Beware of E15 fuel this summer

[mjb929rr]

I don’t understand why more automakers and indmar don’t find a way to make e15 work. I think Most Of the issues you hear about ethanol are based on opinions and not reality.
I have a challenger hellcat that I had set up for e85 3 years ago. We drive this car maybe 1000 miles a year, to car shows etc. I’ve never drained or flushed the tank, sometimes the same tank of fuel sits in the there for months with no issues. Simple pulley swap, unlocked pcm, injector swap yielded 940whp up from 640.

[larry_arizona]

The issues on alcohol are real. It is fact that injectors and pumps get what’s called the black goo of death.

Worked on many forced induction cars with E85 and performance wise it’s godtier for power. Easy 100hp on a booster V8. Alcohol is a great liquid intercooler and 105 octane allows a lot of spark advance and it’s really hard to get knock on alcohol. But you need 30% more fuel pump capacity and much larger injectors compared to pump 93 gas.

But the goo is real, letting e85 sit for 2 weeks+ is bad news for injectors and fuel pumps. Google it.

Seen about a 10-15% pump capacity drop in one year of running a fore triple pump fuel system on a 1000hp CTSV. That is the difference in having enough fuel and blowing an engine up. The goo plugs up the pumps.

We always ran flex fuel sensors and hybrid tunes based on percent alcohol scaled by the sensor. Ran a tank of 93 after a couple tanks of E85 to keep the goo at bay.

Indmar Raptors have a warning stick stating not to run E15. My guess is it needs more injector or more fuel pump capacity and a tune adjustment.

Most modern cars can probably handle it, but boats on water as alcohol is hygroscopic.


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[Zog]

For boats the ethanol issue is real. Ethanol attracts water. Over time you will have a bunch of water in the bottom of your fuel tank. When you run low on fuel, you will suck that gas in, destroying your fuel pump.

We have also seen issues with ethanol fuel in our previous houseboat which had two 125 HP Yamaha outboards. Without the ethanol neutralizer in the fuel, the engine would run for about an hour and would then drop down into limp mode. You would have to wait for a few minutes and then restart. It would then last for another 20-30 minutes before doing the same thing. With the neutralizer, no issues at all. In that case it was not tuned for ethanol in fuel, but this was E10 causing the problem.

[SorryCharlie]

Don’t gas stations have to label the pump as e85?

[larry_arizona]

Don’t gas stations have to label the pump as e85?

Yes of course E85 would require a label as many vehicles would be damaged from trying to run it.

However with the “emergency” order for using E15, I don’t know what gas stations will require as far as labeling.


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[Jason1975]

This is nothing more than a political ploy to try to make it look like something is being done. It will cause more issues actually and isn't long term any way you look at it, its just stupidity. My understanding is gas stations MUST label E15 gas.

[larry_arizona]

Ethanol in gasoline has been proven to be more polluting to the environment than straight gasoline.

Less tailpipe emissions but much higher pollution manufacturing ethanol.

Not to mention heavily subsidized.


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[sandm]

just to clarify as there's a couple things going on here. e85 HAS to be labeled as such and only 3500 stations carry it. not widely used out west, more a midwest thing.

the VAST majority of stations only carry e10 and due to storage/transport and having to certify your station as e15, there are currently only 2300 stations that carry e15 and are labeled as such. they sell e15 from september to april and the "emergency order" extends it through the summer. to larry's point the reason they don't sell e15 in the summer is due to smog from all the summer vacation travel. it is not as clean as regular gas. it is in 30 states but most seem to be midwest oriented. e15 stations have to "certify" their pumps to dispense e15 as there's a couple of parts that the gov't has said can either be e10 certified or e85 certifed(which can then sell e15). they can't swap back and forth on a whim IF they are certified for e10.
most pumps will be labeled as containing "up to" x percent of ethanol depending on your area so just because it says e15 doesn't mean that's what's loaded in the tanks year round. however if biden has his way it'll be that way through the summer.
it's not a democrat ploy as repubs have tried as well so interesting to see if this one is struck down in the courts as well.

to echo larry's point, back in the day I bought a ranger with a flex fuel motor that had 80k on the clock. did a TON of research into e85 and almost everyone that had been using regular gas and swapped to e85 after 50k+ miles had issues with fuel filters. e85 apparently grabs all the crap in the bottom of the tank and takes it along for the ride. most owners stated swapping to e85 required several fuel filter changes in the first couple months as the sediment present in your tank gets picked up and transported. did not read any issues with pumps but a few injector issues and assuming it's due to some crap getting past the filter and concentrating in the first injector on the first bank where it deposits. guess is(and nothing to back it up) long term swapping will cause a few injector issues long term.

[SorryCharlie]

just to clarify as there's a couple things going on here. e85 HAS to be labeled as such and only 3500 stations carry it. not widely used out west, more a midwest thing.

the VAST majority of stations only carry e10 and due to storage/transport and having to certify your station as e15, there are currently only 2300 stations that carry e15 and are labeled as such. they sell e15 from september to april and the "emergency order" extends it through the summer. to larry's point the reason they don't sell e15 in the summer is due to smog from all the summer vacation travel. it is not as clean as regular gas. it is in 30 states but most seem to be midwest oriented. e15 stations have to "certify" their pumps to dispense e15 as there's a couple of parts that the gov't has said can either be e10 certified or e85 certifed(which can then sell e15). they can't swap back and forth on a whim IF they are certified for e10.
most pumps will be labeled as containing "up to" x percent of ethanol depending on your area so just because it says e15 doesn't mean that's what's loaded in the tanks year round. however if biden has his way it'll be that way through the summer.
it's not a democrat ploy as repubs have tried as well so interesting to see if this one is struck down in the courts as well.

to echo larry's point, back in the day I bought a ranger with a flex fuel motor that had 80k on the clock. did a TON of research into e85 and almost everyone that had been using regular gas and swapped to e85 after 50k+ miles had issues with fuel filters. e85 apparently grabs all the crap in the bottom of the tank and takes it along for the ride. most owners stated swapping to e85 required several fuel filter changes in the first couple months as the sediment present in your tank gets picked up and transported. did not read any issues with pumps but a few injector issues and assuming it's due to some crap getting past the filter and concentrating in the first injector on the first bank where it deposits. guess is(and nothing to back it up) long term swapping will cause a few injector issues long term.

Great post, thanks! Do our Raptor engines get enough “better” mileage with non ethanol to warrant the change from e10?

[larry_arizona]

just to clarify as there's a couple things going on here. e85 HAS to be labeled as such and only 3500 stations carry it. not widely used out west, more a midwest thing.

the VAST majority of stations only carry e10 and due to storage/transport and having to certify your station as e15, there are currently only 2300 stations that carry e15 and are labeled as such. they sell e15 from september to april and the "emergency order" extends it through the summer. to larry's point the reason they don't sell e15 in the summer is due to smog from all the summer vacation travel. it is not as clean as regular gas. it is in 30 states but most seem to be midwest oriented. e15 stations have to "certify" their pumps to dispense e15 as there's a couple of parts that the gov't has said can either be e10 certified or e85 certifed(which can then sell e15). they can't swap back and forth on a whim IF they are certified for e10.
most pumps will be labeled as containing "up to" x percent of ethanol depending on your area so just because it says e15 doesn't mean that's what's loaded in the tanks year round. however if biden has his way it'll be that way through the summer.
it's not a democrat ploy as repubs have tried as well so interesting to see if this one is struck down in the courts as well.

to echo larry's point, back in the day I bought a ranger with a flex fuel motor that had 80k on the clock. did a TON of research into e85 and almost everyone that had been using regular gas and swapped to e85 after 50k+ miles had issues with fuel filters. e85 apparently grabs all the crap in the bottom of the tank and takes it along for the ride. most owners stated swapping to e85 required several fuel filter changes in the first couple months as the sediment present in your tank gets picked up and transported. did not read any issues with pumps but a few injector issues and assuming it's due to some crap getting past the filter and concentrating in the first injector on the first bank where it deposits. guess is(and nothing to back it up) long term swapping will cause a few injector issues long term.

Swapping from E10 to E85 is more of a fueling issue than a hardware issue.

Running E85 in a vehicle factory tuned for air/fuel ratios using E10 will run extremely lean and risk detonation.

Flex fuel vehicles use a alcohol sensor that measure %alcohol and scales the air fuel tuning and fuel pump output accordingly.

You need at minimum 30% headroom on your fuel pump and injectors that can feed the higher volume of fuel needed when running E85.


E85 is poor man’s race gas. 105 octane for $2 a gallon vs 110 octane race gas at $7-$9 a gallon.

One of the best ideas to improve emissions and power and performance would be sell higher octane gasoline without ethanol.

OEM’s would love 98 octane pump gas. They could use less displacement, higher boost/compression, have cleaner burn, higher horsepower, cleaner emission and better mpg.

But try to convince a green politician of that despite the data. Only thing they comprehend is oil is bad.

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