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Originally Posted by ProDigit
The car recommended no more than E20. I ran E30 once, and immediately noticed a drop of a few (ten) HP.
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That's surprising to say the least. I could easily expect a car to keep its performance unchanged while using a high amount of ethanol, but not to decrease it.
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On a stock car, you'd have to bump compression from the default (10:1, or 11:1) to 14:1 when running plain E85, and use an engine heater block in cold climates.
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Many older dedicated-ethanol cars here in Brazil actually had a lower CR, and pure ethanol (with some residual water) was used instead of E85. Most of the port-injection flexfuels also rarely go beyond 13:1.
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Worst case, you can start the car spraying starting fluid in the air intake, until it's warm enough, usually about 5 seconds will do (more when the weather is colder)
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Dedicated-ethanol (either carburettor-fed or with EFI) and earlier port-injection flexfuels in Brazil had a small auxiliary tank for gasoline, meant to be used for cold starting. Nowadays most resort to a heated fuel rail, while others have turned to direct injection which doesn't require the fuel to be pre-heated.