Why would anybody at the gas station know the physical characteristics of gas?
All they know is: Regular good, mid grade better, premium betterer, buy premium. Here is you change (that the register calculated)
my dad has a ffv 07 f150, and we run pretty much only e85, it just seems to be a little dirtier, so you have to replace fuel filters more often. a lot of cars will run fine on it, but some cars it may run fine and also set your check engine light on aswell.
If your vehicle was designed to run strictly off E85 it would get better milage than a flexfuel vehicle. Its all a matter of the tuning. But since not every gas station has E85 they had to copromise on the tuning and find a happy medium to run gasoline or E85. Thats why you don't see a drastic improvement in mileage, its simplely not designed that way. E85 is high octane fuel, around 105, right out of the pump. Running it in a vehicle not designed for that fuel won't hurt it to do once or twice say maybe on accident you fill it up. Its long term that will cause damage. You can damage fuel system compenants as well as the valves. I'm no expert but I have done some reseach.
Gasoline vehicles use natural-rubber-only fuel system o-rings and other rubber components due to lower cost.
E85/ Flex fuel vehicles use Neoprene rubber to handle the added alcohol content of the E85 fuel. Ethyl alcohol attacks natural rubber and swells then eats it. Along with possibly damaging the various plastic components that weren't designed for the higher alcohol content. For a while, they were using stainless steel fuel tanks on the FF vehicles, rather than plastic, and stainless lines as well.
As for mileage, you'll get CLOSE with a flex fuel vehicle, after it can "self-adjust" for the fuel. I've heard (from someone I normally wouldn't trust with anything more complicated than a sheet of paper) that if you do a KAM (keep-alive memory) reset on your PCM after changing fuels, it will adjust faster than if it just does it on it's own. You need a dealership tool to do that though.
The added cost of the vehicle, along with the mildly cheaper fuel costs just don't add up though. If you're gonna do it, do it because you're thinking you're supporting corn farmers in the mid west, not for the reduced cost. Just don't do too much research into that either, or you'll be pissed off and burning gasoline again in no time.
i think as long as you mix it about half n half your fuel system will be fine but you will run threw E85 alot faster than normal gas.. not worth risking your fuel system... just my .02 cents
the people ive talked to who run E85 in there gas cars/trucks run half and half with no prbs at all they just run threw the E85 alot faster than normal gas... so you sir are the moron :blah::finger:
the only way to have a truly flex fuel vehicle work is to magically have adjustable compression ratios. since e85 is 105 octane. you can run somewhere around 12:1 compression maybe more before detonation becomes a problem. 87 octane can only support 9.5:1 or so. you can also bump ignition timing up a bit with E85. thats not as hard with computerized ignition. but since they don't have a way to do that yet running 105 octane on 9.5:1 which is roughly what most cars are nowadays it's like pissing in the wind. just a waste. alcohol needs 9:1 air fuel ratio to be efficient. gasoline needs 14.7:1 to be efficient. you tell me how much more alcohol is needed...
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