E85 and unleaded gas?!?!?!?

[Blue Goose]

my dad was telling me about some people he knows here in town who are mixing their tanks, they will put half of it E85 and half of it just normal unleaded, and this is for pickups that are just normal pickups. Not made for E85. So if E85 is 85 % Ethanol and 15% unleaded, then the tank after it is all said and done should be about 45% ethonal and 55 unleaded right?

would this hurt my motor if I did this? 350, 650 edlebrock carb, RV cam

anyone ever heard of this?

 

[randy88k5]

No, it will not harm it, if used in moderation. Ethanol is widely used as a 'gasoline extender', and it is one of the alternative fuels being stdied. But it is mildly corrosive to certain rubbers when it is in a decent concentration. That is why they say only use E85 in flex-fuel vehicles.

Ethanol is present in regular gas to some level, not sure what percentage though. Id say 5-10% as an estimate. You can run it, but just dilute it a bit. ~50% might be a little strong, but for a carb, I wouldnt see it a major peoblem. Fuel injection, with the sensitive rubber orings, I would dilute it farther before I used it.

 

[ryan22re]

no. e85 is 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline.

ethanol is corrosive to metal and leans out the fuel mixture. it also absorbs water. which, when you mix corrosive and absorbing water....who knows what happens. run it for a couple of months and tell me what went wrong. id like to know.

ryan

 

[ryan22re]

sorry...got that backwards after i looked at that...85% ethanol...15% gas...

still corrosive....

ryan

 

[Blue Goose]

I'll let you know how my dads buddies trucks end up, so far so good. and cheap.........

 

[cybrfire]

In my experience ethanol blended fuels are cheaper at the pump but in the end your mileage is worse. not sure if its a wash or not but its pretty close.

EDIT:

Another thing about Ethanol. If you are in a high temp part of the country and are running headers or for some other reason have higher under hood temperatures i'd forget about using Ethanol. It boils at a lower temp. Vapor lock sucks.

 

[88K5Jimmy]

I saw a news report from one of the news stations in OKC. They reported that some of the gas stations had several E85 pumps but nobody was using them. They they went on to describe what E85 was but when it was all said and done its till cost the same per gallon as gas, so there wasn't any point in getting it over reguler gasoline.

 

[mikey_d05]

"Premium" and "Super" around here are usually 10% Ethanol in the first place, with "Regular" (whatever octane ratings they happen to hold) being plain gas. In all honesty I wouldn't mix it that strong, seems like your friends are asking for it to me.

 

[6.2Blazer]

E85 has a lower energy content per gallon than gasoline.....meaning that it requires higher fuel consumption to deliver the same power. Typically if you ran straight E85 in an engine set up for gasoline you will lose both power and fuel mileage.....older carb'd engines would be even worse because they can't compensate for differences in fuel mixture and ignition like newer FI engines can (though standard FI engines usually can not completely accomodate the differences......hence the FFV offerings). If you adjust the engine to run on E85 you can usually regain most if not all of the power, but fuel economy will still be lower.

 

[mouse]

We are using some E85 vehicles in the Air Force. The range on E85 is 292 miles and on regular gas is 390 according to GM - the vehicles are Tahoes. We are told to run the E85 in the vehicles designed to run it. The overall return on investment may be about the same as regular gas, but more of the profits are going to American farmers and not someone on foreign soil!