10% Ethanol at the pump????

I think a bunch of you guys are jumping to conclusions. The 10% fuel has been around since the 80s. Any rubber products produced since then will be fine. If your hoses and stuff are older then that, shouldn't you be changing them anyway? It shouldn't effect the poly fuel tanks either. If you have not been running the 10% mix (are you really sure?) then when you start using it, it will clean out your fuel system in a couple tank fulls. All that **** has to go someplace, either through your motor, or lodged in your fuel filter. If your hoses were a little iffy, there won't be any doubt after the 10% mix.

Now, the e85. Instead of the 10% mixture above, the mixture is now 85%. It has been around since 2001! Guess what, anything rubber you have replaced since 2002 or so will be fine. See where I'm going here? We are talking about a higher % of grain alcy then we had before.

Lets talk about carb'd cars. If you stuff has been upgraded with new hoses and such since 2002 or so, the 10% mix is only going to clean everything up. and the 85% mix may require a jet change. Both mixes would tollerate a little more compression then the first unleaded **** did. The E 85 mix will support the 10 to 1 compression of the olden days, but you may have to play with the timing a little.

The mid 80s carb/ early efi will have the most problems dealing with the alcy mixtures. They were leaned out about as far as they could have been, and had no provisions to richen the air fuel mixture. To make matters worst most of them also had low compression and were set up to run at higher opperating temps. None of which is heplfull with alcy.

By the early 90s most of the efi setups had a provisions to richen the air fuel mixture and the compression was on the rise just a little. Most adapted to the 10% without any issues. Some of the early ones may need a little help with the e85, the later ones will probably be OK.

About the prices? When ever the uncontroled, greedy, *******s want more of your money, they will raise their prices. As long as you want the ease of filling up any where you want, you will have to pay the man. Use his distrubution system, pay his price. Want options, soppose you could start growing your own corn, wonder of home made stills would be legal if you using them for brewing fuel?
Gene

 

I remember reading about a man in England who made fuel from pig ****; would ours smell better?

 

Ah, finally, logic. All the 10% ethanol fuel is doing is replacing the 10% MTBE fuel that a lot of the country was getting. In most cars is not gonna be an issue.

 

On a side note, when I first saw some of the fords with the FFV emblem I thought to myself thats ballsy to brag about being a Fossil Fuel Vehicle... didn't figure out what it really meant until sometime later.

 

Damn, that's a good line about the mermaid. Gotta' remember (plagarize) that one!

But a few guys here have said that the computer cars may have troubles on E85... Does and O2 sensor work okay on ethanol? 'Cause, I'd expect within a short while, that the computer would just store some major short and long term mixture trim revisions if it was working okay in closed loop. Unless the injector cycle was already pretty high at max load... might make it go lean at max power even if the computer doesn't want to.

Anybody here run EFI and alky?

-bill

 

If this fuel will remove sealers from old tanks does anyone know how to remove the sealers first? A Model A for instance using the cowl tank. Removing these tanks requires dismantling windscreens, steering columns, speedometer cables and about 12 bolts that hold the tank to the firewall and front quarter panels.

 

Actually, my OT Ranger is a FlexFuel truck. When I first started running E85 the O2 sensor was setting off the Check Engine light. I could add a few gallons of unleaded and the light would go off. After a few tanks of E85, it seems the computer adapted to teh E85 and the problem is gone. Interesting.

 

the o2 sensor doens't really care what fuel you run, all it knows is how much oxygen is left in the exhaust once combustion has happened. so it shoots for the mixture to be some minute amount of oxygen left in the exhaust, honestly i don't know how much that is, but there is some left. the sensor isn't the weak link, the weakness is either the computer or the injectors, like someone mentioned, if your injectors are already near their max duty cycle, you're gonna run outta fuel, or the other possibility is that the computer just isn't programmed to adjust for such a great change in fuel volume on it's own.

 

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...-kroger_31bus.ART.State.Edition2.783a37c.html

 

How about filling your tank with it, letting it sit a while then draining it ?? Then filter out the **** and repeat until clean.

I guess then the problem will be finding a sealer that the Ethanol doesn't attack to replace it with.

Do you have gas with Ethanol added in Australia ? They are still talking about it here, but want it available by 2008.

 

just be happy your tri-county area isnt trying to push hydrogen on you. id take e85 over having to drive some hydrogen bomb lunch box anyday

 

1 thing you guys havent touched on is WHY there's 15% gas in E85.

ford told me that it's so if there's a fire,you'll be able to see it.
damn tough to see an alky fire in broad daylite...

 

You can make ethanol from lots of other stuff. Like the waste mash left over from making beer. Coors has an alcohol plant at their brewery in Colorado that they are expanding. They are using the waste mash as the feedstock. If they are expanding, I guess the alcohol fuel market is expanding enough for Coors to make more money.

How come the breweries in California aren't making alcohol from their waste mash and just dumping it to waste? Maybe its a problem with the politicians being politically correct and not providing the right incentives to "big" business to solve a solid waste problem (recycling) and produce a product to help the environment and to help reduce imported oil. Ooops, politics on the H.A.M.B.

 

The fire issue is one reason. The other is that ethanol ****s up water vapor from the humidity in the air. Therefore it is watering itself down and makes it harder to burn. The gas helps that problem.

 

Also pure ethanol has very poor cold-start properties. From what I've read, forget about starting it in temperatures below 60 F.