Fyi: Sti's and WRX's have rubber fuel lines. There in the engine compartment too

 

We were all affected at pretty much the same time the switch happened for the 'car people' - the real concern for boaters was the fiberglass resin type fuel tanks - the type that were used on many older boats.

 

there are tons of cars too that use fiberglass gas tanks!

 

I once e-mailed various oil companies asking if they could direct me to a station anywhere near here that sells gas without ethanol in it. Most of them sent back some form e-mail that did nothing to answer my question. Chevron had a tech get back to me, and we had about 5 e-mails back and forth with him telling me how much ethanol sucks in a car that wasn't designed for it, and that cars that have been "designed" to take up to e10 aren't really designed with it, just designed to be not as badly off thanks to it, which corresponds with what the car company engineers I've spoken to have said (gee, thanks federal government). Bump it up to 85% and all I can say to you is good luck.

 

question. so say you get tuned on e85 right and make xxxwhp but e85 isnt readily available to you unless you take a 45min-1hour drive to get it so you run 93 what kinda power loss will there be?

 

Well, a proper air/fuel tune for E85 would be about 8.5:1, so unless you were able to go that rich and still maintain the electronic corrections, it would be absolutely terrible. I know if I start richening my mixture with the car idling, it will shut off before I get as rich as 8.5:1. I've never worked with a car with its electronic corrections intact, so I'm not really familiar with how much self-correcting-adjustment range they allow, other than I know that it varies between car makers.

If you full out tuned it for e85, and made it all motor (so you went to very high compression to utilize the 105 octane), you'd probably have to get out and retard the timing some if the knock sensors were absent...hell even if they were present it's a long way down from 105 to 93, and even with 8.5:1 a/f, they probably can't compensate for that on their own.

If you're on a boosted car, well just don't go high-boost, but I bet you could get away without having to retard the timing.

 

along with a complete fuel system upgrade. it was a zinc yellow terminator in one of the mustang magazines a while back. made like low 600's on gas and after the conversion it made 680 something.

 

But you're still fucking up the environment, so where's the "green" benefit?

I saw this on CNN but couldn't find the link so here's a close one

http://www.alternative-energy-news.i...health-report/

 

Yup, and everybody is finding the link, from Stanford University all the way to Toyota. There is no green benefit. I don't know how they've managed to convince people that it's somehow more green to increase HC, NOx, CO in some cars, and evaporative emissions, which are all poisons, in exchange for reducing CO2, which we exhale.

You also have to add in that uncultivated land is better at reducing greenhouse gasses than land cultivated for corn. That and ethanol can't be shipped by pipeline and is instead shipped by diesel-powered tanker truck.

 

It's only "green" because the source of the ethanol is sustainable.

There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. Everyone should go thoroughly research this topic.

Modern cars should have no problem with E85 being compatible with fuel lines, etc.

Flex fuel vehicles have special fuel system materials that are guaranteed to be ethanol safe, and they have fuel flow that can handle anywhere from 100% gasoline to 100% ethanol. They also have a fuel sensor that detects the amount of ethanol so the tuning can be automatically adjusted.

You can't just throw E85 in the tank. The specific energy is lower, so you have to burn more of it (stoichiometry is lower, like someone already said). You can't take advantage of the higher octane without different tuning. You can't switch back and forth between gasoline and E85 without tuning changes.

Bottom line: If you don't have a flex fuel vehicle, don't just fill up your car with E85.