New E-15 Ethanol Gas creating BIG problems!

Where are you finding e90? You mean e10? As in 10% ethanol? I don't like that stuff in the least, and the e15 is even worse. E85 is 85% ethanol and 15% 93 pump gas. E85 was designed as a safe alcohol or methanol substitute. It has enough gasoline in it to not burn clear in the daylight. The vapors are less volatile as well. I've seen an alcohol dragster backfire, and it took the crew 30 seconds to figure out they were on fire. 6 people went to the er with severe burns. E85 was a safer alternative to that. But when they started with the ethanol blends, it was brought to the pump as another option. If you are going to reconfigure your weekend hotrod to run on e10, why not step it up and run e85 with more power, and you can tell the hippies to f-off since your old hotrod runs cleaner than their Prius. Once again, although e85 is available at some pumps, they are not yet mandating, or even trying to mandate it as a primary fuel. Maybe someday when/if manufacturers start offering decent e85 vehicles, but that isn't happening yet. E15 got shut down, it will be a while before e85 gets anywhere close.

I have been talking about E85, not the E10-15 bs. Huge difference. They haven't tried to mandate it yet. They have made it available hoping some manufacturers will offer vehicles to run on it. In a few years, you may be driving an Eco-boost Ford that changes the map and ups the boost if you run e85, but it isn't there yet, and it wouldn't sell if fuel wasn't available. So they put the fuel on the market hoping it will catch on.

When it comes to e10 or e15, I agree, total crap. It only has enough ethanol to cause a problem, not enough to take advantage of. Horrid idea, those who thought of it should be forced to drink the stuff. E85 is another story, cheap race fuel available at the pump, and shuts the hippies up.

Except the original thread topic is E-15. And E-15 was the one we faced possibly being sold at gas stations. Now that is stopped for now in the US, but I don't know about other countries.

I brought up e85 stating that ethanol wasn't a problem, it was the blends, earlier in the thread. The problem is, when you are running less than 70ish percent ethanol, you are trying to make a gasoline engine run on the wrong fuel. Above that, you are talking an alcohol fueled engine with a little more safety. Ethanol isn't bad, trying to run gasoline powerplants on it is.

I thought I was old school because I think of Hilborne injection and front engine rail dragsters when I think of alcohol. It burns cool, so it is very resistant to pre detonation. Takes a lot of timing and compression or boost.

SLC Mercedes, what a sleeper. Fastest beast Merc made pre AMG Pulled up to a traffic light in a '72 440 Plymouth Duster and got smoked by some old lady in a SLC coupe 20 years ago!

Lucky guy. I was born in late 1981. By the time I could drive, I was converting old cars to run on unleaded. For me, I have been making changes the whole time, so when I find a performance oriented and cheap fuel, I fall in love. And I didn't have to machine the heads and install hardened valve seats to swap to this fuel, just fuel system and tuning.

I said crap cars to illustrate a point. Is the fuel bad because the car won't run on it, or is the car bad because it won't run on the fuel? In reality, neither is crap, they just aren't compatible. I did not mean to offend, if I did I am sorry. Had I said it to you in person, it would have probably made sense. I seem to forget that tone and mannerisms don't travel online very well.

I don't think it is the oil companies, it is the ethanol producers. They lobby against having the pumps labeled because they believe people won't buy the gas if they know what is in it ... really consumer oriented, eh?

You might want to look at who in the MD legislature prevented pump labeling and follow the money.

Labels for gas pumps spur debate in the legislature

Originally Posted by SomeTexan:
A very self centered little world some people live in.

A narcissistic electorate votes in narcissistic leaders, who then leverage our narcissism for their own narcissistic ends.....It's the circle of life!

Yet, More crazy antics AND same mis information;

From the article; a new product E-15 will appear, and it will have a federally-mandated label warning consumers that it’s only approved for late model cars.

Who keeps stating this approved garbage? The media? Politicians? Approved for late model cars? With a warranty? Not the car makers...

None of this would be a problem is Iowa weren't the first presidential caucus in the US. Ethanol as opposed to gas is a purely technical issue, a few plastic parts, some changes to the computer, some changes to the fuel injectors, and you have a car that can run on ethanol but not gas. It's still hugely wasteful to make ethanol to burn in cars. We burn good gas, diesel, and nat gas to make ethanol with lower fuel value, all in order to get what we really want, a prop for the corn market.

It takes a lot more than those few changes to make an engine properly run on ethanol. The cars that have been set up with that method is why people think ethanol will cost you power/mileage. Without major compression/boost increase, power will be down. Same as if you ran c16 race fuel, high octane fuels require more compression to burn properly.

Now, I do agree that corn is a horrible source for ethanol. The corn grown in this country is so genetically altered that it is a better source of cancer than sustenance. Putting that crap in the air has to be as bad or worse than putting it your mouth. Oddly enough, the e85 I order by the barrel claims to be made from sugar cane. I have yet to have seen a gas station that properly stores e85, so I take care of that myself.

That's is another one that wouldn't lose power or mileage if compression/boost was increased. Lots of benefits for those who modify their engines to run it. I've run propane in quite a few dune buggies with excellent results. Although I would love to see a direct injection LPG injection set up, I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

As for infrastructure, anywhere that fills propane tanks could fill you up. Not that they could replace gas stations over night, but they could and do support a limited market.

Just about any campground, r/v dealer or industrial welding supply place can handle it. True, hours can be limited, but it is available. There is an r/v park with 24 hour store and service department not all that far from me, takes minutes to fill a tank. And it is way cheaper than exchanging tanks.