Removing Ethanol from Gasoline

[dcb]

did you see the comment about advancing your timing? Something seems not right with your vehicle if it cannot go farther with more energy input, or goes farther on less energy input.

[dcb]

i think you should be troubleshooting your car more, i.e. EPA baseline MPG and the effect of E-10 - Tampa Gas Prices

"I had a car that ran good on regular gasoline but lost more than normal miles per gallon on E10. A small vacuum leak was the problem. Not enough of a leak to effect gasoline but just enough to keep the car from adjusting the fuel ratio to run good on E10. "

[ShadeTreeMech]

Sadly, I fear our esteemed friend is unwilling to relent on the evils of ethanol.....

[Nerys]

My timing is already advanced as much as I can without more severe pinging (or whatever the noise is)

There are very few vac lines in this model year metro and all are good my vac reading is spot on where it should be no flutter.

its not getting more energy input. its getting less and worse this other fuel is interfering with the proper operation of the engine.

this is 10 cars folks (other family members and co workers cars in this number of course). are you seriously trying to tell me ALL TEN of our cars developed some mysterious magical problem thats causing them all to have the EXACT same problem yet this problem. Poof goes away when I stop using ethanol?

are you serious? your logic says it can't be the fuel it must be the cars and my evil hatred for ethanol.

Chicken and Egg folks. I only hated being forced to use ethanol after I saw what it did to my cars.

2 88* cherokee's
1 96* Plymouth Voyager
2 94* Chevy Lumina APV's
1 98 F150
1 94 Geo Metro
1 98* Ford Windstar
1 99* Kia Sophia
1 92* Clubwagon

BTW the stars? yeah all of those cars every one of them that are Starred? EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM needed a new fuel pump within 6-9 months of switching to E10.

do you have any idea how much those damned things cost?

In nearly 1 million miles driven I have NEVER had to replace a fuel pump until ethanol and my father 58 years old can not remember EVER having to replace a fuel pump till ethanol.

THANK GOD We were able to do the work ourselves or we would have half a dozen DEAD cars sitting around we could not afford to repair!

all because of ethanol. at least the replacement pumps are new enough that they are designed to tolerate ethanol. Except I think I got OLD STOCK for my clubwagon ($140 god damned dollars for that pump) since the pump is starting to make noise again same as it did when we switched to ethanol and it died the first time.

I checked too the METRO has had its pump replaced too its not the original pump in their. Its brand new.

You think its my cars? THEN FINE give me something to check that will effect EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE CARS but ONLY while on E10.

I dumped 5+ year old pre E10 gas into my cherokee a few years ago and its mileage on this old stale E0 Gas went RIGHT BACK to 22mpg where it should be.

Only had enough gas in the RV (where I got the E0 from) for 2 fills then had to go back to pumped gas e10 right back to 14-15mpg (this was before I started driving it more carefully and much slower and managed to get 19mpg out of it on E10)

why when we were first starting the transition to E10 was I able to consistently always RETURN to 19mpg in the Clubwagon when I got E0 gas. on E10 I get 13mpg. Why when I drive out of state and happen upon E0 does my van "suddenly" start getting its normal 19mpg again? when I return home and have to fill up once again 13mpg on that next tank.

Let me guess shadetree. Your professional opinion is all 10 of these cars have some miraculous vac line leak that ONLY rears its head when using E10? and yet none throw a code?

Occam's Razor. all things being equal the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

in fact the ONLY car in our fleet that appears to be not effected so badly by E10 is my pops 96 Towncar. I attribute that to its much higher quality higher performance engine than out other vehicles. While he gets 21-22 mpg with it I am able to get 23-24 which it only 2-3 mpg shy of the 25-26 I could get with his past 96 era town cars.

although he is STILL on the losing side of that equation even with the town car. 20 gallons of E10 gets him 440 miles while 18 gallons (remove the 2 gallons of Ethanol) E0 gets him 450 miles.

thats with only a 3mpg difference. I just might have to borrow his far for a couple weeks once he gets his windstar back and "test" that more carefully.

----
I checked this post. I was accused of "cussing" alas I could not find any cussing in my post. If I missed something please enlighten me and I will edit it out. What do you define as cussing and if reasonable I will endeavor to stop using whatever words offend you.

[dcb]

Originally Posted by Nerys

...
its not getting more energy input. its getting less...

I stopped reading after this. You specifically said:
10 gallons E10 460 miles
9 gallons of E0 495 miles (35 miles FURTHER)


9 gallons of gas plus one gallon of ethanol is more energy than just 9 gallons of gas. There are plenty of vehicles that make good power on nothing but ethanol.

[user removed]

If you have such a large sampling example, then why would you want any of us to experiment with our cars Nerys.

Avoid the cussing, I think it is a violation of forum rules.

Your last post precisely demonstrates Frank Lee's statement about you digging a deeper hole for yourself.

If we went through the energy and high cost (360 mile round trip for me, are you going to do that because I tell YOU to do so. I doubt it).

1 million miles.

You seem to think that a vehicle with 300+k miles should never see any decline in mileage.

At 20 MPG average that's 50,000 gallons of fuel.

Your sampling example of 10 cars supports your belief that ethanol is the cause of your problems.

OK, you are right.

The real question is what do you do about it. Is ranting here, calling me and others names, and in general acting pretty nasty got you one more mile out of whatever fuel you are using out of any one of your cars in a million miles.

I think you already know the answer.

My log shows my mileage for quite some time, several different vehicles, and tens of thousands of miles.

Every single mile was on E10, except the Corolla, on a trip to Detroit, 4 YEARS AGO.

I think Pale Melanasian has just seen the fuel in his area switch over to E10, and he gets unreal mileage in his 96 Honda, mostly due to his driving techniques and a very specific low speed commute.

Maybe he can give you a percentage difference in regular E0 vs E10 fuel.

95% of the total writing in this thread is repetitive rubbish written by you. Any other posters helpful suggestions are attacked and ridiculed by you.

We are not your problem, and you are not our problem.

Go on act like a jerk, maybe you could get better mileage by sticking your head out the window and screaming into your own slipstream.

That's what Frank was talking about. It was not over my head.

regards
Mech

[UFO]

Originally Posted by Nerys

My timing is already advanced as much as I can without more severe pinging (or whatever the noise is)

That's because when you wash out the ethanol, you are left with gasoline with crappy octane. If you advance your timing, you should be able to take advantage of the octane in the ethanol and operate your engine in a manner it was designed. You might see a significant mileage increase.

[comptiger5000]

I agree that tuning for ethanol helps mpg. However, E10 is still 87 octane, so it has the same limits as if you bought E0 87 octane. Therefore, there WILL be a mpg loss.

However, E85 is about 105 octane, so you can raise compression and increase timing to optimize burn efficiency. By doing that, it's possible to extract a greater percentage of the energy from the fuel, which an actually lead to running E85 with only a small mpg loss, despite the lower energy content. The only disadvantage is that it will REQUIRE E85 or other high octane fuel to run.

[Nerys]

Originally Posted by dcb

I stopped reading after this. You specifically said:
10 gallons E10 460 miles
9 gallons of E0 495 miles (35 miles FURTHER)


9 gallons of gas plus one gallon of ethanol is more energy than just 9 gallons of gas. There are plenty of vehicles that make good power on nothing but ethanol.

PLEASE tell me your not serious? OK some basics here. Do you know how much energy is in a gallon of gasoline (or ethanol for that matter)

a heck of a lot more than you will ever see from your car. Your car does not even touch .1 percent of 1 percent of the energy in a gallon of fuel.

100% energy conversion would mean half a gallon of gasoline and have a gallon of "anti" gasoline (antimatter) these would annihilate and produce as near to 100% energy conversion as is possible.

what we get is a fraction of a percent of the energy potential of our fuel converted to HEAT.

of "that" energy converted we extract on average what?? 20% to 25% of the heat energy produced and convert it to mechanical motion.

My numbers are not a lie. they are not a fabrication. they are a testable repeatable example of how the car operates on these two fuels. If you willing to put yourself up somewhere your welcome to join me for a week. I will even intentionally drive 800 miles in one week just so you can SEE the difference in fuel economy from E10 to E0 for your very own self with your very own eyes.

You issue with energy input is massively flawed. Because you can ONLY use such a stance if you ASSUME the engine PROPERLY FUNCTIONS on both fuels.

My contention is it DOES NOT function properly on E10 so it is never able to EXTRACT all the available energy that it normally can when NOT running on E10.

again PUT DIESEL in your gas car. There is more energy in a gallon of diesel than in a gallon of gasoline right?

so why won't your car go further? because IT WAS NOT DESIGNED to run on that fuel.

MY CAR was not designed to run on ethanol but it "can" sort of. Just not very well (just like if you mix a gallon of diesel in with 19 gallons of gasoline you car WILL still run just not very well). SO badly in fact that it HURTS overall FE above and beyond the amount added.

[Nerys]

Originally Posted by UFO

That's because when you wash out the ethanol, you are left with gasoline with crappy octane. If you advance your timing, you should be able to take advantage of the octane in the ethanol and operate your engine in a manner it was designed. You might see a significant mileage increase.

The pinging IS FROM THE E10 I think (not my area of expertise). when I get E0 it stops pinging. (at least it did back then) I did not pay attention to if it pinged when I was on washed gas so I assume it did. I only ran washed gas for a few tanks to confirm if it was worth the drive and expensive to go get some E0 for more testing.

right now I am not washing gas (again only did that for 30 or so gallons of gas last spring) I am just using pumped E10 from any normal gas station.

I can not advance the timing any more without damage to the engine.