E85 blending

SEAIRESCUE

Active Member
Joined
May 8, 2006
Location
SO Pines
The WVO forum prompts me to start a thread on the use of E85 in non-flex fuel vehicles. Advantages of ethanol are its solvent effects and its high octane. Disadvantages include decreased fuel mileage, cold weather hard starts and corrosive attacks on certain metals and elastomers. That said, this past year I have been running different mixes of E85 in most all my gasoline motors which include the lawn mower and power washer. My stock Toyota turbo loves the E85 octane. I have been running 30% mixes with great results. Previous research indicates I will likely run lean above 40% mix. I purchase 5 gallons from the local Mobile station to do the mixing. My small engines have been running quite well on 100% E85 without any modifications. Any one else blending E85? I fully expect the ethanol to clean the tank, fuel filter, injector screens and intake valves.
 
Costs more, doesn't go as far on a gallon, and it takes a couple hundred gallons of regular ol' diesel fuel to get it here.

Not much of an 'alternative'
 
cutting regular gas w/30% E85 probably results in say a 10-12% mix of ethanol over all ?

You can buy that at the pump anyway. Cars have been running 10% ethanol for years.

Myself being from the midwest, "gasahol" has been standard fair since the late '70s.

You do not get the power or mileage out of it, the biggest reason you are not seeing any "negative" issues is your truck has the ability to handle the timing and mixture issues on it's own...... at least while the ambiant air temps are cooler.

once the air warms up, you will experiance detonation if you do not adjust base/static timing. Your Turbo engine will really like that.

I know this from when I moved down here 10 years ago. '87 Toy pickup, carburated. ran like ass once I got NC and burned all the gasahol out, then when I went back to visit in Illinois, it again ran differantly (lot of detonation) . everytime I had to adjust the timing or run straight gas while I was there.

Gasahol (now known as E10) was the "cheap" fuel in Illinois, subsidized by the state and sold on every pump. of course, the state has made up the cost differance in fuel taxes, so what you are paying for straight fuel here is the price of E10 there now.

You may want to experiment further before you do any damage to the internals of your turbo engine.

As for the cleaning benifits, not really, about all it'll do is absorb any water in the fuel system and allow it to burn thru.

Running it in your power equipment, most small engines will damn near run on water, they are designed to run lean, for emissions reasons. again, air temps may cause issue once temps warm up you may experiance "vapor lock" in some equipment as the ethanol vaporizes and boils in the carb or fuel line due to high heat.

these are MY experiances, I'd burn E10 without question, all my junk is now computer controlled so I don't have to dink with it to make the change.

As for Transoprt, at one time, the trucks would go to the ethanol production facility load up with ethanol, then go to the fuel depot and top off with gas, then deliver to the stations ( is how it was done before E10 became "popular" )

Id' bet they are being a bit more efficient with the blending now, and is probably a more accurate blend as well.
 
The reason why they blend it that way, is b/c ehtanol absorbs moisture and it will rot the tanker trucks, so they try to keep it in there as little as possible, also why it can't travel in pipe lines with gas.

As stated before it takes almost as much fossil fuels to produce ethanol and truck it around the country as it produces and then you don't even get good fuel mileage.
 
Yeah, summer blend is already roughly equivalent to E10 in NC. Winter blend is typically less... E85 actually becomes E70 in the winter months.

Keep in mind, also... that a large factor in the gasoline price spikes we see in the spring months are due to ethanol shortages during the transition to summer blend.

It's also worth mentioning that E85 vehicles have extremely high acetaldehyde emissions.... which comes as no great surprise, since you're burning rotten vegetable matter. The EPA does not regulate acetaldehyde emissions.... your guess is as good as mine as to why. But it would not be a stretch to imagine that political considerations figure in. A limit on acetaldehyde emissions would largely ban ethanol use... which politically... who wants to be the guy that killed the so-called "green" fuel movement?
 
which leads us back to other bio matter type fuels... I hear about how great algea and other material can be at growing 'stuff' we can use for bio diesel type fuel but never hear much about it.

I agree that we will see many stop-gap/bridge fuels as we find and migrate to other more efficient fuels.

Ill post my other more political comments in the Garage section....
 
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