Ethanol 50% E85 in 91 Sub

[who1981]

A new station opened in my town, with E85 at 85cents off the price of 87oct. I just got done running 6 gallons of a 50% E85, 50% 87Oct, in my $180 '90 Legacy L. It was interesting, the ECU adjusted pretty quick, and it ran just fine, but different. I think it was lacking power till about 4500 RPM, then it may have had MORE, on dino-juice it starts running out of steam at around 5000, but on this stuff it revved smother all the way to 6400. As for economy, you may have guessed I tend to drive like my hair is on fire ... I usually get about 18-22 MPG, on Eth I got 17, though I may have been pushing harder than normal, for testing purposes.

 

I'm back on Gas, and will probably stay with it 'cause of the better power band. Oh, I don't have a catalytic converter, and the exhaust smelled like DRUNK breath!!! :-p

[NOMAD327]

e85 contains approximately 25 percent less energy than gasoline, and as such gives about 25 percent less economy than gasoline. It has higher octane, but on most vehicles, the computer is not capable of adjusting timing to take advantage of the higher octane. The big reason it's bad to run high concentrations of ethanol in older cars is that full strength, it may attack plastic components in the fuel system. It's hard to make a good judgement of fuel consumption without running several tanks through to minimize errors from variations in tank fill ups.

[Rooster2]

Cars made to run on flex fuel, meaning gasoline or E-85 ethanol, have had their fuel delivery systems revised to cope with the corrosive effect of ethanol on rubber and plastic components. Good to hear that it ran pretty well in your car, but a steady diet of ethanol is just asking for non ethanol revised parts to break.

[nipper]

The flexfuel ECU's have a fuel "type" sensor. It automatically can tell what fuel is being burned, and set the parimeters as needed. On an ECU n ot desined for this, there will be a loss of power.

 

With the reduced power youll use 35-35 % e85 then gasoline. With the price differnce at best you can hope is to break even. But in reality it will cost you more.

 

If the car seems to run odd at all in the next few weeks, replace the fuel filter. E85 can knock a lot dirt out of the fuel system, as its quite a solvent.

 

 

nipper

[Phizinza]

Slightly offtopic, but.

People really need to consider that ethanol is much better for the environment. So even if you don't save any money running it, your still saving something. I can't see why all new cars aren't made to run fine on ethanol. It should be a compulsory standard in all countries.. There also should be conversion kits will all the little things you need to make any EFI car run on it.

Ok, sorry about that, back on subject.

[BlueTrain]

Slightly offtopic, but.

People really need to consider that ethanol is much better for the environment. So even if you don't save any money running it, your still saving something. I can't see why all new cars aren't made to run fine on ethanol. It should be a compulsory standard in all countries.. There also should be conversion kits will all the little things you need to make any EFI car run on it.

Ok, sorry about that, back on subject.

 

ethanol is not the answer. it takes too much energy to produce to make it a solution to our fuel /oil issues. increasing mpg in vehicles 5-7mpg would be a better start.

[jverbarg]

Ethanol is the answer for Brazil, but they make it from sugar cane which doesn't require as much energy to make each gallon of ethanol. It needs another 5-10 years here before the technology will be developed enough to make it the primary fuel for the U.S.

 

All in all, I hope diesel makes a comeback as a cleaner, greener fuel. It can pack in more energy per gallon than ethanol.

 

Josh

[Subarupusher]

Thanks for the heads up on another station opening here in Washington. They are getting closer to Seattle. I would not risk putting it in my Subaru but my truck is flex fuel capable. I have burned several tanks in it and your mileage does go down 20-25%. Does not matter to me as long as the price is at least that much lower.

 

It will never replace all the fossil fuel use in cars for the US but it will make a sizeable dint especially when the enzyme production gets going that allows other plant materials to be converted. There was also a bacteria discovered that produces fuel.

[who1981]

The flexfuel ECU's have a fuel "type" sensor. It automatically can tell what fuel is being burned, and set the parimeters as needed. On an ECU n ot desined for this, there will be a loss of power.

 

With the reduced power youll use 35-35 % e85 then gasoline. With the price differnce at best you can hope is to break even. But in reality it will cost you more.

 

If the car seems to run odd at all in the next few weeks, replace the fuel filter. E85 can knock a lot dirt out of the fuel system, as its quite a solvent.

 

 

nipper

 

Yeah, I think it cleaned something out, my car is running REALLY well now, on gas.

[nipper]

Slightly offtopic, but.

People really need to consider that ethanol is much better for the environment. So even if you don't save any money running it, your still saving something. I can't see why all new cars aren't made to run fine on ethanol. It should be a compulsory standard in all countries.. There also should be conversion kits will all the little things you need to make any EFI car run on it.

Ok, sorry about that, back on subject.

 

Actually it depends where you are measuring from. Using corn based ethanol, it uses a lot of water and electricity to produce (basically its a still). With the US slowly going into a water crises, thats not a great thing to do. ALso with more required to go the same distance as gasoline, thats not great either.

 

As far as it being 25% less effecient as gasoline, you have to have a much larger price differnce then you are seeing at the pump for you to save money.

 

nipper

[Legacy777]

This is a hot issue for me. I do work in the oil & gas industry, but that's not what makes it an issue. The company I'm working for is participating in a research committee to look into mitigating the issues when transporting Ethanol in pipelines. Ethanol can cause stress corosion cracking in carbon steel.....but anyway. There's a lot of issues the general public doesn't know about.

 

Ethanol is not market driven, it's political driven. Emissions-wise, it's not cleaner if you look at the entire chain of manufacturing; emissions from the farm equipment, trucks, processing plants, electrical plants, etc. Your essentually using fossil fuels to make ethanol to take the place of fossil fuels.....it just doesn't make sense.

 

Plus, corn-based ethanol is not a sustainable long-term solution based upon the amount of energy extracted vs. the amount of energy required for production. Celluloise based ethanol is a better solution, but is still a ways off.

 

Ethanol will probably get us through the next 5-10 years, it's an interium solution. After that, something else will need to take the place of fossil fuels & ethanol.

[montana105]

Legacy, not to mention the much higher costs of milk and beef.For me to support corn based ethanol I would need to see the price per gallon at around

a buck just to make up for the 5.00 per gallon of milk and 4.89 per pound of burger I spend so my kids can eat. Like was mentioned earlier,the amount of dino fuel needed to produce and transport ethanol does not offset the benefits of running a cleaner fuel in our car,it may lessen our dependence on OPEC but not much.

[SuperNova]

Ethanol can also be produced from Hemp, alot more efficiently also. Governor Schwarzenegger in California just vetoed a bill that had already passed to allow farmers in Cali to legally grow hemp. And hemp is NOT marijuana. One of the current solutions that i have read about is using vegetable oil in diesel engines. There is a guy that runs vege oil in his Ford that more than tripled his millage by switching. Same power number. Only downside is that the oil needs to be heated in colder climates.

[montana105]

Nova- is the veggie oil you're mentioning reclaimed oil from restaurants? I like the recycling element of that especially since a person can do it at home further reducing the costs.

[88whitecat]

I sure its not the same guy nova is talking about but around 2 years or so ago some college kids were in our local paper. They had taken an old diesal VW Bus and converted it over to a veggie oil fuel vehicle and they drove from Mass, cross country and back,mostly on used used french-fry oil from burger joints. I do believe they were capable of running regular diesal also if need be.

[SuperNova]

Nova- is the veggie oil you're mentioning reclaimed oil from restaurants? I like the recycling element of that especially since a person can do it at home further reducing the costs.

Actually, this guy was running straight vegetable oil that you can buy at any local grocery store by the gallon. It is more expensive that way but there are no CO2 output, clean as hell. But getting used cooking oil from resturants works by just filtering it. Bio-diesel is great because you remove Glycerol that make vegetable oil become solid when its cold. But this issue can be overcome by using tank heaters in colder areas. You can also have 2 tanks, one with regular diesel and one with oil. start the vehicle with diesel and when it becomes warm, you switch over to the oil. Then when you turn it off to sit over night or whatever if it might become cold again, you switch back to diesel to purge the lines of oil. This is a site that deals with the conversion: http://www.plantdrive.com/

[Legacy777]

Ethanol can also be produced from Hemp, alot more efficiently also. Governor Schwarzenegger in California just vetoed a bill that had already passed to allow farmers in Cali to legally grow hemp. And hemp is NOT marijuana. One of the current solutions that i have read about is using vegetable oil in diesel engines. There is a guy that runs vege oil in his Ford that more than tripled his millage by switching. Same power number. Only downside is that the oil needs to be heated in colder climates.

 

Using hemp to produce ethanol would fit under cellulose production, which is not perfected. Switchgrass is another plant that is being looked at in the cellulosic process to make ethanol.

 

Josh