jspain

The owners manual states that gas with maximum of 5% ethanol is ok. I'm having trouble finding local stations carrying gas with less than 10%. Will it actually hurt the fuel system?

Thanks

DoubleParadoxx

I've been filling up at a Hess station that says 10% or less. I'm interested as well.

bfranks

Hmm....never noticed that. I use Chevron almost exclusively, and all their pumps have stickers saying that it may contain up to 10% ethanol. Might have to look into that.

Black Betty

iTrader: (60)

It will hurt absolutely nothing. Many areas mandate 10% ethanol like here in Houston. It burns cleaner and makes slightly more power from the same amount of fuel. It won't harm your car in any way.

dvrming

iTrader: (1)

Unfortunately, it is a bad deal.

First, your gas mileage may be 10% lower than using gas with no ethanol. Second, we are effectively paying 10% more because of the lower mpg.

If you check into the scientific basis of using ethanol as fuel, you will know that it is a complete farce. By some estimate, it costs about the same amount of fuel to make the ethanol as what using ethanol can save.

If you keep meticulous mpg records, you can actually see the drop in mpg when they switched to the 10% ethanol. Now, if only we could use water instead of ethanol, it would make just as much (non)sense. Ethanol contributes zip!

TerribleONE453

yea im gonna convert my G to run on H2O

bfranks

Sorry....always wanted to use that one


On a serious note....I'm pretty sure ethanol is less efficient by volume then gas is (less mpg). Is that the case, or is Black Betty correct? Not that it matters, I haven't seen a station that doesn't use an ethanol blend in a while.

Black Betty

iTrader: (60)

You are correct. A 10% ethanol blend will reduce mileage, but only by approximately 2%. But at the same time it produces far fewer emissions, which it is mandated in Houston because of the poor air quality caused by the petroleum industry's enormous amount of emissions in our area. In the long run, many experts feel that the amount of energy used to produce ethanol produces as much or more emissions in its production than it saves when being burned. But as I said before, even though it does reduce mileage slightly, it more than makes up for it (to me at least) in the increased power and the reduced deposits left inside your engine's combustion chamber. Plus we have 93 octane everywhere and most areas don't.

SkitzoRabbit

While its true that ethanol hype is exagerated and misleading the main point to an ethanol additive is not to create a greater MPG or even save the consumer money.

The real reason for ethanol promotion in this country is that ethanol in your car comes from ethanol grown and refined and produced in THIS COUNTRY

So for every mile driven with ethanol in your tank you put money into the pockets of american companies, instead of shipping those few cents outside of the states, strengthening our economy (we need it) and weakening our dependancy on foreign energy sources without an additional carbon footprint which poisons us in the long run

Not to mention that if we can drive global demand for ethanol up by increasing the fuel economy of cars or the technology in general than we are effectively creating a market for american export to the world, which would be progress towards equalizing the trade deficit and becoming the next "oil country"

Not only would we be the leaders of the technology and the initial provider for the product the US has the richest land (read infrastructure) to produce the ethanol, ever hear of the American Bread Basket from the turn of last century.

Long road end to farm subsidies and additional taxation on ethanol exports could set this country up for a position of economic stability if this ethanol is really supported

Think about that next time you dismiss a technology because it might hurt your pocket book in the short run

Yes its not good that the hype is misleading us into thinking one thing when the motivation is completey different, but hey we pander to the lowest common denominator in this country dont we

todd92

Back to the OP question. Every car sold in the US since the late 70's has to be compatible with 10% ethanol.

Your reading skills are lacking. It says up to 5% Methanol in the owners manual. You won't find gas with any amount of Methanol in it. It says up to 10% oxygenate (of which ethanol is one) is OK. Up to 15% MTBE was OK too (but that is banned in the US now, thanks to the ethanol lobby).

GiGGaplease

glorbal warming is a load of bs...i see no reason for us to invest money into something that we cannot control, if the weather wants to change, how can we stop that?

solopresident

Global waring is a load of BS? wow dude. so then how do you explain the climate changes all over the world? seriously man, you guys in LA are just nuts.

If we can put money in our pockets then lets put more ethanol in the fuels.

jspain

To Todd92:

I was simply asking for help: not smartass replies

todd92

You didn't need help and wouldn't have asked for any if you could read.

bboysteele

Play nice guys.