The article is not clear but I didn't read this as mandating E15 so much as allowing it. No discussion on the impact on cars' mechanicals.
Will you be looking for E15 stickers, or watching out for them?
The article is not clear but I didn't read this as mandating E15 so much as allowing it. No discussion on the impact on cars' mechanicals.
Will you be looking for E15 stickers, or watching out for them?
If I were driving the Jeep more and the stuff was high enough octane, I'd probably run it knowing that if it got a little grumpy, I could just tweak the tune. I've run a blend as high as E30-ish for testing in the Jeep with no issues before.
I don't know that I'd want to try it in the BMW or the Prius without some indication that it wouldn't cause any concerns, and definitely not for fear of running too lean on any of the carb-ed stuff (lawnmower, snowblower, boat). I'm pretty sure everything I've got explicitly allows E10 in the manual (even some stuff from the 80s), but has a warning to never use a blend with more than 10% ethanol.
Will we even notice? I mean if you want anything other than E10 already you have to look for ethanol free gas stations, which I do for yard equipment and Kart. And others know way more than me, but I thought E10 was really 'up to 10%' ethanol and you don't necessarily know how much you are really getting. Ditto for E15 I assume.
In reply to rslifkin :
Ethanol has about 114 octane by itself. It is slightly less fuel efficient but makes more power.
Any vehicle post 2001 vehicle can safely run E15.
My wife's 2013?Gonda CRV. We use it frequently because it's 5 cents a gallon cheaper.
All of Ohio (corn country) requires E10 for "road going" fuel. Around me, near the lake, you can find some places with "boat fuel" that is E0 and expensive.
In reply to frenchyd :
Yeah, the octane of ethanol isn't the concern, it's all about what they blend it with and the final product. They could easily blend it with junk gas to make 87 octane E15 (the Jeep can't run on anything less than 91 without pulling a bunch of timing out of the tune).
Sheetz around here (central Ohio) has E15 88 octane. It is about 20 cents cheaper per gallon than E10 87 octane.
Here E15 is sold as 88 octane. So 5% ethanol raises octane by one point
EvanB said:Sheetz around here (central Ohio) has E15 88 octane. It is about 20 cents cheaper per gallon than E10 87 octane.
I had been wondering what was up with that.
In reply to EvanB :
I run it in the charger. Since the car is made for it, it works fine and hasn't negatively impacted my economy like how my old "flex fuel" avalanche got 4mpg on e85
Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:Will we even notice? I mean if you want anything other than E10 already you have to look for ethanol free gas stations, which I do for yard equipment and Kart. And others know way more than me, but I thought E10 was really 'up to 10%' ethanol and you don't necessarily know how much you are really getting. Ditto for E15 I assume.
Not likely will anyone notice. Since E10 is the nominal fuel that is worked around (and has been for almost 20 years now), even up to E20 will be hardly even noticed on new cars.
And I'm pretty sure that "E10" means up to E15 in reality.
One other note- from the reports I've read, the actual number of stations that will offer E15 will be pretty limited, mostly to farm country. IIRC, we don't grow enough corn to have E15 nationwide. But allowing for E15 does give another market for high priced corn- good for large corn growing companies.
And not to get too political- this isn't about being green, or even helping small farmers. Being green would mean the "corn mandate" would go away to allow any sugar source at all- up to and including waste fruit. Helping people at the pump would also mean any source of sugar. Helping small farmers would be the clear grain shortage thanks to what is going on in Russia/Ukraine.
But enough of the political talk. Based on all of what I'm aware of WRT testing, few will ever notice the change.
There are still some of us who drive older cars (my newest one is a 1988) where it may become an issue.
In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :
I'd notice, for sure. They don't make an ethanol resistant carb kit for my Mustang, and I suspect the fuel pump is also susceptible to it (although that might be because it predated E10 and hadn't been run in a while.)
I've had brand new carb kits go bad in a month or two running E10.
Very much a minority in this, though.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
I'm weighing converting the wartburg and belair to efi sooner than later because of what even e10 does to them. I was in the habit of pulling the carb off the belair before winter storage every year and dumping it upside down to drain it all, and it still needed a kit every couple years and the passages in the metering blocks cleaned every so often
Will avoid for my motorcycle, might run it if I'm filling up the car and E10 isn't available at the station I stop at. Really not a fan of the stuff but I live in a society, so...
Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:Will we even notice? I mean if you want anything other than E10 already you have to look for ethanol free gas stations, which I do for yard equipment and Kart. And others know way more than me, but I thought E10 was really 'up to 10%' ethanol and you don't necessarily know how much you are really getting. Ditto for E15 I assume.
Or use E85. Here it's $1.20 a gallon less than 87 octane and yet it's 100 octane.
With my flex fuel Ford I get about 1&1/2 miles per gallon less using it but save $1.20 per gallon. That means fuel mileage wise I'm about $20 a tank ahead. Plus the engine stays cleaner
Mr_Asa said:In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :
I'd notice, for sure. They don't make an ethanol resistant carb kit for my Mustang, and I suspect the fuel pump is also susceptible to it (although that might be because it predated E10 and hadn't been run in a while.)
I've had brand new carb kits go bad in a month or two running E10.
Very much a minority in this, though.
That still happens? Brand new carbs? IMHO, that's a fault of the carb and pump maker as opposed to the fuel. Maybe 20 years ago, blaming the fuel would be more "ok"- but it's been the nominal fuel in the US for so long that it realistically can't be blamed anymore. We spend thousands of hours making sure new cars are robust to the fuels available in the US- so carb companies should be more than capable of doing the same. It's been almost 20 years since E10 has been the nominal fuel, and almost 50 since it was first put into fuel blends- no longer is it a surprise or shock to be used as a fuel.
In reply to alfadriver :
No, not brand new carbs. Old old carbs. Carter YFA 1BBLs. I've yet to find an ethanol safe version.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Must be getting parts from the same place I got parts for my Tecumseh carbs. Less than a weekend from brand new to useless.
Do some searching, I forgot the name of the website, but I found one that broke down ethanol free gas availability by state and county.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Is it a gasket problem or a metal problem? If it's a rubber/gasket problem, solutions for that have been around for decades. If the metal is breaking down, that's different- since it wasn't developed for the fuel.
RevRico said:In reply to Mr_Asa :
Must be getting parts from the same place I got parts for my Tecumseh carbs. Less than a weekend from brand new to useless.
Do some searching, I forgot the name of the website, but I found one that broke down ethanol free gas availability by state and county.
If the "new" parts are breaking down, by now, that's not the fault of the fuel. Drives me crazy that companies like Techumseh continually get away with blaming the fuel when it's been a know source for so many years. That does go for any metal parts that have been made in the last 15 years. We would get massive abuse for having the exact same problem as opposed to the fuel.
I have run exclusively 'E10' (or whatever's cheap) in my '72 El Camino for 40k miles and 15 years. It's had the same Edelbrock carb, stock fuel pump, and original 50 year old lines and hoses that whole time. It often sits for 2-4 weeks at a time. I've never had an issue with the ethanol boogieman on my old stuff. Even my briggs lawnmower is fine from sitting every spring. If I remember I'll put stabilizer in the Honda CB in the winter but not always.
That doesn't mean I think it's right to line the pockets of factory farms with subsidies to grow environment-wrecking monoculture crops to convert to a dirtier, less efficient fuel that wouldn't otherwise be economically viable just to buy off some voters with "gas price relief" but that's a whole other discussion for a different place.
Just to ask ,
does China have E - 10 or E15 since that is where most of the rebuild kits are made ,
Does any other countries use E10 - E15 ?
just wondering if China makes one type of rebuild kit for the world ?
Nice!
Now, let's get rid of about 17 of the 21 grades of gasoline we sell.
Let's only have:
a) Summer Urban Blend - very low volatility, very similar to an E15 version of California summer gasoline
b) Winter Urban / Summer Rural Blend - medium volatility, loose specification for most uses
c) Winter Rural Blend - high volatility, easy starting, lots of butane
Those three would no longer be available in multiple grades. All gasoline sold for street use would have to be 93 AKI.
d) Power Tool Fuel - dyed red, untaxed, 80-83 AKI, zero ethanol.
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