Is ethanol free that much of a difference...

jakoye

So why have ethanol at all if it reduces a car's MPG? Wouldn't that just cause people to have to fill up more thus defeating the whole purpose of reducing emissions?

Seems like just a very big shell game.

__________________
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

FERRARI

Go ask the "TREE HUGGERS" one reason is so we can use your grains to make ethanol.......and therefore make food prices go thru the roof......and ethanol is put to a much better use if it is for drinking.......lol...dont you think?

Mt Tam I am

The only place near me is ten miles away. It is an out of the way boat sales, tackle etc., right on the water. I guess older boats have older engines that need pure gas(?).

__________________
Nissan Motorsports 34R Oil Cooler. Stillen CBE. Hotchkis Sport Sway Bars. KW Variant 3 Coilover System. Stillen Gen3 CAI. Michelin Pilot Super Sport. Stillen Brake Ducts. Carbotech™ XP10/XP8 Pads. Z1 Front Rotors. Z1 Stainless Brake Lines. Two degrees of camber

SeattleLion

Ethanol, aside from the obvious saving of petroleum, replaced MTBT as a "drying agent" in gas. The MTBT was added because gas and water don't mix. As a result in cold climates water would accumulate in the gas lines and freeze when the car was parked. Of course the car wouldn't start until the gas line thawed.

MTBT was found to be highly toxic and since it, like ethanol, made up 10% of motor fuel, if a gas station's storage tanks leaked into the ground, the ground water was polluted with this highly toxic chemical. Ethanol replaced MTBT since it also will combine with water. Ethanol is grain alcohol and not as toxic (unless you have one too many).

Years ago, MTBT was only added to fuel in my part of New York, I lived in the City, from November to March. During the other months the gas was pure.

Lots of politics are involved in ethanol. Ethanol is made primarily from corn in the US. Corn farmers spend a lot of money promoting its use as a gas additive/replacement.

Bottom line is that ethanol is useful during cold weather to prevent water from accumulating in the gas line. The water is not harmful to the engine in small quantities. Some say it actually improves performance. I dont' know. Here in Washington our winters are pretty mild. Also, our Z's have a closed loop fuel system so it is less likely that condensation (from the walls of the gas tank) will form. Keeping your tank full in winter is an effective way to avoid this problem.

In any case, if you have a cold winter, it's probably a good idea to have some fuel additive to absorb water and prevent the possibility of gas line freeze. Ethanol is as good as any other. But in warmer places the only reason to add ethanol is political.

krzykanuk

It's MTBE not MTBT. It wasn't so much that MTBE is highly toxic, but that it's water soluble, so when underground storage tanks leak gasoline/MTBE, the MTBE reaches underground drinking water sources (aka groundwater) much faster than the more toxic gasoline. When MTBE was first added to gasoline in California I remember there were some issues with it dissolving gas lines in older vehicles.

__________________

Build Number: 46 of 120. Or is it 13 of 120?
Build Date: Tuesday 12 January 2010.

wheee!

pffft. Calgary.., what do YOU know about gasoline?


lol

__________________

Dreezy562

so what? do you just ask your gas station? :yo u got ethanol in your gas?:

most of the pumps around here actually have a sticker that says contains up to 10 percent ********.

the chevron near the airport doesnt have the sticker, so i assume its ethanol free. maybe i should ask

b1adesofcha0s

I work at a gas station and I have no clue how much ethanol is in the gas. I would guess its the same as most other stations though since we get it from the same suppliers.

__________________
Project: b1adeZmobile (2009 370Z) | Uprev Tune by AAM Competition | Berk Exhaust
Project: b1adeZmobile 2.0 (2014 C7 Z51) | Corsa Xtreme Exhaust

Jessobear

Generally you will only find pure gasoline in rural areas and areas that have a lot of boating. My family has a summer home in northern Wisconsin and all the gas up there is pure. I'm not sure if this is because it's in the middle of nowhere or because there are tons of lakes/boats around there?

In general, finding ethanol-free gas in your area has nothing to do with stations wanting to carry it. Fuel blends are set by law and stations have to carry the blend of fuel that is specified for an area. A possible exception would be if they were a specialty station, like a marina or race track.

There is no inherent power advantage to running pure gasoline as long as you use the right amount of fuel. If you had been running your car on pure gas for a long time and switched right over to E10, you might pick up some power temporarily due to the engine leaning out. This of course assumes that your car is running fairly rich for safety. But as soon as you start driving and your O2 sensor picks up the lean condition, the ECU will start writing positive fuel trims and pretty soon you'll be right back to where you started.

E85 is different because it should be substantially higher octane than E10 or pure gasoline. If you had a boosted car, you could turn up the boost or if you were forced to run very retarded timing (which I'm assuming is the case with the Z06), you could pick up significant power. I was once tuning a boosted Celica and initially picked up over 50 whp at 17psi just by increasing timing.

2011 Nismo#91

Ethanol contains 2/3 the energy per unit volume when compared to normal gasoline.
A gallon of ethanol has the same energy as about 2/3 a gallon of gas.
So if you use %10 Ethanol gas then your effectively only getting 90% gas + 10%*2/3 =96.6%

And your MPG will go from for example 25MPG to 25*96.66% = 24.166MPG small but noticeable.

But that's if they don't cheat and give you a little more then just 10% ethanol.
If there's no label "E10" there should be no ethanol in the gas.