[quote=AZCivic]Did you have to do anything different to get it to run right, such as re-jet the carb or something? From what I've read, you need to run a significantly richer mixture on ethanol than gasoline. There's only one E85 pump in Arizona too, and it's about a hundred miles from my home. Maybe if they put one a little closer I could try it out in my mower too. I only use mine maybe an hour per year though. Tiny yard, and grass doesn't grow so fast in the desert with a miserly watering schedule.

I thought I would have to drill out the carb, but I'm able to run mine and one neighbor as-is, just with the choke all the way up (max rich). I used homehooch (shhhhh...) With homehooch, ALL of the gas has to be flushed first. ETOH/H20 is fine, as long as there is nothing to cause phase separation (like residual gas). Another neighbor, I had to drill out the jet on his. He screwed up, though, and put some gas in with my fuel still in there. He may be gunshy this spring. I am not certain I can sustain batch production- I need about 3 pints per week per mower, and my little solar 'still can't keep up, not with sunny weekend-only operation. Not to mention the hassle of making the mash. I'm thinking of transitioning them over to E85 unless I start a full-on licensed co-op and scale up.

I'm just curious here, but why does evaporative emissions really matter on E85 anyway? I mean ethanol is non-toxic, who cares how much of it evaporates? I would think that if it mattered, we'd have to close up every bar and restaurant that serves alcohol and only offer it in sealed containers with some sort of anti-evap straws on them.

I would bet money that it doesn't matter ( although ETOH has a much higher vapor pressure than gas I am not sure there are no smog/ozone precursors, and there is still some gasoline in E85), but the law requires ZERO evap emissions. Doesn't matter what's evaporating. The law was written with only gasoline in mind. It took over a decade to get it where it is, care to guess how long it will take to change? Far far FAR easier solution is for smart engineers to just make it work within the existing regulatory system rather than have dumb politicians and non-experts mess with the regs. And so it goes.


A quick trip over to FuelEconomy.govshows the FFV Suburban rated at 16mpg combined on gasoline and 12mpg combined on E85. I've read that as they perfect FFV's they hope to close the gap to around 80-85% as good FE on E85 as on gasoline, which seems very much worthwhile to me. Even the 75% it now achieves doesn't seem bad to me for a mostly non-toxic fuel.

Yep. Just posted separately on that topic.