Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerys
E85 costs even more than regular E10 around here :-) about 30 cents a gallon more. I get regular E10 for $2.54 a gallon its $2.82 a gallon for E85
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What
? Where are you seeing E85 for $2.82 a gallon? That's price gouging
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The only explanation for that large of a drop (20% or more) in FE is you're running E85. There's no way around it. Ethanol is mucho cheaper than Gasoline and there have been reports of stations using E98 to "cheapen" their fuel and increase their profit. The 6% Ethanol content and the 12% Ethanol content CANNOT make your fuel economy drop more than 6%. Even if it was pure water it would not kill your MPG that much. It's just not possible. Which if you believe 12% Ethanol killed your fuel pumps why would you replace them with the same fuel pump that failed in the first place? It's pretty obvious there was a fuel content problem and your pump was not designed to run that much fuel. The fact that you didn't post anything about your testing of ethanol content means you haven't put your results up for peer review. And replacing your fuel pumps doesn't mean they failed due to ethanol, you should have taken them and had them tested. If you want a lawsuit you're going to need to collect evidence
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Walbro who sells high flow fuel pumps asked for some guys running E85 to return their (Walbro) pumps for a free replacement so they could examine the damage to the components. I don't have the results myself but none of the guys were returning damaged fuel pumps and Hotrod claimed that the effects was minor (According to Walbro) and all of the pumps were in working order. Hotrod sent his fuel pump in because he's running an E85 fueled Subaru.
The reason people find good fuel economy with half E85 and half Gasoline is their fuel systems can only compensate for that much Ethanol. Flexfuels have wider margins for adjustment due to oversized(or wider tuned) fuel injectors. I suspect you had high % of Ethanol in your Jeep when you posted about getting "sluggish performance" unless it was something else I missed. Ethanol requires a 30-42% more fuel to do the same amount of work depending on conditions. Often it takes less than that under better conditions. I suspect you were running extremely lean and therefore more "sluggish" than usual. In low Compression gasoline Engines Ethanol is still more efficient than gasoline on an ENERGY basis. Alky race cars run twice the fuel but make twice the HP of race gasoline cars because they can run more units of fuel per air and still get more torque.
I read this thread completely except for the bulk of others chiming in about Electric cars and junk and I read your comments. And somehow the only thing I keep having a problem with regarding your problem is your results Nerys. I'm not suggesting anything is incorrect, I just can't argue with your reasoning because I looked for test results and records and all I saw was observations and speculations that coincided with your view. The only data you have in your fuel logs show a few tanks last year for the Van and one in total for the Jeep. The Metro showed a 4% drop in FE when you switched to higher Ethanol percentage for 2 tanks before you "wound it out to 80MPH+". That's not even close to a good sample. All on-road fuel is 10% Ethanol by now as MTBE has been outlawed for awhile. I actually favored Shell when I had a paper route because they had the "may contain up to 10% Ethanol by volume" sticker. I had all of my receipts for fuel and I kept records of my Mileage for the year I delivered a 40 mile route. I was getting around 19MPG pretty steady except for days where I actually used the truck for anything but my Route or I was driving slower than usual due to snow MPG went down predictably. I shortshifted, I was in OD by 40MPH, I was a new driver so my style changed pretty quickly. I still had 19MPG pretty consistent. Does that mean anything for a fact? absolutely not. Good records aren't the only thing you need, you need to record more variables. I threw out the receipts but naturally I wouldn't have trusted their results for anything like you have as I had recorded very little about the conditions etc, I found out the Speedometer, which we noticed was way off when we first drove it home, that it was off by 17%. It only reads 85% of the distance I covered which meant I was averaging 22 MPG all along
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Would you please stop telling people that 98% of the energy in a gallon of Gasoline is wasted? That is so untrue it's not even funny. 22% is the AVERAGE energy number thrown around, mostly because it depends on many variables, that is converted from Gasoline to work at the Wheels AFTER heat and friction losses. At a maximum this number is 30something% for a Gasoline ICE with sometimes less efficiency depending on design and variables. For Comparison Diesels in autos get somewhere in the low 40 percentage for peak efficiency. 70-90(MAX)% the quoted number is 78% for the average losses but the waste is either from friction or wasted heat energy. This means for every 33 Kilowatt-hours that is in a gallon of Gasoline you get approximately 7 Kilowatt-hours of actual work to the wheels. 15% of the energy is lost from the flywheel to the wheels but this is already factored into the whole equation. A Generator may get less efficiency due to cheaper engine design but it can produce 22% efficiency because you have to take into account the generator head inefficiency which can sap from 15%-30%. When you put 33Kw-hrs of energy or one gallon of gasoline fuel into an ICE you get an estimated Return of 7kw-hrs. Not you put in 350KW-hrs you get 7kw-hrs! I could have used BTUs but then we have to decide whether to use the higher heat value in a gallon used for home heating or the lower heating value normally used for automobiles. I prefer KW-HR since it makes comparing Gasoline to Electric cars easier.Example; I get 1500KW per mile in my Truck and I pay 7.5 cents per KW-HR, I pay 11.25 cents per mile. But that's fuel efficiency not energy efficiency. A drag car is energy efficient but it is not fuel efficient from a MPG aspect. You might use a lot of fuel to fight drag during acceleration or high speed driving. But that doesn't make it energy inefficient it makes it get cruddy MPG.