will our cars run on Ethanol?

[mark0101]

I was watch TV and they said they opened their first Ethanol station some where in FL. They to see if your car could run on Ethanol, so can our cars? they had the new chevy SUV that was running on it, I think it was running on ethanol

 

[94m5]

No they can't.


You will eat every rubber seal in the fuel system with it.

 

[torquemonkey]

http://www.e85fuel.com/e85101/faq.php

This may help.

 

[Dern Humpus]

Yes they will, but not for very long. One of my coworkers and I talked about buying a beater and run it on nothing but e85 to see how long it lasts.

 

[Lugi20]

What about replacing the seals/plastic/rubber parts that will deteriorate due to the E85?

 

[rmac694203]

seems like a lot of work to replace every one of those parts.

 

[rmac694203]

and I've seen the e-85 stuff and it wasn't hardly any cheaper than regular gas.

 

[torquemonkey]

The issue is; when the alcohol combines w/ water (moisure in the tank) it forms an acid which will eat anything aluminum in the system. Also you need more alcohol than gasoline to get the same amount of combustion power. So you will need to get bigger fuel injectors (and tune)for the same performance expectation. One benefit is the 105-108ish octane rating. Its harder to light this stuff off, so you can run more compression. ~In a nutshell~

 

[lincolnboy]

i know this wont help but i ran methanol in my 96.... ran great with it..

 

[chicken]

the price is cheeper but the milage is worse so it dosent really make up much, and the ethanol also "rattles" more crap loose in your lines, tank, pump, etc causing more poss problems later down the road

 

[formerknown]

I was watch TV and they said they opened their first Ethanol station some where in FL. They to see if your car could run on Ethanol, so can our cars? they had the new chevy SUV that was running on it, I think it was running on ethanol

Why bother going to a station when you can make ethanol yourself for a pretty decent price? All you need is a moonshine kit and a late-model Ford Taurus or Sable. Check it out.

Or you can hunt a Mark VII/ Continental with the 2.4L diesel and hook a grease kit into it. I've actaully thought about it myself as a daily communter, but the diesel Lincolns (or any 70's-80's American diesel car) are hard to get a hold of and I refuse to buy any diesel car manufactured by any of the Axis countries...

 

[MediumD]

I know a couple people who've run E85 in a non-FFV with no ill effects. One is a LT1 with 30k or so on E85 with the stock fuel system. Straight ethanol will deteriorate rubber parts faster than E85 will.

I should specify that for it to run WELL, it will definately need a tune.

 

[poniesviii]

They've offered E85 in Iowa for about 6 or 7 years now. Yeah, 7 because I had a friend that just bought a brand new '99 ford Ranger.

he had between 3-5 mpg increase on his work commute (mainly highway) and you could feel the extra power at the same time. I'd like to say the truck had another 40 hp on E-85, but it's easy to feel just a little in a 4X.

The '99 ranger is a flex fuel truck, so it was formatted to run it.

If you're set up for it, it's the way to go. If you're not, you'll get worse mileage, prob less power, and .. problems from being alcohol.

I also had a friend who put it in his '86 camaro, since it was cheaper than gas. He had to syphon the whole tank after about 35 miles. I thought it was pretty funny at the time.

 

[Dominus]

The problem is that it takes more E85 to make the same power than it does gasoline, so unless your car is set up to meet the increased fuel demand, you're just going to screw everything up.

 

[mark0101]

well maybe not the mark VIII but I have heard the TC is a FFV, so it shouldn't be a problem for the TC.

 

[Brozly]

Tried a couple tanks in my 94, picked up a miss, and dropped a couple mpg...