Fom the original post:

" There is increasing evidence that E10, or gas with 10% ethanol is the worst possible blend for your car. The 10% is just enough to mess with the fuel, but not enough to get the sensors to "adjust" properly "

If that's the case, then wouldn't the mpg achieved using ethanol (all other factors aside) be related to the adjustment of the valves and ect. ???

 

To a large degree, yes.
That's what many people are finding.
The MPG numbers in the car, don't match what the chemist's predictions say they should be.

Pure ethanol has about one-third less energy.
So on pure 100% ethanol, your car should get 33% less MPG.
It follows that with 10% ethanol, your car should get 3.3% lower MPG.

Many cars get 10% less MPG with 10% ethanol. It doesn't add up.
Thus, the car is messing up and running "rich" and injecting too much fuel.

It is starting to look like at 30% ethanol, a non flex fuel car is able to appropriately adjust. I don't know, but maybe pushing things to 40% will get the car to run lean.

I do not think you should put more than 50% ethanol into a non flex fuel car though. Concentrated liquid ethanol will sloooowly dissove lead and aluminum. It is doubtful it would ever "eat though" any metal parts to the point they fail. It is not corrosive like acid ( ethanol has a pH close to 7.0 normally pH 7.70 to 7.75 on a routine day) and is really very slightly alkaline. Nope. Ethanol will not eat through anything, but the EPA is concerned ( and automakers ) that this dissoved aluminum or lead ( if there was lead solder used to connect any parts of the tank or fuel lines, for example ) will be combusted and go out the tailpipe, and into the air or reduce the effectiveness of the catalyitic converter. Is there any lead in modern cars? I honestly don't have a clue on this one.

Ethanol over 50% will dissolve natural rubber ( but try finding that on your car today ) and certain plastics made before 1984. For any moving parts ( fuel pump ) or things like gaskets that need some lubrication to keep from drying and cracking, gasoline is a thin oil and provides some lubrication. 50% gas is enough to provide those oily properties for lubrication. Less than that ( more than 50% ethanol ) and you start to lose some of the oilyness, and may have problems with perlonged use.

Sorry this got so long... I forget if I already said all of this before on here or not. That's probably more info than you wanted to know!
-John

 

Excellent reports, Fadi and GPSMan1 !
I am surprised at both of your actual results when adding a higher percentage of Ethanol.

I'd like to see results like this on other Flex-Fuel vehicles, and see if the small MPG losses carry through in general. Maybe there IS something to this! I just wish we had a better alternative than the corn source. Corn for food, corn for feed, corn for fuel. Is there enough (and enough land) to go around?

 

For all our fuel needs, no there isn't. But for some of our fuel, why not?

And changing feed stock to things other than corn will be easy ( well, maybe 20% $ reinvestment for retooling parts of the existing ethanol plants to use cellulose for example ) when the time comes.
Ethanol is liquid solar power in some ways, and to some percentage.
-John

 

Thanks for all the info everyone!! I wish someone with an HCHII had experimented with ethanol, so I could see what the best blend is. I guess I'll be the first. I have only used E10 and 'E0' so far. E10 brings my mpg down by about 3. I'm going to fill w/ E30 today or tomorrow and I'll let you know how it goes. (Although, it takes me about a month until I need to refuel)

 

Excellent news! Just keep in mind, if you get the same results with E30, as E10, that is actually an improvement! ( if you don't get less MPG feeding your car less gas )

Please check your water temp. if you have a digital display that shows individual degrees. With the precision of a ScanGuage, I found my car ran 3-5 degrees F hotternot colder when using 30% ethanol. If you have a temperature needle, you probably can't meaure such a small amount.

This may be an anomoly, I have a small sample size, but all the "experts" say ethanol makes your car run cooler. -Keep us posted. -John

 

I don't have a scanguage so I can't check the temp. Sorry. it would be nice if it ran a little hotter for the winter tho. I was talking to a guy at Pearsonfuels, the main alternative fuel station in San Diego/SoCal and he said that all Cali stations use at least 5.75% ethanol and will all use E10 by 2009. Pearsonfuels is a cool place, it has basically everything except hydrogen. www.pearsonfuels.com

 

One thing I'd like to see is direct comparason between 0% and 10%. I'm wondering how much of our 'lost' mpgs is really due to the colder weather, as opposed to the added ethanol. since i can't get 0% regular now, i think this would have to be either done by someone in southern states, or i will have to wait until summer to do it.

-edit- i just saw where you live Giant, do you have 0% regular there?

This popped up into my mind because last week I finally had first hand experience as to how drastic the climate affects MPGs: it dropped to 15-20*f for a few days, and my average dropped to 38 from the previous week in the 40's getting ~43mpg! i cried, lol

 

Also, I was watching History channel a few days ago, and there was an episode of modern marvels about corn. of course because of my recent interest in E85 i watched (but really I love those shows, but now actually have an excuse!). Anyways, I don't think we have anything to worry about about running out of corn. The corn they use for ethanol fuel is a special hybrid, so it's not like they're taking it off the kitchen table, or feed stock. Infact, the solids they have left over after they get the oil/starches out of the corn is added to livestock feed, so if you think about it they actually get more feed that way.

Did you know they actually even use corn oil to make plastics? It's a pretty versitle plant apperently. I wish there was a way to get a show synopsis, but if you want to see if it airs anytime soon: http://www.history.com/shows.do?epis...&action=detail

 

The problem is not how much corn there is, it is how much land it takes. That land could be used for food crops, but is now used for fuel. As a result, the price of many products has gone up (corn, meat, etc).

Since corn is a very high input energy crop, and since the amount of ethanol retrieved from corn is so small, it doesn't make sense as a national direction.

It currently appears like algae will be the eventual producer of raw stock ethanol / bio-fuel. Other fuels look to come from waste products via cellulosic means. Of course that is the eventual result, not the currently practical method.

One other problem is that the corn produced ethanol is further cementing crop subsidies. Since we, as a nation, cannot seem to get rid of these subsidies, it seems like we are locking ourselves into corn.

FWIW.

BTW, I appreciate the research that has been done here!