Warning about today's Gas and Carburated Cars.

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I use WAWA non-ethanol in all my vehicles--in my '06 Lincoln i constantly get 20.5 to 21 mph on the non ethanol, if i have to put in the gas with corn squeezings the car cant even break 19 mpg. yea for non ethanol gas.
 

AJ/FormS

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My 68 Barracuda with a 750DP equipped 367HO in it, has been fed a steady diet of 87E10 since fall of 1999. She went 7.92@ 93 mph(8th) on thatchit. This was my DD until about 2012, then a weekend warrior until about 2016.
If it's bad for fuel economy, I haven't seen it. But then, here in manitoba it says right on the pumps; UP TO 10%.
I've only ever had one bad tankful, in 21 years, and even that was not so bad; I just put some water absorber in the tank, and popped in a pair of bigger MJs for a few miles until the water went thru.
Old news.
But yes, if you let it set for long periods in your UNSEALED fueltank, it will cause problems, as the tank breathes daily with changes in pressure and humidity, between daytimes and night times. I would think that after 20 or more years of oxyginated fuels ,everybody would know that, and know what steps to take.

Now here's a tip for all you power-hungry Mopar freaks. You all probably know that the biggest roadblock to making power is trying to get air into the engine. Well actually it's getting oxygen. The 80% Nitrogen in dry air don't count for nothing. So you probably know about supercharging and such.
But did you know that the ethanol portion of an oxygenated fuel is about 2.7% by weight? so it's like injecting liquid oxygen, sorta.
So if I have an 18 gallon tank, and fill it with 10% ethanol, that would be 1.8 gallons of ethanol at IDK maybe 6 pounds per gallon so 10.8pounds of it........ and if 2.7% of that is oxygen. Hmmmmmmm I like it. Reminds me of a line in a movie I once watched; "Please Sir, can I have some more?" .........
The ethanol Molecule is C2H5OH, which in 3D looks like a dog taking a pizz. The two Carbon atoms are the body. At each end are three bonds. At the back are 3Hydrogen atoms equidistant from eachother, and rotated one leg down. At the front are Two Hydrogen both rotated down and one Oxygen rotated straight up. Attached to that oxygen, pointing forward, and looking decidedly like a head is the last hydrogen. So that's two parts solid carbon fuel, six parts liquid hydrogen, and one part oxygen tied to hydrogen on one end and to carbon on the other, altogether a good deal in my books.
ethanol.gif


holesterol-animal-tissues-egg-yolks-hydroxyl-group.jpg
 

AJ/FormS

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I use WAWA non-ethanol in all my vehicles--in my '06 Lincoln i constantly get 20.5 to 21 mph on the non ethanol, if i have to put in the gas with corn squeezings the car cant even break 19 mpg. yea for non ethanol gas.
And you know why?
You can thank your computer for yanking timing on the acceleration to speed portion, and the O2 sensor for reading the extra oxygen/hydrogen during steady state, and over-compensating on the fueling. Just install a scanner on it and watch.
Carburated cars don't have those.
So if I adjust the CCP to 185psi,
the CruiseTiming to 55+ degrees, and
the fueling to 30 mpg,
then that's what I get.
The ethanol, by itself, is Not the problem. It burns just fine. After all it is
6 parts hydrogen,
2parts carbon, and
1 part oxygen.
 

Hayzoos

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Alcohol has less stored energy by volume compared to gasoline. It cannot achieve the same mpg as gasoline. Perfect combustion of hydrocarbons produces H2O and CO2 which means one Oxygen atom for every two Hydrogen and two Oxygen for Carbon. In fact the presence of the Oxygen in the alcohol is the reason for the lower energy density. Alcohol tends to burn "cleaner", easier, because it requires less oxygen to burn completely. A problem with high energy combustion is the higher temperatures and production of NOx which only happens over a certain temp. because Nitrogen does not combine easily.

Any particular combustion system though will impart it's own factors. It is possible to achieve higher mpg with alcohol than gas with a system better attuned to alcohol as a fuel. Blended fuels have their own combustion profile also. So, trying to compare has to take into account many factors.

The main topic of the thread still applies. Generally, carb'ed gas engine systems suffer from the use of ethanol blended fuels. It also does not help that many of those vehicles are not driven for extended periods. Gas by itself does not do well in storage, blended with ethanol it is even worse.
 

LSM360

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My mileage in my SRT8 Charger went down by almost 2 mpg when ethanol came into play here. It steadily measured about 1.8 mpg's less with Ethanol. :(
 

Justwondering

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My poor 5th Avenue has sat since January when hubby got sick.
I just recharged the battery this weekend.
Tomorrow, I'll check the carb and the gas. Sigh.
I'm confident there is goo everywhere.

JW
 

Duke5A

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You can crack it however you want: ethanol is shit. It was a gift to the farm lobby, nothing more, nothing less.
 

XfbodyX

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I really wonder how much humidity has to do with this in the big picture. I see AJ mention it. I live in a semi arid desert by modern terms and although I rotate gas in some things yearly that sit and im probably going to jink myself but I do not experience any of the issues many have with newer gas.

Yea I get the white build up in carb bowls and such but is always very little. I do run carbs dry or as dry as possible for storage.

A really good test is to goto a tnt night and run pump gas then run low lead semi low octane fuel from a non mainstream supplier on subsequent runs and simply look at the slips.
 

Ele115

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You can crack it however you want: ethanol is shit. It was a gift to the farm lobby, nothing more, nothing less.

Run all the ethanol you guys want. I have had to repair anything and everything, and my hands and eyes tell me what I need to know. I don't run it and I'm happy that way. I see what it does to other people's stuff and what it used to do to mine. Call it anything you like. Buy all you want. Keep paying them extra subsidies to grow corn because they are too lazy and risk avoidant to grow anything else. It's your car, lawnmower, boat whatever. It makes me so happy that it works out so well for you
 

XfbodyX

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Wow, vs a angry under informed rant on US farmers are you aware that ethanol use is vast as in world wide and why its used? It is the norm around the world in modern societies.

Ethanol fuel by country - Wikipedia

It does not seem to make you happy it does work or at least does not cause a lot of harm for some by your reply, you seem very pissed off that it does not impact all who use it as much as others. Please look at the link I posted. Although the USA does produce the most Ethanol in the world we use 4x the amount of oil/gasoline vs China and then it falls off drastically from that point on with other countries use.

The origins and history of Ethanol is easy to find and dates far back.

Ethanol use as fuel dates back to Henry Ford, who in 1896 designed his first car, the "Quadricycle" to run on pure ethanol.[21] Then in 1908, he produced the famous Ford Model T capable of running on gasoline, ethanol or a combination of both.[21][35] Ford continued to advocate for ethanol as fuel even during Prohibition.

Do you know why gas producers actually use it and its not what most think. If the Gov. removed the mandate to use it gas producers would still use it because ethanol is the cheapest way to raise the octane level vs further costly refinement and thats the bottom line, the cost to produce a gallon of gasoline.

Do I like ethanol, no I do not for various reasons but to claim this is a USA only issue and to place it on the backs of farmers is very narrow sighted in the global picture of ethanol use.

Modern vehicles are throw away items, small gas powered products are being phased out so unfortunately us car guys in the end see more of it long term then other groups.

Anything gov. related is complex and many think the RFS is the big issue but this here is baffling. We export nearly 800 million gallons of corn based ethanol, approx 40% goes to Canada, now this is corn based but corn based ethanol can not meet Californias Low Carbon Fuel Standard so we import approx 80 million gallons of sugar based ethanol from Brazil to meet Cali-s needs.

Not every farmer gets gov. money the current number is less then 40% so again to lay a blanket statement on "farmers" is off base not to mention the overall global use of eth. that has nothing to do with many farmers.

There is many things about farming and ranching most just do not know. For instance a rancher made more money per head of cattle in 1970 then in 2021, even with covid and the huge spike in meat prices ranchers received not a penny more. The huge increase in costs is from the four major meat processors in the country. JBS being the biggest and global reported near a 900 million dollar profit in 2020 before the pandimic.

Im sorry you have so many issues related to ethanol but dang, no real need to unload on people or a generalized group, it is what it is. There are far more pressing issues before us in the world currently.
 

Duke5A

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Wow, vs a angry under informed rant on US farmers are you aware that ethanol use is vast as in world wide and why its used? It is the norm around the world in modern societies.

Ethanol fuel by country - Wikipedia

It does not seem to make you happy it does work or at least does not cause a lot of harm for some by your reply, you seem very pissed off that it does not impact all who use it as much as others. Please look at the link I posted. Although the USA does produce the most Ethanol in the world we use 4x the amount of oil/gasoline vs China and then it falls off drastically from that point on with other countries use.

The origins and history of Ethanol is easy to find and dates far back.

Ethanol use as fuel dates back to Henry Ford, who in 1896 designed his first car, the "Quadricycle" to run on pure ethanol.[21] Then in 1908, he produced the famous Ford Model T capable of running on gasoline, ethanol or a combination of both.[21][35] Ford continued to advocate for ethanol as fuel even during Prohibition.

Do you know why gas producers actually use it and its not what most think. If the Gov. removed the mandate to use it gas producers would still use it because ethanol is the cheapest way to raise the octane level vs further costly refinement and thats the bottom line, the cost to produce a gallon of gasoline.

Do I like ethanol, no I do not for various reasons but to claim this is a USA only issue and to place it on the backs of farmers is very narrow sighted in the global picture of ethanol use.

Modern vehicles are throw away items, small gas powered products are being phased out so unfortunately us car guys in the end see more of it long term then other groups.

Anything gov. related is complex and many think the RFS is the big issue but this here is baffling. We export nearly 800 million gallons of corn based ethanol, approx 40% goes to Canada, now this is corn based but corn based ethanol can not meet Californias Low Carbon Fuel Standard so we import approx 80 million gallons of sugar based ethanol from Brazil to meet Cali-s needs.

Not every farmer gets gov. money the current number is less then 40% so again to lay a blanket statement on "farmers" is off base not to mention the overall global use of eth. that has nothing to do with many farmers.

There is many things about farming and ranching most just do not know. For instance a rancher made more money per head of cattle in 1970 then in 2021, even with covid and the huge spike in meat prices ranchers received not a penny more. The huge increase in costs is from the four major meat processors in the country. JBS being the biggest and global reported near a 900 million dollar profit in 2020 before the pandimic.

Im sorry you have so many issues related to ethanol but dang, no real need to unload on people or a generalized group, it is what it is. There are far more pressing issues before us in the world currently.

Lots to unpack here. Number one is you're taking disdain for a lobbying group as a direct attack on farmers. I said 'FARM LOBBY'. I hate Boeing's lobbying of the Fed too - doesn't mean I'm anti US military. Don't stretch it that far.

Ethanol isn't this wonder fuel that you seem to be under the impression that it is. Lets go ahead and not even debate its utility when mixed with gas at only 10%. Instead lets compare it to how far it'll get me down the road vs a gallon of gas in the conditions most favorable to it. An e85 flex fuel rated vehicle. A 2014 Ford Focus with a 2.0 and Flex Fuel rating. E85 gets a combined 22 MPG city/highway. Gas, or E10 shoots all the way up to 32 MPG. Even if you had a car that designed to run purely on E100 taking full advantage of the much higher octane rating you're still falling short because it just doesn't have anywhere near the energy density of gas (30% less). You'll be stuck with a vehicle that can't fuel up anywhere and even if you manufacture enough corn based ethanol to supply the market you'll completely overrun the usable farm land in this country.

Besides the above, at the end of the day what matters to the consumer is how far you can get down the road for the dollar. E85 is only 60 cents cheaper a gallon right now at $2.60 vs $3.20. This disparity was even less one year ago when domestic gas prices were more insulated from foreign turmoil.

You can assert that it would exist without the mandate, but until the mandate is gone that is just a wild assumption. Fact is it needed the mandate to even get incorporated into the market. You can still get corn free gas. If the incentives were that great the market would move on its own. If it is as viable as you assert then let it sink or swim now on it's own merit.

The cost to produce isn't the bottom line, it's how far it gets me down the road for the given cost. That's the bottom line.

I am under no illusion that farmers aren't getting screwed right now. We don't need to argue that point as I'm in total agreement with you. Manufacturing a useless fuel and using the force of Government to make us buy it though is not the answer.
 

XfbodyX

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I wasnt really responding to your post I was responding this comment. Sorry I should of been more clear on that.

"Keep paying them extra subsidies to grow corn because they are too lazy and risk avoidant to grow anything else."

The reference to the bottom line being price was meant for the producers not the end user. All the easy ways to increase octane have been banned over the years so its been about 90/10 speculation the producers would still use it for there cost savings.

It is a mess, thats for sure.
 

Ele115

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They tried the same exact game with "biodiesel" too. That went over like a lead balloon for about 98 good reasons. When the government gets involved, they just add to the problems. Always ask yourself "who funded this" and "who will benefit from this". The answer is rarely going to be you.
 
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