It's Final -- Corn Ethanol Is Of No Use

[POKE1911]

I see so many people filling up with ethanol and I just can't believe it. It's not even that much cheaper. Do these people not realize what that is doing to their car?

FWIW I was told that it can cause hell on smaller motors. It'll break down larger motors faster than regular gas but for the mileage and length of ownership 90% of car owners won't notice a difference and likely isn't caused only by pumpin corn.

Watch the fuel filter / pump assembly I know a guy the stopped his new truck by getting a dirty batch. But I guess that can happen with regular fuel too....

 

[TwoForFlinching]

Didn't see e-85

No problem. Don't worry about it.

 

[SoonerBorn]

I heart corn.


Sent from my meh, using my meh.

 

[Elm Creek Smith]

I rented a 3.6 liter "multifuel" Caravan for two weeks for my wife to take a business trip. (Her 2008 Kia Rondo was showing signs of age that we hadn't fixed yet.) On regular unleaded (E10) it got 21 mpg around town. On E85 it got 16 mpg around town and performance suffered, too. On the highway, the differences in fuel mileage were roughly proportional with nearly 30 mpg on regular unleaded (E10) and around 23 mpg on E85. With the "lower price" of E85 at the pump (not in real life since it is heavily subsidized) we got more "miles per dollar" from regular unleaded (E10) and performance was much better on E10 than E85.

Ethanol is a scam!

 

[MoBoost]

I daily drive all original 1965 Bel Air with 283 and 49 year old carburetor and pump.
I fill it up with e10 all the time.
Gets 20+mpg. Runs great.

Its easy to blame your broken crap on something you simply don't understand.

 

[farmerbyron]

About time they realized that ethanol is no good. It's simply to expensive to make. The energy consumed to make it is far greater than the amount left to be blended with fuel. Besides 8.00 a bushel corn isn't good for the cow business either. Corn prices dropped dramatically this fall and the number of cattle on feed increased. A profit can now be made on fats instead of losing a 100 bucks a head. Keep ethanol out of the fuel and corn prices will drop which will positively affect a lot of other markets as well.


Sent from NSA wire tapped device.

Except for all the other grain markets. When corn goes down it usually drags other grains down with it. Historically speaking grains are stupid cheap. If the grain markets had kept up with inflation, we would be getting $25/bu for wheat and $20 for corn and god knows what for beans.



Just look at these charts.

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/historical/CW/2013/0/continuous.html

Wheat was trading in the $3-4 range in the late 70s/early 80s. It stayed at or below that range until the mid 2000s. Now how much did a tractor cost in 1980? A new one was about 25k. Now a new one approaches $200k or more. A new truck? Maybe $7-8k. What's a new one cost now? $50k. How about fertilizer and land costs? Fuel?

Call me crazy but grain commodities in particular are dirt azz cheap comparatively speaking. Just pisses me off when people ***** about the price of milk and bread. They have no idea what it takes to fill their bellies.

Sorry to get off on a tangent but there is absolutely no food being taken out of anyone's mouth by ethanol.

 

[cichlid-dave]

I've seen a few of these at ONCUE they tell me that in many of these stores E85 also just does not sell.

 

[AKguy1985]

Ethanol is the devil. However, it does keep mechanics in business.

this....

 

[Nraman]

I daily drive all original 1965 Bel Air with 283 and 49 year old carburetor and pump.
I fill it up with e10 all the time.
Gets 20+mpg. Runs great.

Its easy to blame your broken crap on something you simply don't understand.

It may be easy to blame broken crap on ethanol, at the same time there are some facts that cannot be denied.
Your mileage will drop. I don't care what you drive, ethanol doesn't have as many calories as gas and cannot give you the same mileage.
Engine power will drop for the same reason, that the ethanol has less energy.
Some engines suffer, many motorcycles worse than others.
You are paying your tax dollars to subsidize ethanol production. You are making some multibillion dollar corporations richer so that they can sell you
an inferior product.

So, what is the upside again? That your car runs? Great!

 

[cody6766]

It's ironic that ethanol mixtures do not, in any way, reduce the amount of petrol a vehicle will us to travel a given distanc

Yup, I have an 11 F150 with the ecoboost engine. When I got it I tested different fuel grades to see if I saw any difference in performance (very subjective) and mileage (objective w/a handy dandy calculator). I shoot down a few country roads and hit the highway for about 2 miles before rolling on to the base. I make a few short trips into town, but not much changes week to week. My driving is very consistent, both where and how, so it's a pretty good test. I ran 2 tanks of each: 87 octane, 91 octane and 10%etOH and compared numbers. I lost almost 2mpg with the etOH gas and had no changes between premium and regular. In the city, my new, fancy, 'fuel saving' engine got almost the same mileage as my 01 F-150 with the old 5.4L. My mileage jumped from 13 to 15mpg when I dropped etOH.
It's not a monthly budge buster, but filling up with the 'more expensive' 87 w/o etOH, I"m saving about $10/month based on my driving habits. With all of the etOH negatives, I can't fathom why I'd pay more for an inferior product.


3.8mi/$ I drive ~1125mi/month = $269/month @13mpg
4.3mi/$ 1125mi/month = $261/mo @ 15mpg

this is assuming $3.40 for etOH and $3.50 for 87