by the way all companies get subsidized well ,some don't but I won't go there

there's money piled up under all their tables

if not ,they just aren't a company any more ( or never grow in size) or get bought

blabla I know

 

nuff said lol

 

Not "nuff said" about ethanol. I know how to calculate fuel mileage. With E10 The mileage dropped about 20%. Also several others I talked to.Wrote to EPA about this, basically using more fuel+ more pollution. Reply back: "public comment period is over". I've had fuel lines in small engines disintegrate with E10. I've bought gas in NC from pumps that say "Contains less than 10% Ethanol" and have gotten better mileage. Some pumps are now saying "may contain less than 10% ethanol". Not too many carbed vehicles around when ethanol was introduced so E10 "tuning" shouldn't be needed.

 

nuff said to rusty trusty f150

not the thread


there is thousands (some reputable ,some not so much )

of web sites that show and tell the ills of alcohols

some that have done good running ethanol most have not ( they say they have ,lets wait and see lol)

alcohol is like either tuning specially for it or do not use it at all

its not like ( another ball game ) biodiesel or veggie oil ( corrosion is not so much a problem)

of which I have a liking for because it is sustain-able

ethanol like we produce it is a poor choice

 

Is there a special reason you don't post using standard English sentence structure, including capitalization and punctuation?

It isn't "cool" and it doesn't communicate more effectively. It makes for worse reading.

 

I mentioned possibly using E85 as an aside in my proposed big block F350 build in the Bullnose section and the discussion went way off topic about ethanol. So, I'll redirect that discussion here to the proper thread

Ethanol is actually a pretty good fuel and has gotten a bad rap. Most of its reputation is due to the politics surrounding its introduction and in people not realizing it isn't exactly the same as gasoline. I think that if it had been marketed differently on its introduction that it would have been welcomed with open arms by the folks here. Let me explain.

Ethanol is very high octane and that is a very big deal. That's how it should have been sold rather than as some "green" fuel which the tree huggers actually hate. We've been stuck with the same 87/89/91 octane unleaded fuels for the past close to 40 years and it's continued to take ever fancier and more expensive fuel injection systems, ECUs, valve gear, and now forced induction to try to squeeze more power out of the same fuels. Increasing the octane levels only a handful of points by adding in a little more ethanol can have serious performance increases- we saw the opposite happen as regular dropped from 89 octane and premium from 94-95 octane to 87 and 91 after the EPA bared its nasty claws and banned the highly leaded fuels. The most recent trend of turbocharging tiny little engines is absolutely PERFECT for ethanol as its latent heat of vaporization increases the effective octane and allows for more boost for more power and more static compression to lessen turbo lag. Or if you are an auto maker, you can run a smaller engine with more boost with higher octane fuels to make the same power and get better "M-P-Gs" as they put it. (Nobody ever talks about "miles per gallon.") Also, ethanol is less expensive than gasoline by quite a good margin even though the subsidies have expired. RBOB 87 octane is $2.64/gallon on the commodity exchanges while CBOT fuel ethanol is $1.92/gal. Why as an enthusiast would you NOT want to run what's essentially race gas that's cheaper than 87 octane pee-water?

So, what I would have done is introduce higher-ethanol blends as super-premium fuels for specially-designed vehicles. I would NOT have made any mention of the whole "green" bullcrap. The tree huggers would have not wanted anything to do with this since it would be highlighting performance rather than "green-ness" and anything that makes cars more enjoyable is horrible in their book. They'd really like to all see us riding around on choo-choos and buses. I'd have introduced two grades of fuels with specific ethanol/gasoline blends that unlike current ethanol blends has a guaranteed octane level and the ethanol level does not change with the seasons or supplier. That eliminates the issues with tuning that a lot of gearheads have with current pump ethanol blends which can vary quite a bit. I'd heavily promote the octane level and the fact that this is specific high-performance fuel for specially-tuned engines only. This would also help to keep goofballs from putting it in chainsaws and their 1987 Tempos which are not designed to handle the alcohol content.

The first grade would be 95 octane E30. This would be sold as "Super Premium 95" and would be positioned as a good upgrade over 91/93 octane regular and with similar mileage. (Studies show that E30 has about the same mileage as E10 and most premium is E10.) 95 octane is also about what the best old leaded premiums had, something I'd certainly mention as well. I would try to get at least one auto maker with a turbocharged performance vehicle such as the 3.5 EcoBoost in the Taurus SHO to tune for the fuel. Generally you can de-rate by about four octane points and still have the engine run fine as the 3.5 EcoBoost shows. It's recommended to run 91 octane in that engine but you can run 87 and it just cuts the boost and timing somewhat. I'd have the maker mandate a minimum of 91 in the tuned engine so it would be able to take good advantage of the 95 octane E30 for maximum performance. Mandating 91 octane isn't beyond the pale and shouldn't affect sales of a performance vehicle. The price of the 95 octane would also be less than regular 87 octane so it should be seen as a no-brainer to use and other makers should follow suit. You could also run it in the current type of low-compression flex-fuel vehicles without a fuel economy hit like E85 has but it wouldn't really be marketed for that use.

The second grade would be 101 octane E60. This would be sold as "Max Power 101" and would be the premium product despite the price being the same or lower than the 95 octane product. I picked 60% ethanol as that is about how much ethanol that can be run year-round and not have trouble starting in cold weather like E85 can. It also gives a three-digit octane number which would be good for advertising. I'd not roll this out until the 95 octane product caught on well and started to let automakers increase octane requirements. There would be a small fuel economy hit associated with 101 vs. the 95 but it would be sold on the basis of being a high-performance fuel rather than as a "cheap" fuel so this shouldn't matter as much.

So, I bet if ethanol were introduced in the above fashion we'd have a much different view of it. Meanwhile, we keep on putting the same old 87 octane pee-water into our engines, just like we did in the Bad Old Days of the 1970s. Maybe somebody can reintroduce ethanol using the above strategy as it certainly seems to be a very valid one.

 

No matter what good is said about ethanol and you have proof to show how good it can be, there are still people out there that will always be against it cuz they are uninformed and don't have first hand technical knowledge of it. E85 wasn't originally meant for standard low compression gasoline engines. They start hard and get about 15% less mileage but if there was a higher compression engine designed to take advantage of the ridiculously high octane then you will get comparable mileage and increased performance. Sure....everyone likes to say they are on the "green" bandwagon but when we have a 100% American fuel that's perfect for high compression performance and get us away from imported oil, it is debunked because like you said it wasn't marketed right. I love E85 and have built engines around it with great results. Also it helps out farmers who we in Indiana have all around us. So let's market ethanol as a high fashion racing fuel and have someone like Leo Decaprio or George Clooney or if Paul Walker would've endorsed it people would've went crazy for it even if they didn't know anything about it. E15 will be mandated this year and the funny thing about gasoline now is that people don't know its got 10% ethanol in it now and has it hurt fuel systems? No. I guess image is everything.

 

The thing is that people think that 10% ethanol *has* hurt fuel systems. Yes, some of the older original carbed systems don't run optimally on it. But in reality you would have needed to tune up the carb a long time ago and be running slightly richer jets based on your tuning. The old, non-alcohol-tolerant fuel lines should have already been replaced due to age.

 

Ask yourself why there are small GA planes at can use, and are certified for, regular gasoline, but CANNOT use e85 or E90 for that matter. The reason is simple.....when your law mower fuel line splits, there may be a small fire....but it won't come down on someone's head. And yes, I have my Pilots license and I have talked to people who didn't know this, although that was five years ago. I'm pretty sure there is not a single pilot out there who would use it now.

 

when your using e85 or better usually the print beside the filler cap says flex fuel vehicle unless the operator knows the deal with fuel lines and alcohol leans out the mixture . Plane engines is out of my radar for experience . Lawn mower engines will bite the dust if the fuel mixture is not richened or fuel lubricant not used . Will void warranty also on new ones so watch it .

 

It's actually E15-E20 or higher (depending on year) that requires a flex-fuel vehicle. E85 absolutely requires a vehicle compatible with high ethanol concentrations. A non-compatible vehicle will destroy its fuel pump and lines, and run extremely lean on anything approaching E85.

Higher concentrations of alcohol than 85% generally are the domain of race fuels only. The vapor pressure is so low than 100% ethanol fuel is hard to ignite at less than summer daytime temperatures in a warm area. (Brazil runs 100% ethanol rather than E85 and their vehicles use gasoline to get started and then switch over to "alcool" when warmed up.) You also have to be VERY careful with alcohol mixtures above 95% picking up water from the air as well as pure ethanol is quite hygroscopic. That's why E85 was picked. It was the highest concentration of ethanol that isn't a huge pain to handle, store, and will start reliably during most times of the year in most of the U.S.

 

Interesting to read the development of thought on a debate that's been going on here for more than 7 years.

There was some debate about the level of mileage drop for a typical consumer using E10. Isn't there a mileage issue if you were to put, say, E15 in a car that was tuned for E10? The computer would be expected E10 or less, and you might have some issues with the computer overly richening the mixture b/c it doesn't know there's too much ethanol in the fuel?

The fact that field levels of ethanol vary seems to be a contributor in all this. AAA did spot testing of pumps that were supposed to have max 10% EtOh, and found variance above E10 all over the place.

 

The issue would be that the engine would run too lean as it may not be able to adequately accommodate for the lower stoichiometric air:fuel ratio of higher ethanol concentrations.

Was that at blender pumps, multi-grade/single-nozzle pumps or in premixed fuel from single-nozzle-per-grade pumps? I can easily see how a blender pump that has a hose full of E85 from the last customer may end up with the typical five gallon test volume being a little high on the ethanol concentration. I'd be a bit more surprised that premixed fuel from a single-nozzle-per-grade pump being very far off of spec since fuel is supposed to be pretty tightly controlled per ASTM specs.

 

And the debate goes on and on....
For those that say Ethanol doesn't cause problems, they are welcome to look at my disintegrated gas line on my chainsaw and string trimmer as well as the gas tank from my 89 Ford SW.
Can't we get sugar from corn??Used to be if you really wanted to screw a guys car, you'd put sugar in the gas tank.

If the Stupid Feds say we HAVE to have ethanol...why are more and more places offering ethanol free gasoline??

 

Funny how it's talked about high compression engines and using Alcohol. So what we all need is street leagal funny cars to be green. There is a seperate class of dragsters, pretty much the alky class and that is mostly the only thing I see that has a high performance app for Alcohal based fuels. And they don't use Ethanol Alcohol Also realize those engines are torn down and rebuilt almost every race. They may use a supercharged methanol-burning engine or an injected nitromethane *combination.

Also I have a supercharged engine, granted it's a 4 popper, but my factory manual says do not use fuels inexcess of 10% Ethanol alcohol. Granted this car was built in 1991, and most likely the ECU cannot compensate for anything much higher than 10%, or seeing most people hardly ever push their cars over 6/10'th on a performance scale you won't see much of an issue. also did you know that car companies stood their ground just recently against a recent plan to increase pump gas too 15%. Most of the MFR's said if that was going to happen they would not warrenty any new car sold.