OUCH, gas prices.
#61
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actually, if you need the rather high octane it rates in at, it'* a wonderful bargain. IIRC, it'* like ~105, try pricing that for straight gasoline, the loss in MPG is more than worth it. however, the only people that would really be in those situations are running ridiculously high boost/compression.
#66
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It'* not hard to convert a car to E85. You need injectors that are 25% larger, so 42.5# injectors on a stock set up, 65# injectors on a heavily modded engine. Then adjust the tune for the new AFR. The problem is you need to run E85 all the time. The stoich AFR for E85 is 9.76:1 and stoich AFR for gas is 14.7:1 That'* a huge difference. More then the PCM can adjust for. Flex cars have this built in to the operating system of the PCM. Now as you can see stoich is way richer in E85, which means your dumping far more fuel in, actually that comes to about 34% more fuel. So a drop of at least 35% in mileage. There'* also the mater of less power. In short, ethanol is a bad choice for fuel, it wastes more then it saves. But the tree huggers don't care. Even E10 results in a 12% drop in mileage.
#70
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Worse thing about ethanol is it attracts water, No way around that property. And for steel gas tanks, sending units, pumps, lines, and many other engine components that makes up a car, it causes unavoidable damage. Cars were not engineered to use it. Neither are the storage tanks and equipment associated with the logistics of getting it to your local pump from the refinery where it is mixed. So the fuel is contaminated before it even makes it to your tank.