I did swap the fuel line for an alcohol resistant one, but haven't heard of a flame arrestor, will look into it.
I do wonder what about ethanol would require this while gasoline, another liquid with highly flammable vapor, does not. Still, I can't see why the many companies which make flexfuel cars would be spending the money for a piece of gear that doesn't do anything, so if you're right and this is industry standard, I'll certainly look into the reasoning.
(edit to add) here's a quote from EHow:
Quote:
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Ethanol burns hotter and faster than regular gasoline, so vehicles that burn it must have more heat-resistant engines; metals in fuel lines, fuel injectors, fuel tanks, piston rings, fuel pumps and other components must be made of ethanol-compatible materials. Fueling and spark advance calibrations must be adjusted. Anti-siphon and spark arrestor features must be added to the filling spout because of ethanol's conductivity and increased flammability.
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So they say the reason for the spark arrestor is that ethanol is both more conductive (more likely to generate a spark, I guess?) and more flammable.
The 1.4T engine in the Sonic was designed for E85, so I didn't have to replace most of the components they list here, the injectors I replaced because I needed a higher max volume. I did address the spark advance as part of redoing the tune to run E85.