Thread: Ethanol E85

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Do a Google search and you will find a bunch of info on it. Basically it's 85% ethanol. There are a couple of stations in Tucson (75 miles away from me) that sell it.

Ethanol is basically grain alcohol and my personal opinion is that I would love to see it become readily available nation wide. Although I try to keep my political views off this forum I'll make this exception. I would much rather see our excess grain turned into fuel than shipped overseas to people who don't particularly care for us, let alone buying crude oil from countries who are actively trying to do us harm. (OK I feel better now )

Besides the logistics (increasing output of ethanol, distribution etc) there are a few minor problems associated with running ethanol at above the 10% level. First is there is not as much BTU value in a given quantity of ethanol as there is in the same quantity of gasoline. This in effect means that the fuel mixture must be richer to compensate (naturally meaning less fuel mileage) along with timing adjustments. The second problem is that even at 10% levels Ethanol can attack "rubber" fuel system components such as fuel lines and carburetor needles that are not specifically designed to run ethanol.

Many of the newer cars are E85 (flexible fuel) compatible and the computer makes the necessary adjustments for the ethanol based fuels.

Now I'm a carburetor guy, so everything I have is set up to run gasoline. If the fuel were to become available nation wide I would make the necessary changes to run this fuel (even if there were not a difference in price (I'd rather see my money spent in this country rather than overseas, I also suspect you would see the crude oil prices PLUMMET). I personally feel the transition to ethanol fuels would be no more traumatic than the switch to unleaded fuel in the 70's, and likely less so.