I traveled a bit in Minnesota this past weekend, and since e85 is available an many gas stations I filled up a tank full at $2.09/gallon. I was within 20 miles of the low fuel light coming on, so I got a good 25 gallons in. Before I filled up I was running about 16mpg with the bikes racks on the front and back. My e85 tank dropped right down to 12mpg.

I get better then 12mpg with short local city driving in the dead of winter.

 

That's an expensive fill up. Over $5200! I filled up the other day and it cut me off at $100.

 

I fixed it.

 

I belive that your MPG droped beacuse E85 has less potential energy in it that regular gas. So you have to burn more to make the same amount of power. Please anyone correct me if I am wrong.

 

I think most people have come to the conclusion that it currently isn't worth the investment. If the price becomes cheaper at the pump, the savings could play out. Currently, it costs cheaper than regular gas by the gallon, but costs more by the mile.

 

lets hope your truck is set up for E-85 or else you may have some issues down the road with your fuel system

 

I would like to see someone run about 4 consecutive tanks through one, then report back. I'm sure there is an adjustment period for the computer after switching gas. It may not be as good as regular gasoline, but the drop off may not be as significant on the 3rd and 4th tanks.

 

E85 is a joke, currently, with the way America produces it (primarily with corn) it takes something like 4.5 gallons of diesel fuel to create one gallon of E85. Now if we made it using very low maintainence crops like suger cane, like they do in brazil, the fuel required to make it would go down, and the price itself would drop, therefore possilbly making it cheaper by the mile.

 

As a Minnesota resident, I tried it in my 2007 for about 1.5 tankfuls, only because it was my first E85-capable vehicle. I tried it, mileage sucked, and I'm back to gasoline.

pa_wolf62 is correct that E85 has only about 75% of the energy of unleaded gas, so that's why your mileage was reduced. So it's only financially worthwhile if the cost is 75% of gasoline or less. However, the true cost of the E85 is actually much higher than the price at the pump, because E85 is heavily subsidized by the state. Of course, some people will consider other factors (environmental, foreign dependency, help farmers, etc.) in deciding whether to use E85. I just don't happen to be one of them. The real beneficiaries of E85 are shareholders of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).

 

So at 12,000 miles a year we are talking about roughly $170 more over the year

Price MPG 1000 miles 12,000 miles
$2.64 16 $165.00 $1,980.00
$2.15 12 $179.17 $2,150.00

 

E-85 is good for one thing...

street legal race cars. It's much cheaper then running 105-110 octane gas..

 

Yup, anything with an engine built to run 11:1 compression or more probably love the cheap fuel.

 

It all depends on the vehicle. I've heard of as little as a 6% mileage loss, and as much as 35%.

 

It's not that, the problem is that the compression ratio on gas engines is too low to make good power and mileage on E85. I've seen a couple tests that showed engines with bumped up compression making more power and mileage with E85 than they did on gas.

 

The other factor is we're all paying for E85 whether we use it or not in the subsidizing that you can "reclaim" some of that money by using it....not that I run it, but it's another angle.