Ethanol?

[invisibledemon]

what effect would putting ethanol in your gas have?
E85?

just wondering bc the gas stations around here, not sure about everywhere else, have stickers on the pumps that read: "all grades contain ethanol"

 

[Justin66]

Ethanol wont hurt your car, its been in effect almost everywhere for years. Most pumps tell you its in the gas. At shell bronze has 10% ethanol, silver has 5% and premium has none. If your still worried use premium.

 

[invisibledemon]

yeah, i actully stumbled upon the info when i was searching far a station in my area that carries it.
it says that prolonged use could cause damage to the the parts of the fuel system bc ethanol is highly corrosive. but using it a couple of times wouldnt hurt. yet they also said that mixing a maximum of 10% with gasoline is completly safe.

so, if nobody buys this sol from me, im running nothing but E85 to see what happens.

i may need to find a way to chip the ecu to take it though. the site also said that it could trip you CEL bc of high oxygen levels, ethanol contains higher oxygen than gasoline. so we'll see.

 

[LS_VTEC]

Most fuels out today contain 10% ethanol. On the other hand, E85 contains 85% ethanol. I've seen cars run E85 before but there are downsides to it. You will have to maintainence the engine more often, tune-up wise. You can run it, or just buy a brand new Chevy Impala with the flex-fuel system that allows the use of E85 and/or other fuels whether mixed or not. Pretty interesting stuff, I will be taking a free class on flex-fuel systems within the next couple months.

 

[LudeBoy]

I recently swapped from DPFI to MPFI and had a stock z6 map sensor on the throttle body. With this map sensor connected the car ran way rich so I used my stock map on the firewall. You see, E85 has a lot less energy. You need a lot more E85 than gas injected or you will end up way lean. In my brilliant thinking I filled up with E85 and plugged in the z6 map and off I went. It still stumbles at idle being a little rich. In back to back A/B tests with 2 people we both agreed that it pulls harder up top with the e85 but with a loss of low end tq. This however was probably due to tuning rather than e85 itself. Im sure if I fattened up the fuel curve with reg gas in the upper rpms I would feel the same increase in power. The upside is that e85 is equal to 104 octane I believe. You could advance your timing and possible see a small gain, maybe a large gain if FI.