Mongrat

Hi guys, wondered if any of you had looked into converting your yota' to run Ethanol. Some of our gas stations around here are starting to carry E85, Ive always been intrested in getting off the arab teet.

chimmike

it'll eat through your gas tank and prolly your fuel injectors.

e85 is pretty corrosive to aluminum IIRC.

dcg9381

Doesn't ethanol have a different A/F requirement also?

Mongrat

Most of what ive read talks about how e85 has a different mass than gas which means it has to be injected differently.

dcg9381

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E85 - general info

I'd be suprised if aluminum intake systems were a problem. I wouldn't be surprised if there were issues with stock rubber and other components designed to operate with gasoline.

E85 does require more fuel, if I recall right. The stock ECU isn't going to handle that gracefully.

gametom

even in trucks that are e85 compatible you get worse mpg and it's generally not worth the lower cost, and if you run it in something not compatible with it it will can damage components and hurt performance. like putting regular in something designed for premium it will work just not well

MMA_Alex

ethanol can eat through cheaper rubbers, not sure about the effect on aluminum. Chances are that all the rubber in the fuel system will survive unless you're driving some cheap early 70's car. Most gas in the northeast is 10% ethanol now anyway. You can even do things like put acetone into your gas tank, the modern rubbers used in fuel systems are pretty rugged.

the ecu wont mix the right mixture of fuel, and air, and it just wont run quite right with that much ethanol. Ethanol is pretty heavily subsidized anyway, and the current production methods wont really make enough to make e85 commercially available in large portions of the country.

Mongrat

I have seen Mods for the ECU to run Ethanol, I know the mpg goes down and all that, the point is to get off of the oil tit. If there was high demand in our country I think the tycoons would work to make it commercially available.

MMA_Alex

Celulostic ethanol is the technology that everyone is waiting for. Another issue is the dependence in this country on making everything with corn syrup to help domestic farmers. There has been a tarrif for years on importing sugar which forced corn prices up. When mass production of ethanol started in the last few years the price of corn skyrocketed as supplies dropped, and ethanol now costs more than gas/gallon.

The other thing to realize is that gas prices are cyclical, and after periods of high prices always come down to low prices, because the high prices encourage expanded production, and opec can never actually enforce production cuts.

realistically to reduce our dependence on foreign oil its going to take a mixture of hundreds of different things. Celulostic Ethanol, low sulfur diesel technoligies, hydrogen fuel cells, wind, solar, nuclear, clean coal, tidal, and conservation