I want to get to the bottom of this ethanol killing my mpg

[Nerys]

I don't do additives for the most part. On the metro I am using seafoam but its the first car I messed with any real additives. tried acetone for a few tanks years ago (did not work)

Thats just it. I don't think they ever do catch up. I think they "get rid of" the car before it happens and the next owner or 3rd owner whoever eventually has the problem just chalks it up to used car blues.

the very FEW shops who said hmmm whats going on here tested the fuel and found WAY to much ethanol in the mix.

as for who does it? I do them myself. I could NEVER afford to have a shop change a fuel pump. Have you ever priced the labor for that? for a couple of my cars the labor costs more than the damned car is worth!

The jeep was just FUN to do. it was actually pretty easy in the jeep (they designed it with some sort of logic in mind UNLIKE the clubwagon those engineers has their heads up their asses when they designed that one)

alas I broke the straps bolts holding the tank up. Grrr crazy expensive if you could find them (I refused to pay $70 for what is just nothing more than a 12inch long bolt) so I fabbed my own from some SS hardware and threaded rod. Worked a treat :-)

gas at the same place. NOW yes THEN no. in my history of driving I have never once. Not one time bought gas at a gas station that performed "ANY" different than gas from any other stations. Name brand or not. I regularly travel between 19057 and 08215 and I buy gas at "whatever" stations I happen to be near that has the cheapest price.

Never saw a FE performance difference between any of them.

NOW today. wow. huge variations in performance. I am talking as much as 10mpg difference at times! (in the metro) in the van I range from 13mpg to 17mpg depending on where I go the jeep ranges from 14-19mpg

Thats when I discovered that ethanol is not always ethanol. ie not all equal. the level of ethanol in the fuel can vary immensely from station to station and even day to day when they get their refills.

The worst was the little no name stations like US Gas etc. my little test kit said they were as high as 14% ethanol.

Wawa and Sunoco were the lowest consistently measuring 6-8% ethanol (I do not know and don't really care if the actual % is accurate all I need to know is the relative difference between them IE wawa is 3-4% lower thats all I need to know :-)

SO I only buy gas at those stations now and my fuel economy has stopped leaping all over the board. Its consistent now and HIGHER now (though still far far lower than it was pre ethanol)

The van gets 16-17mpg versus its old 19mpg versus 13-14mpg on the independent gas station fuel. Jeep gets 19-20mpg old was 22-23mpg on cheapy fuel 14mpg

The metro gets 47 summer 44 winter. if I get cheapy gas it dips down nearly to 40mpg

also thats another odd thing. in the past I NEVER saw a difference that was measurably definitive between summer and winter blends (I hear this is because of my very long commute smoothing the differences out)

Now I see huge swings.

I run my tanks by miles not the gauge. They tend not to be accurate and my metro has no low fuel light and the van low fuel light means you already ran out of gas (I know I tested it once and only once within 3 minutes of the low fuel light coming on steady I was bone dry :-) hehe

so the metro I run to 400 miles then refill all the other vehicles I run to 300 miles and refill.

[Nerys]

OH as far as diesel. **** MAN I WOULD LOVE TOO. but I can not afford it. I had a few 300D's but they maxed out at 35mpg so I got rid of them. (really loved those cars too 75 and 76 300D's last of the hand made mercede's)

the other problem is FIRST they are WAY beyond my financial means and SECOND I can only drive a select few diesels.

I need 4 person carrying capacity for my work commute. 2 seaters won't work as I never have less than 3 people in the car for my commute.

Second I am a very large critter. I a 6'4" - I tried. I simply DO NOT FIT in most of the Diesels I can gain access to (namely VW's) save one.

the beetle. It has enough head room for me. (the rest I literally can not sit my head straight I have to lean my head to the side to fit in the cars) the beetle gives me about 1 fingers space between my noggin and the roof.

The metro gives me zero space (I touch) but just barely ie no tilting of the head needed. A nasty "bump" in the road gives me a nice head bump though :-)

alas The diesel beetles never seem to go for less than $4500 which is well beyond what I can afford and THOSE are all private sale ie no payment arrangements can be made.

The dealer Diesel Beetles usually bottom out at around $6000

yeah I WISH I could afford one. Would solve a lot of my problems for sure. Would net me 52mpg without batting an eye I could make my own fuel to some extent No ethanol to worry about etc.. etc..

I keep dreaming :-)

[99LeCouch]

I've seen more consistency in fuel mileage doping my gas with that darned Marvel Mystery Oil. Ethanol gas doesn't have as large a hit as non-ethanol gas. That's measured via the ScanGauge's fillup screen. The "correction factor" jumps less when using the MMO vs. not using MMO. It's handy on trips when the fuel is bought as needed at wherever is most convenient.

[Allch Chcar]

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

What? Where are you seeing E85 for $2.82 a gallon? That's price gouging .

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 .

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 .

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.

[Nerys]

"What? Where are you seeing E85 for $2.82 a gallon? That's price gouging ."

That was sometimes early summer. There is only one station I pass that has it. I will try and remember to check and see if they still have it and see if its still more than E10.

"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."

Reality tends to impose itself whether we agree with it or not. Maybe the reasons for my FE drop are wrong but I have seen NOTHING to tell me its otherwise. Off course the issue is I can not test it because I CAN NOT BUY non ethanol fuel.

The DROP from 19mpg to 13-14mpg and then BACK to 19mpg when I stopped using E10 (when it was not everywhere) is REAL. I did not imagine than.

"Ethanol is mucho cheaper than Gasoline and there have been reports of stations using E98 to "cheapen" their fuel and increase their profit."

Ethanol is not cheaper than gasoline. Gasoline is artificially too high and ethanol is artificially too low (heavily subsidized)


"The 6% Ethanol content and the 12% Ethanol content CANNOT make your fuel economy drop more than 6%"

I am not arguing that with you. You don't pay to fill my gas tanks. Until you do I am going to buy and wawa and not lose that 6% for as long as I can.

"Even if it was pure water it would not kill your MPG that much. It's just not possible."

well SOMETHING is doing it and the problem WENT AWAY when I stopped using ethanol. While that is not conclusive scientifically its pretty damming to me and my wallet.

"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?"

what else should I replace them with? A hand pump?

"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."

Being on ecomodder is a very new thing for me. While I have recorded my FE for hundreds of thousands of miles I have NEVER had a reason to RETAIN those records. I record them note them and dispose of them.

lately in the last few years I do NOT DRIVE the van or jeep much because I simply can not afford to.


"If you want a lawsuit you're going to need to collect evidence .

duh - reread my post

"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."

?? point? is that statement going to get me my 8 or so fuel pumps back?

i have NO IDEA why the pumps failed and there is no way for me to really know for sure. but i can make an educated guess and the switch in fuel and following failures all in a short time are pretty damned informative with no other suggestions being offered.

"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."

maybe more efficient at producing HP but not at producing FE and no they are not running lean QUITE the opposite with ethanol they all seem to want to run RICH hence the lower FE.


"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."

thats because I CAN NOT GET test results HENCE THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS THREAD. how to get non ethanol fuel SO I CAN TEST AND GET RESULTS.

"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."

while i can not do the math I believe its closer to 99.9% of the energy is wasted.

how much energy is contained in a gallon of fuel if you were to matter/anti matter annihilate it?

THAT is the full energy content of a fuel

now someone later corrected me that ENERGY content of the fuel is not considered its ACTUAL energy content but its HEAT content when combusted. 20-30% makes more sense when you look at it that way. that was my confusion and already stastefd as such which means you did NOT read the entire thread

but that 100% of heat extracted of which 20-30% is put to useful work is less than 1% of the total available energy content in a gallon of gasoline.

probably less than 1% of 1% of 1% since a few grams of anti matter can take us to the stars.

My gut and my anecdotal evidence says ethanol is the cause. I could be wrong maybe I am wrong but the only way to know is to TEST IT and they have made it very hard to do that.

HENCE the point of this thread.

[Allch Chcar]

"That was sometimes early summer. There is only one station I pass that has it. I will try and remember to check and see if they still have it and see if its still more than E10."

So you gave use fuel prices last Summer? Okay, that's just strange to give us such outdated information. Some Gas stations have price gouged E85 a couple times. Ethanol typically is delivered for $2 a gallon. In comparison the energy content is 2/3 Gasoline that means by energy content it should be the same price per mile as $3 Gasoline. But that's just the highly simplistic number. The energy efficiency is higher for Ethanol and it's sold as a maximum of 85% Ethanol. Summer E85 is 105-109 (R+M)/2 Octane. Premium is usually 93 (R+M)/2 Octane max. And so the numbers differ for the marketed price.


"Ethanol is not cheaper than gasoline. Gasoline is artificially too high and ethanol is artificially too low (heavily subsidized)"

They are both subsidized. Oil exploration is subsidized, refineries get subsidies, Gas station get subsidies. Corn growers get subsidies, Ethanol plants get subsidies, and blenders of Ethanol/Gasoline get subsidies. I'm not impressed by your lack of agreement on that. Either it is cheaper or it's not. Subsidized just means it is competitively sold cheaper than it would normally be worth at market prices. Ethanol production has reduced Corn Grower subsidy payout and while there are now subsidies for the Ethanol industry there has been less money paid for Corn Grower Subsidies. The exact numbers are where the truth is.

Ethanol's 52 cent tax CREDIT for blending with gasoline is a credit against tax expenses. For an Oil company with billions in profit that means a small cash back per gallon. Gasoline is a MUCH larger and much more profitable industry even though Oil companies spend $100billion for $1 Billion in profit. Ethanol is still fairly "new". Ethanol production was less than 1 billion gallons in 2001 and still is not producing enough Ethanol to be profitable. There is a minimum level before they can make enough profit on ethanol to pay off their expenses and have any profit to be taxed. Considering Ethanol is competing with Gasoline which is already a VERY competitive market there isn't much hope for Ethanol becoming profitable besides base line blending with E10/G90.

"maybe more efficient at producing HP but not at producing FE and no they are not running lean QUITE the opposite with ethanol they all seem to want to run RICH hence the lower FE."

Energy efficient means is it better at HP and producing FE but Ethanol has less energy content per gallon so it gets worse fuel economy on a gallon basis. But this doesn't make it less energy efficient just takes up more space/weight to perform the same work.

You don't seem to understand what Rich and Lean are. Electronic fuel injection vehicles don't run Rich when you're in closed loop or cruising mode. It runs Stoichometric which is neither Rich nor Lean. You seem to think running more fuel to air ratio means it's Rich. You are incorrect. Running Rich means instead of Stoich giving your oxygen sensors a Lamda value of 1.0(which means Stoich) you inject more fuel for a given unit of air. Rich is a less than 1.0 Lamda Value. Just because Ethanol has a Stoich number of 9.8:1 doesn't mean it takes 1.42 times more energy to do the same work as Gasoline with it's 14.7:1 Stoich.

Ethanol requires more volume of fuel than Gasoline for Stoichometric value which doesn't say anything about how much energy it needs to meet your daily commute. Most people report 5% more power from using E85 vs Gasoline. But you are having an opposite and exponentially worse effect.

And regarding Energy content. The ICE use the heating value because it runs off heat energy. Energy content including energy from an anti-matter reaction is irrelevant to ICE discussion as the ICE does not use this energy. I read your posts not everyones.

Have you drained you fuel tanks and examined the fuel? You might have water and therefore phase separation. It can happen. People got water in their gasoline. Modern cars have sealed tanks but none of your vehicles are less than 10 years old. You could try that.

[Nerys]

I am correct on rich. Please read before replying.

The math says I should see a 3.5% drop in FE with ethanol. I am seeing IN EXCESS of 20%

does this not mean I am running RICH for some reason? Stoich according to you folks means 3.5% below normal FE.

SO my assumption was that for "whatever reason" the ethanol makes my car run rich (though it does not throw any codes)

since its using MORE FUEL than the math says it should be under the conditions.

Can't really have water in a well used fuel tank. Water is heavier than gasoline so it will sink to the bottom and be the FIRST thing your fuel pump draws in with nasty consequences I imagine.

Since this has not happened I imagine this is not my problem.

and yes I drained all of the fuel tanks when I had to change the fuel pumps. the insides appeared normal. No obvious wear rust or residue rather clean actually which I guess makes sense since your running gasoline through it.

I fill up twice a week usually. or twice in roughly 8 days or so. so any phase seperation would have to happen pretty darned fast :-)

I am going to go get some mid grade gas today and try my hand at removing the ethanol and "see what happens" it will be expensive but it will get me some data to work with.

Who knows maybe its not the fuel but I am having a tough time figuring out what could possibly be affect SO many vehicles in precisely the same way.

The only thing I can think of is all of my ECU's became corrupt in exactly the same way at exactly the same time resulting in exactly the same FE loses?

Logic says BS to that :-) but I won't outright dismiss it.

If I manage to find another XFI ECU I can afford (very rare mind you) I will get it and install it and "see what happens"

For me energy efficiency has ONE valid description in this discussion. How many miles can I go on one gallon. Thats it. Nothing else matters to me.

If your a race car driver OK you want HP if your town 10,000 pound trailer cross country OK you want HP

ME I just want as many mpg as I can get per gallon which also means the lowest dollar amount per mile driven. any other description of efficiency is just not that important to me.

[TomEV]

Possible no-ethanol test for you - Aviation gasoline. It does not contain ethanol Ethanol is prohibited in aviation gasoline, although some aircraft have a cert to run auto gas. Try to get the lowest performance number available so you don't cook a valve.

Couple of problems though - May contain lead (bad for catalytic converter) and is pricey - about $4.50/gl for 110LL. May work if your test vehicle is too old to have a converter.

Here's a link to an airport near Levittown -
Robbinsville Airport

[Nerys]

I found ethanol free gas up in allentown.

[mwebb]

...It runs Stoichometric which is neither Rich nor Lean. You seem to think running more fuel to air ratio means it's Rich.

You are incorrect. ...

no
he is correct

and
his metro can run lean , when the 02 sensor is reporting rich condition

because of poor fuel quality - i have caused it by mistake and documented it
======================
http://pure-gas.org/
to locate an ethanol free gas station
=============================
the EPA has also admitted that "some users" are reporting as much as a 20% difference in FE between summer and winter blends
while this does not identify ethanol as the culprit , it does the leave the subject open for more testing to see why ...
imho