Alcohol in gas going up this summer
 

Did you happen to see or hear this? The percentage of alcohol in the gas is going up! From 10% to 15%! Any Ideas if this is going to harm the longevity of our beloved Toyota engines! Vance.

From what I saw, the sale of year-around E15 sales were "OK'ed" where it was previously banned.

It does not look like a requirement and most fuel stations that don't currently sell E15 probably won't switch for a little while at least.

Ethanol in motor fuels is the biggest corporate welfare boondoggle ever devised.

And it destroys most elastomers used in older fuel systems.

I buy 100 octane low lead aviation fuel for use in all my small engines and vintage motorcycles. No alcohol in that.

They call it 'low lead' because it has less lead than av gas once did, but it still has as much, or more lead than regular motor fuels ever did.

It is just as live and sweet as ever, even after a year, or more.

Couldn't agree more, that stuff is like poison on my older cars.

Yah that good 'ol corn sludge!

I'd guess that any engine made this century with all the fancy electronic controls will be able to handle this puke. The elastomers (I didn't want to appear to be a troglodyte and say rubber) should handle it too. You'll burn more gas as the BTU's of that crap is less than 'pure' gasoline. I don't understand how burning more gas is good for the environment if that is the goal of this stuff.

My older rig only gets the higher octane fuels as it either has no ethanol in it or just 5%. I know that sucks for a daily driver cause of the higher cost, but with an older rig the price and availability of replacement rubber parts far outweighs the additional fuel cost. I also avoid the pumps that have the sticker that says, "may contain up to 10% ethanol". I don't know if that's an option in your area.

I think mid to late 80's is when manufacturers knew ethanol was coming, and they all updated their fuel systems accordingly.

FWIW ethanol is great fuel for boosted motors. I ran it for many years in my 90's turbo Volvo (rwd 240). 24 psi of boost, no pinging, you could actually advance timing past peak torque and get into 'non-productive' territory because it was so ping-resistant. I think E85 is rated at something like 105 octane, but in practice, it acts like 110, or even higher. Basically race fuel, for sale at regular gas prices at regular gas stations.

I'm putting a turbo LS engine into it now, and I'll be running E85 in that as well.

You're 100% right IF the induction system and engine is designed to use (high) alcohol based fuels, however in the case of the original question to run higher alcohol ratios then it was designed for would be a disaster. Aside from the fact of long term damage to rubber and aluminium parts, and even steel parts, carburettors would need considerably larger jets and older EFI systems would need the injectors opening duration increased just as a starting point. Its possible modern EFI systems could compensate for this, otherwise new injectors would be required. Toyota recommends in the owners manual not to use fuel with an alcohol content greater than 10% and definitely not to use E85.

I believe the air/fuel ratio needs to be about 8:1 to achieve the same performance.

High alcohol fuels control detonation by reducing peak combustion temperatures mainly due to the high rate of evaporation.

I leave you with some history of when my near 100 year old dad was say 75 years younger and well we were not quite getting along with each other on a global scale. Side #1's aero engines ran on 105/150 octane fuel and operated quite well at 40000'+ with carburettors and multi stage/multi speed supercharging. Side #2's aero engines ran on 87 octane fuel with alcohol (methanol) injection and struggled to perform at 30000'+ even though they were technically more advanced with fuel injection and variable speed supercharging. We know what side came out on top.

From my 1987 Toyota Truck owner's manual regarding ethanol under the "Fuel Recommendation" section:

Toyota's fuel systems should be able to handle E10 without drastically breaking down and falling apart, from 1987 on, at least.

From the description, it appears that Toyota felt that E10 was okay, but straight gasoline would definitely be the preferred choice, most likely due to the fact that the engines (and fuel systems) were designed around 87 octane regular unleaded fuel.

I wish there were more straight gasoline places around me, because there are only a few stations out in the sticks that really carry regular- non ethanol gasoline.

I have been using E10 gas ever since I started driving my truck 10 years ago (has it really been that long?!). I really hope the availability of E10 and below doesn't dry up in the near future.... :scared:

EDIT: What the heck is going on with the Automatic Text Color lately? All of the text above is in the same "color", but shows up differently. I have noticed this in a number of threads recently.....
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