85 percent ethanol gas
85 percent ethanol gas
(OP)
Why can't I use 85 percent ethanol gas in my 2001 Chevy truck. It is cheaper than standard gas with 10 percent ethanol.
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RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
However, if the truck is not labeled for E85, you will also get the 'opportunity' to replace all of the rubber parts in the fuel system.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
Mike Halloran is correct, ethanol has a nasty habit of eating the gas tank, fuel pump, all the rubberized fuel line components, the fuel injectors and seals, and if allowed to puddle, can start eating away of any aluminum and related alloy components. I made a lot of money cleaning up fuel systems of the early 80's with E-10, just imagine what E-85 would do?
Franz
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RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
(among others)
rmw
RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
Ashelin
PS: By the way Franzh, were you referrring to using pure ethanol in the gasoline tank?
RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
I have no specific data on ethanol and the specific elastomers used in fuel systems, but my experience with other solvents and other elastomers says you can expect serious attack in less than a day.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
To the best of my knowledge, only vehicles which are listed by the OEM's as a flex fuel vehicle operate properly on E-85. The check engine light coming on usually indicates a fuel trim code fault, insufficient injector pulse width to supply enough fuel within parameters.
The oxygen thought may be true, if the engine leans out due to insufficient fuel, there is excess oxygen during combustion, not necessairly due to the oxygen content of the fuel (although it does indeed have more). The stoich ratio of E-85 is much lower than gasoline.
Franz
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RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
All the modern cars are warranteed to be save at 10% ethanol and my experiment leads me to believe that they are essentially ethanol safe as far as materials go.
You need to bump fuel mass flow by 27% to get proper mixture, but the fuel milage does not drop any where near the amount you would expect based on the specific energy density of the fuel.
On 100% E85 you can expect about 5% increase in power and torque, and the engine needs less throttle got achive the same results. Higher octane allows the ECU to use more favorable timing closer to MBT advance, and it can run leaner mixtures under load without hitting knock limited performance.
The real world results in my case is I get about 92% of my gasoline fuel milage on 100% E85 with better power and drivablility.
E85 is a very turbocharged engine friendly fuel.
Larry
RE: 85 percent ethanol gas
The new RFG3/Phase3 fuel will use 10% ethanol as an alternative oxygenate but this is yet to occur, I believe. Most cars in production will not have had much exposure to this fuel since when my gasoline days ended (4 months ago) the brew hadnt been finalised.
The oxygenates will of course cause you to run lean, if your engine is of an adaptive EFI nature then there is the risk that you hit the clamp of your fuelling adaptions running v.high O2 content in your fuel. Infact even worse than that the high speed/load operation may mean that you are far to lean when running open loop fuelling control.
Hopefully if you are 'leaning out' OBD2 should pick it up and put the check engine light on...However you may not know about it if you are just within the threshold during closed loop operation but way out during open loop.
MS