Posted on 01/12/2010 10:24:05 AM PST by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
You are confused between a gasoline and a diesel engine.
The car will run fine on ethanol. It will get worse gas mileage, but it will run ok. The problem is your fuel system won’t take it.
80s cars used a lot of rubber in the fuel system. These rubber parts are fine with gasoline, but ethanol is caustic and will eat that stuff in a hurry. You’ll get a fuel leak before you know it.
The solution is to harden the lines, and anywhere else in the car where rubber was used in the fuel system. Not a cheap thing to do, unless you do it yourself.
Virtually all cars from the unleaded gas era will accept gasolines containing 10% ethanol. The new E85 stuff, which is almost all ethanol, is a different story and requires an engine computer and fuel system that is tuned for it. It would not be practical to require E85 anywhere for this reason and because ethanol is not abundant enough.
Many cars from the 80s and 90s had manuals containing warnings about, not ethanol, but methanol in fuels. It appears that a few fuel distributors once used significant amounts of methanol in their blends as a means of increasing fuel octane. Methanol is the kiss of death to many synthetic fuel system components that are not harmed by ethanol. If your car’s manual warns about ethanol I’d be curious to see what it says.
“my project car is a 1989 Nissan Sentra”
The fix was the “Cash for Clunkers” program! ;-)
I have had fairly good luck with a 2000 carbed Harley using ethanol fuels, but I use double the normal amount of Sta-Bil in the tank as well as using Iso-Heet if I think I’m having water problems.
WHY?
Ethanol is FOOD!
And the world is doing a lousy job of feeding the hungry among us, so let’s drill for fuel and feed the hungry with the food, and quit pretending we need alternatives, while ignoring nuclear power altogether.
Probably why my Camry Hybrid recommends no ethanol. Need to keep the fuel mileage number up.
It’s mandated at the pump, so there is no way to “grandfather” anything in. It’s just there. Note when you fill up how it says on the pump “This blend included 10% ethanol”. No way to avoid it and if you have an older car, you are screwed.
That’s a poetic irony about the greens.
OTOH, ethanol does not need to use grains of the same quality that we would want for animal or human feed. Most modern cases of world hunger cannot be blamed on lack of charitable will or wherewithal, but on local political conditions that coldly prefer to keep their sheeple hungry and begging.
Go ahead and use the ethanol.
When it dies, go get a Z-car instead! You won’t be sorry!
I’ve run older cars on 10% ethanol gasoline without ruining the fuel system. When they first started adding ethanol to the gasoline, I had to change out all the fuel filters, since it dissolved the gunk in the fuel system. I heard stories about some owners having to change out fuel filters twice.
That was my experience. Your mileage may vary.
jus put regular gas in it?
To begin with, race cars (formula A) run on Methanol. But in order to do so, the compression ratio has to be phenomenal in order to make use of this very cool burning fuel. Vapor pressures are also a contributing factor as to why a standard engine cannot run on pure ethanol.
Fuel injectors are the only way a modern vehicle can be run with this fuel. Older carburetors do not vaporize it well enough and the low flash point does not develop enough power for the engine to function adequately.
Newer Engines are being researched and developed to run on ethanol, but there are very few proven designs available to the public to date. Those that are, are extremely expensive.
If there are any doubts as to what I have just said, prove it to yourself by taking your non flex fuel programed older car to a station, fill it with nothing but E-85. You will regret every moment from there after.
Ethanol will swell older rubber fuel lines, gaskets and o-rings and cause them to either decompose (and leak) or swell shut.
For the o-rings, look into the proper grade of Viton(r) synthetic rubber products for your vehicle. In the past, many “rubber” components in engines were made of “Buna-N” which is a synthetic rubber that was developed for oil/solvent resistance - and it worked well since WWII. Buna-n doesn’t take well to higher levels of ethanol.
Aside from the hose/gasket/o-ring issues, ethanol is going to attract water to your fuel, so be aware of that.
As for the ability of a gas engine to burn ethanol - normal gas engines will run on ethanol just fine. The octane rating of ethanol is much higher than the highest octane you can get at the pump, so that’s not an issue. You’ll get lower mileage due to the lower heat content of the fuel, but it will burn OK, once you get the fuel system retrofitted.
Thats for diesel engines
Have you tried this?
Lucas (complete fuel treatment). It is an upper cylinder lubricant and fuel injector cleaner.
I have used it for years with great success in big engines that didn’t like the govt. mandated fuel. Good stuff.
Wrong. Reformulated fuel requirements are done by area, not by provider.
A newer engine will automatically adjust the timing and the fuel-air mixture based upon the amount of ethanol it senses, an older engine has to be tuned manually (and may require some modification of the carburator or injector ports).
Also, ethanol is an astringent. While a 10% blend shouldn't make any difference, a higher amount will clean all the years' worth of gunk out of the fuel system, depositing it in the filter, and will encourage any natural rubber hoses or seals, and untreated steel, to oxidize.
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