Thanks for the info. I am planning on buying another F150 and am simply looking for possibilities. I still need(or possibly just want) a truck, so I am glad to see at least one respondent, that is having some success.

As I understand it, there is currently no real financial gain by using ethanol. I don't think that will stop me from trying it out. I see a couple people worried about the price and/or government help to farmers. From my point of view (21 years Army), I would rather help the farmers (or even companies) in the mid-west, than keep paying Iran, Iraq, Russia, etc. . . these rediculous gas prices.


Quintin, Are they actually selling it at the PX gas station, at Benning, or is it a post program?

Thanks again to all!
MMM

 

It should and could be the answer to the USA fuel problem.

If all cars/trucks ran on E85 we could reduce or eliminate completely our need for foreign oil.

That is reason enough for me.

I would rather spend the same amount on E85 vs. gas, if it meant the money was going into Americans pockets, not OPEC.

If it was cheaper, that would be even better.

 

A couple E85 stations around here in WI. But I do have a problem understanding the pricing. Seems to mirror the E10, and regular gas prices. Now, with only 15% pertol, I would think the price of the Ethanol would be controlling the price. But it's not. Way too high priced for the mileage you won't get.

I read the other day that Brazil, Argentina, or Venezuala has gone totally Ethanol. Made from cane, it's really priced low, probably where it should be.

 

I think it's the same deal as it is here in IA, lack of competition! When we get more than 1 or 2 local stations selling it, we'll find out what they can really sell it for!

Another thing I should have mentioned above, this was the first new vehicle (truck or car) that I sprung for the extended warranty. Who knows what's going to happen after exclusively running E85 for 80,000 miles? Wanted to make sure I was covered...

Eventually I'd like to see somebody make an E85 ONLY motor. With 105 octane straight out of the pump, imagine the power they COULD make with say 11:1 compression.

 

I would not use ethonol with the 5.4 UNLESS it is a readed 5.4.. i know a guy who has one, and it will starts ticking with ethonal!! Try it, if you DONT get a tick, your fine!

 

E85 is a rip off where I am. Its only like 15 cents less than gas. You lose about 30% of your mpg. It should cost MUCH less than gas but once again the folks that refine and blend this stuff are ripping us off. Need to regulate fuel like we do with utilities. Allow a certian reasonable profit and that is all!

As for running it from day one - no problems at all. I have run E85 for 10K miles without issue on one of my vehicles. The only ill effect it could have is on the fuel lines and sensors for NON E85 vehicles. So if you are E85 - you are fine.

 

That's why I got the FFV option. Simply to support the US farmers.

I have no found an e85 pump in Alabama yet, but we have a city here in Alabama that runs it's police cars off of e85 and they actually setup a "refinery?" for it. I just order mine from there in a 55 gallon drum. I got a little diesel pump setup in the basement and I use it to pump the fuel into my truck. I get about the same mpg with the e85 as I was with the gasoline.

Oh another weird thing is my oil. When I change my oil it looks like it did when I first put it in. I guess that's because ethenol burns cleaner??

Some of you might already know this, but Brazil runs off of 100% ethenol. Brazil also only buys GM and Ford products, for the most part. Ford has F-150s in Brazil that runs 100% ehtenol, and they work fine. They also have a host of other vehicles there.

Anyways.... support the famers if u can.

 

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=6817

You can't seriously believe this. Not even close. While Brazil does have FFVs that are capable of running off 100% ethanol, the government recently dropped the mandated concentration from 25% to only 20% in gasoline powered vehicles.

By utilizing ethanol as a geater percentage of the fuel used by their nation's vehicle fleet, they no longer have to import petroleum for vehicles and can make do with thier domestic oil production.

See this Businessweek article from a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...pStories_ssi_5

or this Wall Street Journal report from January that gives a decent history of Brazil's program: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=6817



Steve

 

I was told by a Brazilian who works in the Mercedes plant with me, that the majority of the cars in Brazil ran off of 100% ethenol. It would seem that your article tells a different story. Bottom line though, I don't know what Brazil is doing, and I don't care.

All I know is, the e85 mixture that I run in my truck, works great.

I am told that the place where I am buying my e85 adds some sort of additive into their mixture, which makes it burn slower?? I guess to stop pinging. I dunno enough about it to really give any information, but I am told that this additive makes e85 act more like gasoline.

Anyways, the need for a new fuel alternative is undenyable. The only way we will ever successfully implement a new fuel is to some how stop the oil companies from buying patents, and to get these oil invested idiots, out of Washington.

 

Ethanol is a good thing for the time being. I think that it is good because it will help open our eyes to alternative fuels, not because it is necessarily the "savior". Here are a few reasons while it will never be the long term solution, IMO. 1) Ethanol contains about 2/3 the energy of gasoline, by gallon. This is why you see abot a 30% decrease in mileage when running E85, and a 5-10% decrease or so when running E10. 2) The most recent studies put the energy out to energy in of ethanol at about 1.24:1. This means that for every 124 btu's of energy we get from ethanol we had to use 100 btu's of another fuel source to create it. This is not very high(especially compared to the 3-4:1 ratio of biodiesel, which I will ge tto later). In my opinion this is what wil limit the success of ethanol. So in all honesty, ethanol will never be that cheep to produce, right now it is cheaper at the pump in some places because states are giving tax breaks and credits to reduc the cost. This is why I believe a beter alternative to ethanol is biodiesel, which offers much higher enegrgy returns. On th plus though, ethanol does burn much cleaner than gasoline, which is why the oil will look much cleaner, and it will not ping, as some body mentioned earlier(it increases the octane rating).

 

The reason you are not seeing a great reduction in the cost of Ethanol is because the supply and demand is not there. The problem is that there are not enough cars on the market to substantiate a large number of gas pumps. On the flip side, there are not enough noticeable perks yet for the consumer for them to run out and buy these vehicles. It will take some government involvement to start putting these pumps out there. Once you get more pumps, people will see more of the benefits and thus buy the vehicles. A lot of people are seeing the environmental benefits but still are not convinced. As for Brazil, consumers are given the option of Ethanol (or alcohol as they call it) and regular fuel. Most people buy Ethanol because it is MUCH cheaper even though they do lose gas mileage, the cost offsets the loss of mileage. People there still buy gas though if they are making long trips so they get the mileage back. Brazil did go to not having to import any fuel anymore. The downside as far as the government is concerned is that the Fuel suppliers having serious pull on Capitol Hill so it is slow moving for fear from the gas companies of losing business. Once they wake up and start investing some of their billions of dollars into Ethanol you probably wont see a lot of government involvement. Or once gas gets outrageous and the local populace raises hell then government will have to react.

 

It's pretty easy to tell if your F150 is an FFV or not. Besides the fact that there's a big honkin' sticker on the underside of your hood that says "This Flexible Fueled Vehicle...", all you have to do is go to the VIN number and look.

If the 8th letter/digit of your VIN number is a "V", then your F150 is an FFV. If there's no V, then it's not. This also goes for the Ranger, Crown Vic, Town Car, Grand Marquis, and Mazda B3000 pickup. On the Explorer and Mountaineer, it's a "K" that means FFV. On the Taurus and Sable, it's a "2" in that 8th spot.

All that being said, good luck finding an FFV in Texas or the South without having them ship one to you. We southerners tend to be some gas-chuggin' idiots. I for one can't wait until the Edge comes out so that I can trade my 02 F150 in for a nice FFV CUV that gets 30MPG.

Oh, and 100% ethanol is a bit of a stretch. That would come out to something like 140 octane - that's corrosive enough to eat through anything except metal.

 

And one more thing: Our 2005 V6 E85 Explorer actually tends to get BETTER mileage on E10 than it did on conventional gasoline. We bought an E85 Explorer not knowing that it was an E85 Explorer until tax time when I ran the VIN number. We had it shipped down to Ft. Worth from Michigan due to the fact that it was exactly the configuration that we wanted (hence the reason why we're one of probably 5 people in the state that own one). Now that Texas has started putting E10 in most of its stations, both my wife and I noticed that the average milage on the Explorer (which used to be a 15.9) is now closer to 18. We have not changed the daily routine - it just tends to run better (and actually smoother) on the E10. I'd like to see how it runs on E85 - I guess time will tell. Our sticker says that it should be getting 20mpg on the highway - I'm pretty sure that those numbers will be reached if we could ever get the fuel that this thing was designed to run on.

 

I have not checked the VIN on my truck but I too noticed that my truck gets about 50 miles more per tank when I run E10. I alternated filling up at a shell station that ran straight gas. I always got better mileage with the E10 blend from Albertsons. I will definetely be checking my VIN.

 

The reason why it's E85 is because they put in 15 % gas to keep people from drinking it IMO.