Does anybody else notice a difference in the way their trucks run on ethanol gas. Mine wasnt running great on the ethanol gas. It had/has a sluggishness at about 1500 rpm. Ive added a ethanol gas treatment from lucas oil. Boy it made a difference. Has anybody else noticed a problem from ethanol gas for our trucks??? Being that they are not flexi/fuel setup.

 

From your post I can only make general comment.
Eth has less BTU content than Gasoline so the greater the mix the less power the engine will make.
To take full advantage of Eth the compression ratio needs to be increased and a timing change involved as some of the ways to improve but they are out your ability.
Running high concentration ETH Gas makes more Oxygen in the exhaust.
The OX sensors detect this and add even more fuel so mileage goes down as a result and your foot gets closer to the floor trying to get the power back.
IMO, if you have a choice don't run the high concentrations then use additives because you likely spend the same or more per tank than if you ran better gas.
You do know LUCAS is in biz to make money. The additive tends to defeat the original intent of the Eth blend.
I am not saying here that engines cannot be made to run well and make power on those concoctions but they need to be designed like the new ones, to do so.
I have for many years run race engines on 99% pure Meth not ETH and they needed to be set up for that fuel and still made about 10% more power dispite the lower BTU content.
The changes made recover the net power loss from these fuels as well as go beyond to make more power using the same methods as a on a gas fueled motor.
The CUP cars on fuel injection are now an example of that running on a mix and make well in excess ot 800 hp..
I might add that some owners get a CEL lamp if there is too much Eth in the gas. Reason is the OX sensors try to shift the fuel tables richer and run past the limits trying to correct for the excessive oxygen detected. When that happens a lean code is set.
Good luck on your fuel mix and uses. Sound good here if it works for you.

 

E10 is fine. Been running it for close to 30 years and have never had a problem attributable to it. However, if you screwed up and used E85, it's your own fault if it runs poorly.

 

I wouldn't run it. If you aren't flex fuel you can have issues with gaskets and hoses being ruined.

 

Well, you pretty much have to run E-10 these days, and all engines can handle that no problem. E-15 should only be run in 2007 and newer. If you run E-85 in a non-flex fuel engine, you will get a CEL with lean codes.

I think Chester said that you can run up to about 35 to 40% ethanol in a non-flex engine without a CEL.

However, the more ethanol you have, the harder it is on fuel system components. That's why proper flex conversions are so involved.

 

It's only e-10 that you buy at any station here in houston. as far as e-85 goes i dont know of any stations that sell it here.

The money making proposition goes for all of the items in this post from the truck, gas and lucas oil.


I was more curious about if anybody else has noticed anything like it,, forget the btu measurement. The gas mileage thing i cant really do much about its 5.4 v8.

Before anybody makes a suggestion of changing anything,,, recently the coils and plugs have been changed. The only thing that i know of that might need to be changed is the fuel filter. The s.p. are motorcraft too,, the coils are from ebay global (cant remeber the rest of its name). One coil is a autozone one.

 

Your trucks been running on e10 for awhile. I havent seen a pump that didnt have "this fuel may contain uup to 10 percent ethenol" on it for a couple of years at least. I actuallly searched for a non ethenol fuel source and there isnt one I can find. Ethanol sux but it probably is not the reason your truck runs bad.

 

It's a lot easier to find non-ethanol fuel in Houston than in Iowa or Nebraska....

 

Finding non-ethanol fuel in Iowa is easy - just look at the big price signs. If midgrade is cheaper than regular, the regular is ethanol-free.

It's here in MO where it's real hard to find it - E-10 is mandated with a few exceptions. There's one station here in Joplin that has it, and it's the Spirit station, the 91 octane premium is ethanol-free. That's where I get gas for my lawnmower. Tried it in the truck once, it didn't run any better or get any better gas mileage.

Here's a good site:

http://pure-gas.org/

 

Let's see, our engines make less power with the Ethanol, which adds more oxygen and makes the engine try to richen up the mixture to compensate for the excess oxygen which consumes more gas that it should or would without the Ethanol. So unless you have a tuner to compensate for this condition, our trucks automatically get less mileage. Want to bet that the oil companies know exactly what adding ethanol does to mileage and why?

One thing to remember about Ethanol is that it attracts water, if there is excess water in your fuel that would definitely affect your engine performance. Maybe that is why your truck runs better with the Lucas treatment.

 

I suspect corn farmers are the happiest to see ethanol in your gas. Oil companies would prefer to just sell stuff that comes out of a well. EPA wants the higher O2 in the exhaust.

 

Corn state politicians are probably happier than their farmers...

 

The ethanol in fuel has cleaned up the air some here along the wasatch front in utah. We get bad inversions so in the winter I can understand it. I dont like it being mandated state wide year round..

 

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You should see Phx air in the winter....

 

I guarantee you they aint as bad as the Salt Lake winter inversion. We might not see the sun for a month. The whole time the temperature never gets above freezing. Depressing. My plan is to leave Salt Lake because of it. Nasty.