I burn E-85 and I lose 30% of my gas mileage. My Sonoma dropped from 17 to 12 mpg and my Lightning dropped from 12-15 mpg to 8/9 mpg. You need to advance the timing when you convert. I don't think any of us are building our cars for gas mileage. My $.02.
Those two trucks are not flex fuel and were never intended to run E85 One other thing. Since I ran E85 in my daily and our winter days can go from 70 to 15, cold weather starting with that percentage of Alky is REALLY slow. Took 3x the cranking to get it to fire. But, on the flipside, never had to use HEAT in the tank since it was mostly there already! I always laugh at folks at the pump in the winter paying $6 a pint for heat and pouring it in their tank then topping off with our normal 10% fuel.
I am. You get three choices where the fuel goes: Out the tail pipe. Towards producing heat Forward motion. Only one relates to both performance and economy.
Good point. My Tundra owners manual specifies 5k mile oil changes when using up to 15% ethanol. E85 lowers that to 2500! With 8 qts of 0w5 full synthetic needed, that goes a long way to covering the cost of 15 or better. And then there's that drop from 16-17.5 to 12MPG highway. So, it's had two tanks of 85 just to check.
I've found that a gallon or two of E85 in a tank of gasoline is a great way to stop engine knocking. At that dosage I haven't had any noticeable problems with the engine running too lean, but it turns out the "E85" here is actually "E65" as alluded to earlier.
You are right. They are not flex fuel trucks. That is why you need to tune them to accomodate E-85. I'm not positive but I think the ethanol content is lower in the winter to aid in starting. The pumps say a minimum of 70% ethanol. This makes me believe it's higher in the summer and lower in the winter. Again, my $.02.
As said we have been running all kinds of blends of Alky since the early 80s. When I had that flexfuel truck I truly was running 85%. Each station or company has their own ways of labeling and selling (all legal just boilerplate). I also ran a fleet of fuel tankers and got to know the ins and outs closely. We hauled upwards of 250-500 thousand gallons a day for Exxon, Sinclair, Conoco and Independants. There is no big conspiracy, just some crazy logistics due to lack of refining and pipeline capacity. Imagine having your garden hose full of milk but had no storage to empty it, THEN you wanted to run beer thru the hose. You have to find a market for the milk BEFORE you can pump the beer BUT you have to have something BEHIND the beer to push it thru.......
Whaaaat? 5k would be 3 times a year for me. That sounds crazy. I would have expected more something like 50k on a modern car. In my daily driver (2002 Explorer) I haven't changed the oil for 120k - just topped it off from time to time
It's complicated. Read on: Most all gasoline sold in the US contains at least 10% ethanol. Fuel stations are not required to notify consumers that the fuel contains up to 10% ethanol (E10), they are supposed to post a notification for 15% ethanol (E15). https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_blends.html#:~:text=E10,conventional, gasoline-powered vehicle. But that changes seasonally, as during the winter months gas formulators are allowed to change the mix, and the content can be as high as 15%. It all depends on where you are, different states have different rules and different needs. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15339380/the-vapor-rub-summer-versus-winter-gasoline-explained/ Note that there was a push by the ethanol industry to persuade the EPA to allow up to 15% ethanol in gasoline year round, which the EPA did consider; but there was a lot of pushback from a lot of other interest groups, which included not only consumer groups, small engine manufacturers, and even environmental groups, so the EPA backed off. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a...re-ethanol-into-gas-tanks-is-stalled-for-now/ However, this year, due to high fuel prices, the Biden administration issued a waiver to allow the sale of E15 year round: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gas-prices-e15-ethanol-gasoline-blend-biden-administration-epa/
Yes, there can be multiple products in the line at one time. If there is nothing going onto the pipe on one end OR they have no room for what currently in the line in storage at the end, the line is dead and not moving. A great example is our area. We have ONE pipeline into Wester Sodak. It comes from Newcastle Wyoming. Many times for example, the diesel storage will be full on our end with diesel sitting in the line waiting to go into said storage. There could be 70 miles worth of gas stuck in the line behind it and none of it can move until they make room to store the diesel. In the meantime the gas storage goes low, they up the price to slow demand and our trucks would run several hundred miles in any direction to supply gas for the local stations we serviced.
Gasohol was the same as E10 is now I used to work for McCal Oil co one of the biggest suppliers of Gasohol in the Western US. Only thing I ever ran it in was a little Opel Station wagon with a 1500cc 4cyl. and a Weber DGV carb. it went like a raped ape.
Actually, alcohol as a motor fuel as been available since the early 1900's. Many carburetors from the 1920's and 1930's were designated as "alcohol carburetors" with a significantly different calibration than their gasoline only counterparts. It seems that every other generation has to learn the hard way that MADD has it correct: gasoline and alcohol do not mix! Jon
The engine in my 1964 Chevelle is on the edge of detonation using 91 octane, if leaning on it hard I mix in race gas or octane boost. E-85 first became available it was cheap so rejetted a 750 Holley vacuum secondary, then expermented with 50 % mix of E-85 and 87 octane with 10% ethenal for one summer The engine ran well but warmed up a little slower, didn't notice any change in performace but made up my mind that it was not worth the effort after looking in the secondary fuel bowel at the end of summer Jets were pitted badly inside the bowel was ugly from old fuel , when I was 16 maybe the secondary bowel would have used enough to keep it refilled with fresh fuel The internal regulator in the fuel pump failed at the 2013 Meltdown drags the next summer
Well... Most engines are multifuel, as long as you are prepared to make the necessary adjustments when changing between different fuels. We just haven't had any reason to, as gas has been easy to get and (relatively) cheap for ages.
Did you have the secondary throttle cracked open with the little screw? That keeps fuel flowing very slowly through the secondary circuit, so it doesn't go stale. If that is working, the secondary bowl should be no worse for corrosion etc. than the primary.
My guess is that the secondary blades were not cracked open, have tuned that carb back for gas and its long gone on a diffrent project.
There is far too much talk of EFI vehicles in this thread. That talk gets threads closed. A non-flex-fuel EFI vehicle can run the injectors at 100% duty cycle in an attempt to correct the mixture for the excess Oxygen in the exhaust, from the lean condition. This might work fine if you are running at lower RPM, but if you move out of that range, you will be running dangerously lean. You might even get a CEL. None of that matters on this board. Please stop. If you are carbureted, your carburetor tune MUST match your fuel. Not the fuel that you sometimes run, or fre-form mix inaccurately at the pump. If you want to try E85, start changing everything to parts that are alcohol compatible. Pull your jets, and figure out what size they are. Then replace them with ones that are 43% larger, in all positions. Tune from there. If you really want to get it correct, install a wideband Oxygens sensor. Once you get that right, you now can only run E85.
A minor fender bender in my 1960 Falcon would be a fatality of all passengers in a Model T. That's how far, in The HAMB area, anyways.
If you want to just change jets by numbers, you first need to figure out what svale they are rated by. Increasing the fuel flow by 43% is simple if you're running "modern" Mikuni motorcycle carbs with the hex head jet, as that's graded in cc of flow/minute at a certain pressure. If you for example have the round head Mikuni jet instead, that's rated by hole diameter, so to get 43% more flow something more like 20% bigger diameter may be right. Other jets can be rated by those or any other type of scale, some are related to the actual size, some are completely unrelated other than a higher number means a bigger hole, so while it may sound simple to go for a 43% increase figuring out how to get there without trial and error may be difficult.
I know some guys in Tennessee that tried running E85 in their dirt car. They built the engine with more compression and had a Holley carb calibrated for the E85. Now these guys weren't dummies, and they had experience running racing fuel and straight methanol too. What they found was that the E85 they were getting at the pump was all over the place, and what ran good this week, would suck the next. They solved this by buying the E85 by the drum, but then they were right back to the problem of supply and storage they had went through with the methanol. After a couple of seasons they went back to running VP16 they bought at the track. I mentioned Tennessee, because I dont know if this was a regional thing or not. YMMV. Good Luck
Some of the variations have to do with the carrier. Out here, the Ethanol gets blended into the gas in a separate step by the truck driver when they load. The ratio can and does at times get slightly off a bit. When we wrote up the ticket for each load I would manually calculate the gallons for the gas and the ethanol for the driver so the percentage was right
Given the potential content variability. Using what is supposed to be E85 in anything that doesn't have onboard electronics to automatically adjust, is effectively impossible.
Yup, given my testing the aforementioned OT EFI driver even the computer struggles at times to adjust to changes in fuel. We could see it with the AFR and O2 readings The exhaust smells great tho!
I won't mess with ethanol (any more than I am forced to with E10), until it is no longer made from feedstocks that are also potential food, and I can buy it most places. Many do not know that that ethanol can be made from just about any cellulosic plant, and does not need to be made from corn (food/feed). There is an extant and massive waste stream that could supply this, but it is not being utilized. We could move from a 65 to 165-million-year carbon-cycle, to a 6-9 month carbon-cycle. If we had non-impactful source E100, we could all convert, get on with our lives, and there would be no need to ban our hobby. My German diesel already runs just fine on biodiesel made from waste vegetable oil. No fossils required.
We have a LOT of research happening here locally on cellulosic materials in conjunction with SDSM&T (engineering school). Think such as logging waste, yard waste, all the tree trimmers that chip their waste etc.... the possibilities are endless.
True that, and I hope we get to all of those! One more thing that should be noted, and especially for those that want to use E85 because it is cheaper (and this is NOT a political post, or an invitation to start a political discussion, so curb that. These are verifiable, non-partisan economic facts): The reason why E85 is at the price-point where it is, is that it is very heavily subsidized by households that pay Federal income tax. It is subsidized at a far higher level than conventional gasoline and diesel. Given that 61% of US households paid no Federal income tax in 2021, many of you need to be aware of where the money to do that came from. As a taxpayer, I am happy to help a brother (or sister) in need. Just keep it cost-effective.
The Jalopy Journal
