Gas vs. Ethanol
 

My explorer will use both - have any of you tried ethanol? If so, what was your experience?

Thanks

RE: Gas vs. Ethanol
 

If that is the so called "flex fuel" I haven't heard anything good about it. However, it burns cleaner and is probably less expensive. I don't know for sure but I would think that it would be cheaper becuase anyone can distill it from abundant starting materials (grain, corn etc). Alcohol does have a tremendous amount of energy stored in it bonds. Theoretically I would think that it would be a good fuel. But again, I haven't heard anything for sure.

RE: Gas vs. Ethanol
 

flex fuel blows



i can use ethanol 89 90 octane and up. i just use that.

RE: Gas vs. Ethanol
 

Flex fuel is just clean fuel but very bad MPG, and so far its the same price or more then gas. Here is some info on E 85 flex fuel http://www.caranddriver.com/features...-promises.html

RE: Gas vs. Ethanol
 

Right now the only pro at this time would be environmental.

If it were to take off, then it would make us more independent for fuels and create more jobs in the USA(hopefully). and technology would get better for producing it and drive the costs down per gallon. So then the MPG's would not be a big concern as we are use to the MPG's now of reg Gas and the inflated price.

Now if these producers got too greedy and kept the price as the same as reg gas now, it would make it, IMO.

RE: Gas vs. Ethanol
 

The wife's explorer can use it but not my f-150. My first experience was back with when it was being first tried in fuel systems. Holleycarb wanted to know what it would do if anything to their product. I modified a production carb for testing for one test vehicle and then installed a new stock carb on the other. We had the gas tanks filled up with a blend of pump gas/ethanol (15%) and off we went for central Ohio down I-75. These trips lasted till several thousand miles were logged. The carbs were taken off and tested against base line data. The carbs were then disassembled to see what may have happened. We had our suspicions as the test car's fuel filters were clogging up with dirt from the gas tanks. We new there had to be some caustic cleaning action going on. That stuff was rough on the zinc the fuel came in contact with. It even loosened up the liquid steel I had used during the modification. You normally had to chisel or grind that stuff to get rid of it. Ford was a big customer of Holley carb and came to them to build a large amount of carbs to try on their vehicles. We had learned from our testing the castings needed to be nickle plated to resist the effects of the ethanol. When deposited on the zinc it built up a layer that caused every machined hole to become too small. We had to hand machine them all before assembly.

RE: Gas vs. Ethanol
 

E85 (gassahol as I knew it) has taken off somewhat and our livestock products have taken off price wise accordingly. It seems the farm animals now are on a unionized pay scale. We eat less meat than we used to so we can afford enuff milk and other items that went up. When is the truckers gonna start using french fry oil to make an impact on operating costs? Diesel used to be the fuel to buy because of its cost as compared to gasoline. I guess the Mercedes drivers are feeling what use gas users feel.