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The 2 tanks I used E85 I was traveling out of town, once in October 09 and the other time it was Thanksgiving of 09. E85 isn't available within 100 miles of here, so I cannot claim much consistency. And to be quite honest I topped off with E85 more than the two tankfuls, but in all fairness, there was still plenty of E0 in there.
In both instances I'm claiming 95% E85 in the tank, it was on the second refill of the stuff. There was a lot of mixed driving, and a lot of highway driving, with some aggressive driving thrown in (I get a bit impatient sometimes.) Both times I came home with at least 3/4 a tank left, and ran the tank low both times with our normal driving.
IIRC, the E85 was $2.01 a gallon, and regular gas was $2.35. I get an average of 20-21 mpg fairly regularly, so I figured the percentage of difference in price and used that percentage to figure my minimum MPG needed to break even. I came up with low 17 mpg, and ended up actually getting like 17.5 mpg. So yeah, it was cheaper to run the E85, but not by much. On the second tank I think the amount of "free" miles was even lower, but then again I broke even. I wish I had written the numbers down, but I didn't, so this is from memory, and my wife assures me I'm pretty close to accurate as best she can remember.
The EPA averages are (city-highway-combined)
(old) 17-23-20
(new)16-21-18
I suspect there is a bit of error in my figuring, but then again I've been figuring my MPG since 1999 so I've a bit of practice. My favorite car, an 83 Nissan Sentra, got about 37 MPG, whcih turned up to be about 100 miles per quarter tank. On an exceptional tank I was on mile 450 before filling up and was just under 40 mpg. Of course, I did love using the AC in that car!
The only thing I can think of that may have helped boost my economy a bit with the E85 is my engine is always on the brink of wanting to octane knock. The first engine I had was really bad about it, and the newer one does it on occasion. Since E85 has a higher octane rating, maybe removing the chance of octane knock helped.
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 RIP Maxima 1997-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
I think you missed the point I was trying to make, which is that it's not rational to do either speed or fuel economy mods for economic reasons. You do it as a form of recreation, for the fun and for the challenge.
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