E-85 Fuel question...

[chots]

I want to use it in my vehical but it is not rated for it but a lot of people say there vehical isnt either and it is running just fine for a long time, what is the worst that can happen?? I have a 2001 f-150 and I really want to run this cheap fuel it also has a higher octan than gas.

[Harvey_Carver]

Chots:

You may consider asking your question on an alternative board, such as http://www.biofuelsforum.com/.

You'll find that this board is nearly 90% anti, and that your thread will be hijacked and torn apart. The majority here do not understand nor care about the principle(s) of sustainability.

Good Luck.

Harvey

[mac]

A friend had a car that was not rated for e85 and he used it and after about 2 tankfuls, it cost him about $650 to get all the sensors and stuff fixed and the engine working again.

[Neptune]

Don't believe all the negative hype about E85.I use it constantly in my 04' Explorer V6 and it runs like a charm.No....you will not save money. Yes, the responsiveness is better.E85 in present day cars (in my area) costs 30% less but delivers 25-30% worse mileage.It's a wash...but you are not contributing to Hugo Chavez's wealth.The Ford folks told me to use E85 on a full tank....do not use it in small amounts.When the tank is empty fill up.E85 burns cleaner and keeps your tank cleaner. If you have a real old vehicle, it probably isn't rated for E85. If your car is E85 compatible and if the tank has gunk in it, the Ethanol could dredge up the gunk and plug your fuel filter. It should be used on newer vehicles with a clean tank. I like it because it is very clean and our corn producers get the benefit.Soon it will be made with other alcohol producing waste products.

[ChrisNE unlogged]

Harvey,

I hardly doubt an Australian website about biodiesel is more reliable or accurate than the owner's manual of this man's vehicle.

Please explain what's "sustainable" about using coal and natural gas to manufacture ethanol? Is there an unlimited supply somewhere that you're aware of that I'm not?

Take care,

[Eyehound]

"You'll find that this board is nearly 90% anti, and that your thread will be hijacked and torn apart."

Actually what you will find on this site are many intelligent people that ignore
all of the emotional reasons for using Ethanol. We can and will show you fact
after fact demonstrating why Ethanol is a bad Idea.

[Oh really]

I've probably read through 50 or more threads on this forum about ethanol, and not once has anyone provided a convincing argument as to why ethanol is a bad idea. A lot of myths and assumptions, but no good, solid arguments as to why we're better off burning gas than ethanol.

And we're just scratching the surface, ethanol will continue to get cheaper to produce and vehicles will continue to be optimized to run it. I'll let you in on a little secret, you can choose to believe or disbelieve: most american made vehicles 99 and newer can run ethanol with nothing more than reprogramming. I know one person who has done this on GM pickups. No parts replaced, and 10% or less economy loss on a fuel that's anywhere from 20-35% lower cost. This is better than any factory flexible fuel vehicle is doing currently, most are 15-27% economy loss on E85. If you don't think that the automakers are pandering to the oil companies, you're a fool. Ethanol and other bio-fuels are the future of the auto industry, you can either get on board or side with the greedy fatcats who run Big Oil.

[wildcat]

I burned corn for heat this past winter and am just about to start distilling corn to produce alcohol. On non e 85 compliant vehicles you will have problems with anything rubber and not outfitted to handle the two types of acid that alcohol produces when combusted.

the net affect is that is currently more expensive to produce and use e85 from the market right now but they are not putting a 3 billion dollar bio fuel factory down the road from me in warsaw indiana for nothing. Prices will come down with increased production and distribution capabilities.

i plan on making mine at home and if the facts hold, it comes in at around 35 to 50cents per gallon.

good luck burning and fishin.

[Eyehound]

Actually, Hydrogen fuel cells are the future. Etanol is a political
temporary helper!

[Bill Krejca]

I like the idea of burning something besides gasoline. That said, I find when I use 10% alcohol, I actually use more gasoline than when I use 100% gasoline, because my mileage over a given distance is so much worse than with 100% gas. The gasoline industry people must be laughing their heads off - what a deal, they can sell even more gas when folks use 10% alcohol. The alcohol industry, which promotes alcohol, thinks this is good, too, because they make a product that people want to buy. Hey, everybody wins!

Your mileage may vary, but a mechanic friend has an identical truck and discovered the same scenario as I. Do we have a nation of math challenged consumers, or don't I just understand this? Is this a case of the "Emperor's New Clothes"? Right now, I think it is. Help me to understand.

[Pooch]

Hydrogen looks great as long as you don't consider that we are short on fresh water in most areas. Someday maybe desalinization could fix that.

Ethanol appears to be in it's infancy and will only get better as we learn to produce it more cheaply and more efficiently. It's not the cure, but at least we are moving towards other fuel supplies besides oil.

Inefficient to produce ethanol? Surely it can't be any worse than the cost of our overseas presence in the mideast. I don't think that gasoline comes out of the ground ready to use. It takes a lot of energy to get it to us. I think it is may or may not be a wash as to which fuel uses more energy to produce when everything is factored in.

If I remember correctly Carl Sagan claimed that you need to add two or three dollars onto the price of a gallon of gasoline for our military expense associated to aquiring crude. That goes out in tax dollars and we don't see or gripe about it at the pump.

I do drive a used E85 vehicle, and when we next trade cars it too will be E85 or what ever is best at that time. My wife's current car gets 28-32 mpg. This is the best my family can do for the time being.

My truck is definitely "snappier" on E85 than unleaded. Mileage went down from sixteen to a short fifteen pulling a trailer everyday for work.

I don't have the answer, but my generation has had plenty of time to fix this problem and we didn't.

Pooch

[OntarioAngler]

Some car rental places will make you sign an agreement which states you will not use E-85.

[DuckCrusher]

Are you going to figure in the cost of farm subsidies and put that into the price of ethanol as well? Don't you think that if ethanol was a legitimate business practice, and profitible in the long run, the oil refineries would begin producing it? They could put up a "still" in a short time. They already have the low end heat. They already have the infrastructure to do it much more efficiently than some co op of farmers and suckered investors.




>Hydrogen looks great as long as you don't consider that we
>are short on fresh water in most areas. Someday maybe
>desalinization could fix that.
>
>Ethanol appears to be in it's infancy and will only get better
>as we learn to produce it more cheaply and more efficiently.
>It's not the cure, but at least we are moving towards other
>fuel supplies besides oil.
>
>Inefficient to produce ethanol? Surely it can't be any worse
>than the cost of our overseas presence in the mideast. I
>don't think that gasoline comes out of the ground ready to
>use. It takes a lot of energy to get it to us. I think it is
>may or may not be a wash as to which fuel uses more energy to
>produce when everything is factored in.
>
>If I remember correctly Carl Sagan claimed that you need to
>add two or three dollars onto the price of a gallon of
>gasoline for our military expense associated to aquiring
>crude. That goes out in tax dollars and we don't see or gripe
>about it at the pump.
>
>I do drive a used E85 vehicle, and when we next trade cars it
>too will be E85 or what ever is best at that time. My wife's
>current car gets 28-32 mpg. This is the best my family can do
>for the time being.
>
>My truck is definitely "snappier" on E85 than unleaded.
>Mileage went down from sixteen to a short fifteen pulling a
>trailer everyday for work.
>
>I don't have the answer, but my generation has had plenty of
>time to fix this problem and we didn't.
>
>Pooch

[Fishinddog]

Wow, you have got to be kidding me! I purchased a new Yukon XL in 2005 that runs E-85 and will tell you that if you are willing to spend MORE money to run it, then buy it. When I checked the fuel economy, where I was getting around 14-15 MPG for all around driving with regular...I was getting 10-11 MPG with E-85. Best and worst case scenarios, this is more like 20% to 25% loss in efficiency.

I believe at the time I was paying around $2.75 per gallon of regular and around $2.25 for ethanol. Do the math.

If I use regular unleaded with 14mpg for 16 gallons, at $2.75 per gallon I can go 224 miles for $44.

If I use E-85 with 11mpg for 20 gallons at $2.25 per gallon, I can go 220 miles for $45.

Honestly, the spread was farther than that, I just wanted to demonstrate best and worst case scenarios. Also, they recommend not to tow with it...keep your E85 unless the cost drops much lower.

[Far Beyond Driven]

There is really no free state hydrogen around. Most of it is combined with oxygen to become water. This is also a by product of combustion.

So in order to get hydrogen back to it's free state, you need to reverse the process of combustion and put energy into the water to break it back into hydrogen and oxygen.

Figure most power plants are 35% effecient, and you end up using 3x the energy from the initial combustion just to reverse the process and get hydrogen, to either burn or put in a fuel cell that is not 100% effecient.

I like the idea of ethanol, but when our farmers plow from fence to fence and revert all the CRP lands back into production, how much dirtier will the rivers and lakes become (no buffers for run off) and will we ever have ducks and pheasants?

No easy answer to this one....

FBD, Holland, MI

[unlogged rock2me]

The dirty little secret is that ethanol is not the answer. It is literally smoke and mirrors. We (gov't) is subsifdizing the farmers (and ADM and others) and the creation of the ethanol plants. Ethanol is not viable even with these subsidies, until gas went over $2.00 a gallon. Interesting that the more money we poured into ethanol, the more expensive our gas costs, too. I'm not saying it is the only factor but it is another in a long list.

[Eyehound]

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1100&full=1

[ScottL]

To answer the original question posted by chots; Vehicles that are capable of running flex fuels (E-85) have a sensor in the fuel system that measures the percentage of alcohol in the fuel and the vehicles computer makes adjustments to spark and air/fuel mixture to make the engine run correctly based on that sensors readings. As others have said it can cause problems with rubber gaskets and O-rings, and because Alcohol is a solvent it can also release any buildup (scum,varnish, etc.) from your fuel system and plug your fuel filter. All gasoline powered vehicles are capable of running some Ethanol and most are running 10% currently, but I would not recomend running straight E85 in your vehicle.



I'm a big proponent of alternative fuels, not just Ethanol, but Bio-Diesel, wind generation,and biomass gasification. All of these should be investigated with an open mind for feasability. Any time we can reduce the use of fossil fuels we should. I'm also an American Farmer and if you think that we are getting rich on Ethanol and government subsidies, I would gladly discuss this further rationally and professionally via Email.


Arguing on here about Ethanol is becoming old hat. I would like to thank everyone that supports Ethanol, and for those that don't that your choice and your right as an American.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend and take time to think about what this weekend is really about.

Regards,

Scott Lee

Since there is six times as much water as dry land on earth, any fool
can plainly see the good Lord meant for man to fish six times as much as he works.

[Troutbeck]

Okay, here's my rant:

I'm sick and tired of supporting Hugo Chavez and all the other OPEC jerks. We continue to buy their oil and wind up financing their rediculous regimes. I also believe you need to add a lot to the price of a gallon to just pay for military costs of keeping the "pipelines" open (although I cringe at the thought of agreeing with Ralph Nader).

I don't buy the argument that oil companies would get on board if they saw it as a viable and profitable opportunity. Just look what the big three auto companies did (or didn't do) in response to demand for better, more fuel efficient cars. They got their clocks cleaned. Maybe that's what's ahead for the oil companies, too. Just because it's a good idea doesn't mean they'll get onto it.

Having said all that, I also don't buy the sustainability argument. We'll always have enough fuel! If we run out of oil (which aint gonna happen soon), we have a ton of other options--and we'll make them work.

So....where do I stand? I support ethanol. I want my next vehicle to be able to use it and i want my government to support it, too. Brazil is self-suficient when it comes to fuel. We can be, too. In my opinion, it's time to stop supporting the oil jerks and start supporting our home-grown sources--like ethanol.

Just my $.00, Trout

[uhhh..]

Read the WHOLE argument, not just the part that you have a counter-argument for, and maybe you'll understand WHY your vehicle gets such crappy economy on ethanol, compared to what it could be getting.


Anyway, $1 and 4 miles is a fair tradoff to never again have to send our young men and women into a desert to secure our oil supply, wouldn't you say?

[whatever]

The farmers are subsidized anyway, are you going to make the argument that bread is bad because the wheat is subsidized too?

[Smedley Butler]

>Anyway, $1 and 4 miles is a fair tradoff to never again have
>to send our young men and women into a desert to secure our
>oil supply, wouldn't you say?

No I wouldn't. And your comment is so far off base it's laughable. If your so brainwashed(or braindead) to believe that's why our troops are over there, you have in addition to short term memory, a severe lack of history knowledge.

Semper Fi

[jiggingrick]

I suggest to write to our Senetors and Congress write a bill to Mandate the vehicle manufacturs to make vehicles useing flex fuels.Its a win win situation.The farmers grow the crops,the manufaturs sell vehicles all over the world that we produce and sell the ethenal all over the world.We might get independent from other oil producing countries.

[Fishingdog]

Nope. That is not why they are off to war. Many would like to think this. If that was the case, why did fuel increase instead of decrease after Saddam was ousted??? I won't turn this into a political arguement. Why should I sacrifice for poorer performance? If you make this product a value, I will use it. That is how America's economy works! Supply and demand...period.

Bottom line is that I pay MORE for less. No thanks.

[world]

<Bottom line is that I pay MORE for less>

Get use to it!! Global economy, WE go down, everyone else goes up. Only so much to go around.

Look at brazil and what they have done with fuel.

[old]

Do you have a more up to date article?

That was written in 1995

[colt100]

>Anyway, $1 and 4 miles is a fair tradoff to never again have
>to send our young men and women into a desert to secure our
>oil supply, wouldn't you say?

So your saying that the 10 to 15 % ethanol added to the gas we BUY FROM OVER SEAS is going to secure our boys from not going over there? Like what was said, that's not the real reason we are over there anyways but where do you think the rest of the 85 to 90% of the fuel mixture comes from?

Unless we are running 100% ethanol, I can't see your point.

I'm also on the side of if I have to burn more ethanol mixed gas to get to the same place then just running strait gas, I don't really see a benefit, to the enviroment, our pocket book, or trying to get off our dependance to oil.

Give me a better running/more fuel efficient vehicle with the same preformance as older vehicles and that's how to be more "green" and use less oil.

[ahem]

If YOU'RE so brainwashed that you don't see that oil and God are the root cause of all this, then I'd say that it's YOU who could use a history lesson.


Anyway, you folks have done an excellent job of proving right the poster who said that the thread would be hijacked by antis.

[jet man]

I posted this comment on a previous discussion on ethanol and I still find it intriuging:

The whole energy arena is complicated to say the least. Cargill in a business section article in the Minneapolis Tribune indicated that "if 100 percent of the US corn crop were used to produce ethanol it would replace only about 20 percent of motor fuel". Thus they feel the focus needs to remain on agruultural land use for food and feed.
Food for thought (no pun intended).

It seems to indicate that producing more ethanol is not the answer to gaining independence of and by itself. Plus you have the economics of the growing world wide demand for food.

Interesting

[Polish Prince]

Yes....20% might be the number but if we overrule the democRATs in congress and they allow drilling in ANWAR, windmills off the coast near Ted kennedy's home, shale oil reclamation and start building nuclear energy plants and new oil refineries, we could be independant of the oil shieks and Cindy Sheehan's new friend Hugo Chavez.

[jet man]

you may have missed my point when I put the post in. With the demand for food the 20% number is probably not even close to being realistic or happening. Given that situation, ethanol does not appear to have the potential to give us much relief.

[Dacotah Eye]

As I understand the situation, it will take over 70% of the USA's agricultural production land to produce enough corn to produce the ethanol that we need and we will end up importing food as well as oil. I keep hearing that the automobiles being exported have to get much better fuel economy than the vehicles sold in the USA. Any truth to this? I really think we can do better by making engines that are more efficient. I don't build em I just drive em.

[remember]

You guys are all referring to ethanol produced through the method in use today. Ethanol production will become more effective, and ethanol from raw cellulose would dwarf the production we're getting from the current, fairly inefficient method of production.

I've done the math myself, based on USDA harvest numbers, and our current corn harvest would produce enough ethanol to replace about 70% of our current gas consumption, but that isn't realistic to expect. If we could get to 20% in the next 5 years, we would help ourselves tremendously. The answer isn't simply producing cheap, clean alternative fuels, it's convincing people that it's a good idea, against their traditional conservative leanings (which baffles me, what's more patriotic than telling the arabs to stick their oil where the sun don't shine?). Also, helping them understand that even if it costs a penny more, it's a penny that's spent in the USA instead of Saudi Arabia.


Fighting against ethanol and other alternative fuels will only hurt us in the long run. One may or may not believe that ethanol itself is the fuel for the next century, but if one embraces the idea of alternative energy, one should be led to the belief that using as much ethanol as they can right NOW is still a step in the right direction.

[wrong]

ANWAR doesn't contain enough oil to come even close to replacing our oil needs as they are today, and shale oil is more expensive to produce than ethanol per unit energy. Are you the one complainging about subsidizing ethanol? Are you prepared to subsidize exxon-mobil? Windmills and nuclear plants are irrelevant to this discussion, unless you've got a car with a sail or a nuke reactor.

[FJH1]

I completely agree! We have a Chevy Tahoe Z71 that accepts E85. We ran the E85 twice and we received almost exactly 25% lower mileage than unleaded. The second time was the last time I'll run E85.

Best Regards,

FJH

[jet man]

Of course we are talking about what we have today; not a hypothetical possibility in the future. I am all for cheap and clean alternative fuels, but unfortunately ethanol is not the answer for now. When ethanol production becomes more eficient I will embrace it. Based on current methods getting to 20% is likely not realistic.
everyone here would embrace cheap clean alternatives; right now we do not have them and that is the basis for this discussion.I am both conservative and patriotic and for you to suggest I would not embrace them is an insult.
You seem to have a headstart on how to do ethanol more efficently and cheaper; I hope you succeed. Patent the idea when you figure it out and I will buy as much ethanol as I need and help make you a wealthy busines owner.

[Polish Prince]

Every little bit helps. The DUMBocrats are now planning to block drilling 40 miles off our Florida coast...how nice! The Chinese and Cubans have no DUMBocrats in their country so they will be doing the drilling thank you.
I mention the windmills only to illustrate the hypocracy of the democRATs who scream about alternate fuel sources but when someone suggests windmills off the Nantucket coast....there is a problem. I thought everyone got the connection but I guess someone like you who is "wrong"" most of the time wouldne't catch it...
Next time I'll do capital letters and small words so you won't feel left out.

[a dreamer]

*sigh*

If only we could aspire to such high standards as China and Cuba.... but alas, we'll have to settle with being free and living comfortably. Maybe someday... maybe someday.

[pistol grip]

Yeah..the problem is, apparently being backward nations (Cuba and China) it makes them smarter than the Dems. who want to stop all oil and nuclear production in this country and have done so since the 70's. Their idea of utopia is everyone riding around on their bicycles wearing brown uniforms.(uhhh except for them)
Remember..."more prople have died in Kennedy's car than from nuclear accidents in this country"

[work]

<riding around on their bicycles wearing brown uniforms>

It would be about time the repubTICKans do some work and stop sucking off of the workers.
<

[pistol grip]

"stop sucking off the workers"??? WHAT? The last "sucking off" that occoured in the White House happened while "Willy the Zipper and his wife Thunder thighs" were co-presidents...remember? No more sucking going on since then.