E85=Bad. Hess stations (the one near my house anyway) have gasoline with 10% ethanol. Avoid them. The alcohol is aggressive and prolonged use will damage rubber fuel seals and cause bad leaks in the long run. E85 will create more power in high-compression engines (Koenigsegg CCXR), but in gas-only engines, the compression ratio isn't high enough to use the E85 efficiently and you will experience 10% worse gas mileage. Considering that E85 costs about 90% of a regular gallon of gas...you do the math. You're coming out the same in the end.

Not to mention that the world cannot produce enough food products to create enough ethanol so that it becomes the next mainstream fuel.

And no I don't think there are any plans in the short-run to make E85 stations anywhere near us.

 

Also to be noted the newer cars have the fuel lines and seals to deal with this. You can also use additives with a lubricating property to help offset the alcohol in older cars.
Compression isn't required to takeadvantage in terms of static compression as you can acheive alot of the same result with timing increase. At some point your ignition couldn't keep up on a stock car but it is unlikely you would go even nearly that far.

The world can't produce enough using current methods is correct. I don't much care about the world production (I don't want it to completely replace gasoline)and america can produce more then enough to meet a decent amount of our requirement which would pour hundreds of millions of dollars into our ecomony and also create new jobs here in this country.

 

 

It's funny that only a couple people know what they're talking about, and the rest say it sucks because they're clueless.

 

I'm thinking of running ethanol from a purely performance-oriented standpoint. I'm not too worried about mpg, although I know the loss won't be too great. I believe I can still achieve 20-25mpg in vaccuum, regular city driving. The last thing on my mind is how good it is for the enviroment.

Seals and fuel lines can be replaced.

I can run 30-35psi on e85 with perfect timing. Thats what I'm mainly concerned about. My next concern is price, which will not be too much. I can live on $3.00 a gallon, hell I can live on $3.50 a gallon. But with projected gas prices to be around $4-$4.50 a gallon by next year, I'm having a bit of trouble sleeping at night.

So for you guys to come in here and start throwing out opinions on how "oh e85 is bad" and whatever, I don't want to hear it. All I want to know is where can I get some. And just because Hess and BP sell gasoline with 10% ethanol, that doesnt prove a damn thing about it. It just says that 10% of ethanol aint shit.

As far as not being available to completely replace gasoline, I don't care. If the demand for gasoline went down, then the price of gasoline goes down. If half the gas stations in the U.S. were e85 and the other half gasoline, that would just be more fuel(options) available to everyone. Grandma can get 87 at $3 something, John Doe can get 93 at $3 something, and Johnny Speedster in the Sportscar can get e85 at $3 something, without having to spend 7 or 8 bucks for a gallon of race gas. everyone wins. except of course the middle east.

 

IIRC,It's government regulated to be 10% ethanol.

Every gas station i've been to in the past few weeks has had the sign on the pump.

 

yo jason you can buy 55g drumbs at the sebring track.
also if your relly goin to ethonol powerd you should check out magnus they have been workin on alot of ethonol stuff for the dsm.
2100cc injectors, pump drives, coated fuel rails all sorts of cool stuff.
i too have been considering it as a possibility.
all you guys saying its a bad choice for fuel have no clue what your talking about. yea your right its no more efficient and in the long run no cheaper then 93 but it sure is a hell of alot cheaper then 110.
and the 10% hess bull shit is up to 10% meaning it could be 4% one day 10% the next so you could get fucked over trying to run too much timing thinking you got 10% ethonol when relly you just got 93 octane.

 

if we can get the cellulose based/switchgrass based solution figured we'll get more out than required to put in to create it, and it won't have an affect on the amount of corn being produced for fuel vs. consumption.. i'm looking forward to it and wish I had the funds to design a "conversion kit"....

 

I believe there have been a couple E85 manufacturing plants approved in Florida recently. So if "short-run" is this year then no, but maybe 2009.

Personally I'd rather see hydrogen be the next fuel. Hopefully it won't be too far behind E85. Until then, go E85.

 

Yeah there are some stations in Jacksonville and 1 in Miami. A lot of them are privately owned, I don't know if that means a privately owned gas station or like, an Air Force base or something.