anyone use it yet and whats the formula to make it work? or do you have to do some conversion to make it work?

 

Look right below at the sponsor links on E85.
You can't use it in your truck as is.

 

E85 is just another "fad" that will pass. Ethanol was popping up in the 70's fuel crunch, and faded away soon afterward. It's a very impractical fuel all-around. The reduced emissions out of the pipe just stay inside your motor/injectors(carb)/cat-con, everything. And since E85 has a much lower BTU rating, the vehicle has to burn more of it to get as much work done as a comprable engine running regular 87 octane. SO the savings from cheaper E85 are eliminated since you burn more of it to drive the same distance.

You CAN run e85 in a regular gas motor, but it should be avoided at all costs. The motor will start, and run, but have no performance to speak of and will rapidly clog up your motor and eventually cause a whole host of issues, some potentially fatal to your motor. Don't bother with E85, it will be gone in a couple years anyway.

Not to mention e85 also completely wrecks 2-stroke motors within only hours of running. It still hasn't caught on around me, I couldn't be happier.

 

thanks for the heads up

 

[QUOTE=RaWarrior]E85 is just another "fad" that will pass.[QUOTE]

Must resist urge to respond to uninformed BS.

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From the most recent Consumer Reports:

But after putting a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe FFV through an array of fuel economy, acceleration, and emissions tests, and interviewing more than 50 experts on ethanol fuel, CR determined that E85 will cost consumers more money than gasoline and that there are concerns about whether the government’s support of FFVs is really helping the U.S. achieve energy independence. Among our findings:

* The fuel economy of the Tahoe dropped 27 percent when running on E85 compared with gasoline, from an already low 14 mpg overall to 10 mpg (rounded to the nearest mpg). This is the lowest fuel mileage we’ve gotten from any vehicle in recent years.

* With the retail pump price of E85 averaging $2.91 per gallon in August, according to the Oil Price Information Service, which tracks petroleum and other fuel prices, a 27 percent fuel-economy penalty means drivers would have paid an average of $3.99 for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.

* When we calculated the Tahoe’s driving range, we found that it decreased to about 300 miles on a full tank of E85 compared with about 440 on gasoline. So you have to fill up more often with E85.

* The majority of FFVs are large vehicles like the Tahoe that get relatively poor fuel economy even on gasoline. So they will cost you a lot at the pump, no matter which fuel you use.

* Because E85 is primarily sold in the upper Midwest, most drivers in the country have no access to the fuel, even if they want it. For our Tahoe test, for example, we had to blend our own (see The great E85 fuel hunt).

* The FFV surge is being motivated by generous fuel-economy credits that auto-makers get for every FFV they build, even if it never runs on E85. This allows them to pump out more gas-guzzling large SUVs and pickups, which is resulting in the consumption of many times more gallons of gasoline than E85 now replaces.

We put the Tahoe through our full series of fuel-economy and acceleration tests while running on each fuel (see our test results). When running on E85 there was no significant change in acceleration. Fuel economy, however, dropped across the board. In highway driving, gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city driving, it dropped from 9 to 7 mpg.

You could expect a similar decrease in gas mileage in any current FFV. That’s because ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline: 75,670 British thermal units per gallon instead of 115,400, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. So you have to burn more fuel to generate the same amount of energy. In addition, FFV engines are designed to run more efficiently on gasoline. E85 fuel economy could approach that of gasoline if manufacturers optimized engines for that fuel.

Yeah, it's slanted, but the science is science and the economics is economics.

 

My '06 Screw is a FFV and I have run E-85 in it on numerous occasions. From what I've noticed with my truck is that it normally gets 13 City 16 Hwy on Regular gasoline, but on E-85 it gets 10 City 13 Hwy, so I lose 3 mpg across the board. That being said it's $0.30 a gallon cheaper right now and the more plants come online hopefully the price will go down even more, plus there is the added benefit of putting money into the farmers pockets rather than into already rich oil companies or worse Arabs that want to buy bombs with their money. Just my $.02.

Robbie

 

that's the only thing i like about E85 is that it puts money into farmers' pockets,where it needs to go

 

What farmers? You mean the guy down the road squeaking out a meager living or ADM.

Do the math, you aren't hurting Exxon burning ethanol, you aren't helping the average farmer burning ethanol and it's costing you more per mile to burn ethanol.

 

12% of the nations corn crop goes into ethonal production, that is a big part. They actually refine/distill it in my area too, so that is more jobs here. I run the E10 for that reason, it helps the people in my area and the people that my family depend on to make a living. (my parents run a ag repair shop)

 

Actually a researcher at ISU (who's nickname oddly is Moo U) says the number of jobs created by ethanol has been grossly overstated. It's a big election issue in Iowa obviously, but the issue is more of a matter of return on investment. I'm all for jobs, but creating them at a net loss to support an already heavily subsidized industry that exists essentially because of the subsidies doesn't make for good fiscal policy.

The bottom line is in a free market, ethanol is more expensive than regular, it offers less performance than regular gas, therefore it is doomed to extinction without more subsidies.

It doesn't decrease gas useage, and the increased gas useage it creates offsets a lot of the enviromental advantages it may have.

Quite frankly, it would be cheaper to just cut a check to the people ethanol is supposed to help.