how will ethanol affect you at the pump?
 

What should I do at the pump:

1) my car requires regular gas, will it matter if there is ethanal 10% in the new gas.
2) Will going up higher octane to avoid ethanol be worth it? Will a 92 or 94 improve my gas milage eventhough my car is made for regular gas.

10% ethanol wont kill a stock car... much

at 87 it'll have 10%
at 89 it'll have 5%
at 91 it'll have 0&

that's shell anyways. Chevron needs 94 to have 0%

newer cars can handle ethanol, but people with older cars should be careful. ethanol will eat away at the rubber hoses in your fuel line, rubber in your seals and gaskets too.

http://www.hybridcars.com/ethanol/be...drawbacks.html

http://environment.about.com/od/etha...ol_problem.htm

http://www.eng.wayne.edu/page.php?id=636

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyl...514_058678.htm

there are ppl with my car that are tuning specifically for e85 and they're making a lot more power than with just on gas ..although there are a few mods performance wise that helps it out (just tune to run the e85 though)

cause pure ethanol has an octane of about 103.

but you lose a hell of a lot of fuel economy.(doesn't matter for tuning) but it matters for DD

they live in the states though so its super cheap and they have stations everywhere..they end up spending same amount lol but u end up with more power if ur tuned for it haha

if ethanol is too dry for your fuel lines and rubber seals - look into TCW3 !

older cars as in pre-2000?

Actually Id really like to know this too. If a car is setup for 87 OCT, (say a Honda civic, 2000 model D16), then what happens to fuel mileage when that 87now has 10% ethanol. How much does your fuel mileage drop? Is there a significant difference?

If E85 nets you a 7 percent less mileage reading (according to the EPA) than 100% gas, does the 10% being added to our gas now make any real diffrence, or is it our heads?

this has already been discussed in the chevron thread

flexfuel from dodge minivan takes E85 i think

1) E10 wont do anything to your car. Yes, ethanol eats away at rubber, but this amount is too minimal to do any damage, unless you're looking at the looooooong term picture.

2) No. If your car is designed to run on regular, running higher octane will do nothing more than eat away at your wallet and heat up your engine temperature slightly. Again, no short term mechanical issues, but long term may eventually hurt your engine. It will also cost you a fair bit more.

If you're concerned, spend the money ahead of time and repipe your fuel lines with non-rubber lines.

It's not as bad as most people think. When I switch between ethanol-blended and non-ethanol fuel, fuel mileage will vary to pretty much the same extent as if I decided to spend one day on the way to work driving more agressively than the other days.

Ford pick up trucks can use Flexfuel too

This. :thumbsup:

What do you mean by loooong term? Some of us drive cars built in the early 90's...is that long term enough?

Vehicles built after 1990 can run 10% of ethanol safely. Check your owner's manual if you want to be sure.

Any car can run as much as 100% ethanol it just has to be tuned to do so. One of my vehicles is a 1974 carbed v8 and I run methanol blended gas with no issues.
If you have a carburated car and are running higher percentages of ethanol then you have to jet it accordingly it will generally need to run much richer or you will lose power. Newer E85 compliant cars IE chevy flex fuel ones are pretuned to operate on either fuel type but any proposed methanol based fuel currently is no more then 85% methanol and 15% gasoline hence the E85 designation.
Running gas will net you better fuel mileage tho as it takes roughly 2 times the methanol to produce the same power as gasoline but the methanol burns cleanly.

I've also never heard of methanol increasing engine temps the main byproduct of methanol burning is water. water I should think would have a cooling and cleaning effect on your engine.

Neither methanol nor ethanol should increase engine temperature under normal load. The upside to using them is that they have fantastically high octane ratings (119 and 116, respectively). However, the downside is that ethanol contains only 2/3's of the energy of gasoline, and methanol is even worse at 1/2.