e85

[bertvorgon]

I only post this up as a general matter of interest, mainly mine I guess.

Since we had the lead taken out of our fuel, back in the 70's, I of course have had a need for practical considerations of octane.
I spent years messing around with all sorts of additives, to keep my engine alive on the street. Racing was no problem, as race fuel was readily available. It was my need for around 100 octane ( R+M) on the street, that has always kept me looking at anything to do with fuel.
Secondly, I was there when the great fuel crunch came in the 70's, really hitting the U.S. market, and then of course prompting the car manufactures to get with better fuel economy. This brought about the CAFE standard. Over the years, it kinda disapeared, which I always wondered about. Maybe it was just out of the media, but, when you looked at the wealth of HUGE American vehicles, it did make me wonder.
Ron M's discussion of whether to run E85, which I have read about off and on, led me to this site, which basically explains why there are so many E85 vehicles out there. I must admit, that I see a ton of them in Vancouver...and there are NO E85 stations here ( there are 3 in Canada. The U.S. midwest has them, due to the closeness of the great corn belts, but, here in Canada, Mohawk has stated they have NO interest at this time, to make E85.....and they are the ones making our ethanol now. I make no comment on whether it is the way to go down the road, that is for better minds than mine, but, from the standpoint of ducking the better fuel milage issue..it seems business as usual. I find the “phantom” reduction interesting, kinda like GM’s latest sales figures only relate to how many cars they BUILT, not how many were sold! I love accountants.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ ... xfuel.html

[510-Trevor]

Its funny how times change. I remember back in the early 90's, there was a push for more alternative fuels and the City of Calgary as well as a few taxi companies ran a bunch of E85 cars. At that time there was only place in Calgary to fuel them up. It surprises me that there are not more now. To me, it makes sense that running E85 and BioDiesel would be good temporary solutions to stretching the gas reserves/reducing emissions while other technologies become more mainstream.
While not really anything to do with e85, new technologies that the automakers are using to decrease fuel consumption is Direct Injection, or as Audi calls it FSI (Fuel Straight Injection) Audi runs over 13:1 compression in their FSI engines and an AFR of 16:1. For more info go to: http://www.canadiandriver.com/2005/11/1 ... ection.htm