1 or 11.5:1 OEM E85 only motors, they will be using the fuel to it's full potential. Flex-fuel really means gasoline motor tweaked to run E85. It is not optimized.

In current non-optimized flex fuel vehicles, there will be a slight increase in power and slight reduction in mileage. The increase in power comes from the higher latent heat of vaporization. This means E85 cools the air down more as it vaporizes. When it does that, you get a cooler denser charge into the cylinders, and therefore more power. There is a slight reduction in mileage because E85 has less energy than gasoline. The compression is the same, therefore the efficiency is the same, and you get a drop in mileage.

If you built an E85 optimized motor with higher compression, you would not lose mileage and would gain a lot more power. The higher compression would extract more energy from the fuel, as well as add a lot of power. To my knowledge nobody has built a motor like this yet. I am in the process of doing so though, check the V6 forum.

Some current flex fuel vehicles do better in terms of mileage than others. For instance, the F150 seems to get much better mileage on E85 than GM's flex fuel vehicles. I suspect it's a combination of valve timing and computer calibration.

 

$1.87 -$1.99 / gallon. for E85 in my area. Unleaded is $1.89-$1.99. People in Kansas are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to the price of E85. Retailers for the most part, don't pass on the tax breaks.