E-15 was tested today

Since fuel blended with 15% ethanol is probably just around the corner one should probably pay attention to NASCAR racing since that series is using this fuel this year. If you watched the Bud Shootout today you saw speeds of 206 MPH in a two car draft and very near 190+ running alone. The amazing part of this is that they also saw engine revs in the 9800 RPM range. There was only one engine issue and with no details available (at least at this time) I doubt it had anything to do with fuel. While these cars are carbureted, they will likely be fuel injected early next season. So what you say! Well, if corn squeezin's can power a race car 500 miles with an engine spinning 9000+ rpm I would guess the 4, 6, or V8 chunk of iron in our boats should survive nicely. Some precautions will certainly be required, especially with older boats. But is it the end of the world as we know it? I really doubt it.

Re: E-15 was tested today

Yep, good thing they ddn't have to store the cars with 50 gallons of E-10 for six months.
Pit stops would require a fuel filter/water separator change.
Maybe a catch can for the water.

I guess if my motor was torn down and rebuilt every week, I wouldn't care how it was fueled.
BTW...ARCA and The Shootout were both incredibly boring races.

Re: E-15 was tested today

INDY cars have run alcohol for years, it does burn quite nicely but I am still not sure if I want it in my boat.

My brother in law got a new truck that could burn that e85, it was cheaper so he got a tank of it and said his mileage went from 23 to 14, I don't remember the exact numbers but it was that drastic of change.

Add to that that ethanol takes more energy to make than you get out of it and it is made from food and it really doesn't make alot of sense to me, I know why they are doing it but it still doesn't make alot of sense.

Like Hydrogen powered cars, it takes huge amounts of electricity to make hydrogen just to turn it back into electricity.kinda silly.

I am with Ninja on this one, if I had a group of engineers working on my engine I wouldn't worry about it either.

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If you use the ignitions systems they run, MSD et al, you can burn just about anything at 9800 RPM. We'll see how many are standing on the last two laps of the 500. But even if they are all in it at the end, it's more of a statement about how efficient Mallory, MSD... multiple spark ignition systems are than it is about burning 15% ethanol. I agree, the shoot out was boring.

Re: E-15 was tested today

5150abf said:

INDY cars have run alcohol for years, it does burn quite nicely but I am still not sure if I want it in my boat.

My brother in law got a new truck that could burn that e85, it was cheaper so he got a tank of it and said his mileage went from 23 to 14, I don't remember the exact numbers but it was that drastic of change.

Add to that that ethanol takes more energy to make than you get out of it and it is made from food and it really doesn't make alot of sense to me, I know why they are doing it but it still doesn't make alot of sense.

Like Hydrogen powered cars, it takes huge amounts of electricity to make hydrogen just to turn it back into electricity.kinda silly.

I am with Ninja on this one, if I had a group of engineers working on my engine I wouldn't worry about it either.

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And I've been running E-85 for 60,000 miles and see nowhere near that difference in economy. First, I doubt the 23 MPG claim with 19 or possibly 20 being more realistic. 23 to 14 is a 60% drop and that is simply bogus. Even industry will report a maximum of about 30% drop. Talks with the engine builders prior to the race said they were seeing 5% difference in mileage but a significant increase in power. Higher octane rating means they can get away with more timing advance. All that equates to power. But in science, there is no free lunch so there is a trade-off with this as there is with nearly everything in life. We've also used E-10 up here in the tundra since 1997. Strange that collector cars and boats can be stored with a tank full of E-10 for six months or more and have no issues. Lastly, I am not proclaiming E-10, E-15, or E-85 to be equivalent to the second coming!! It is an alternative and unless one gets over this notion that every change one must make in life means the end of the civilization as we know it, there will be a lot of disappointed folks in this world. Adjust and get used to it. Maybe we should all go back to burning whale oil lamps and then there would be no whales left. Perhaps you didn't notice in the news this week that Saudi Arabian oil reserves are nowhere near what they thought they were. Without alternate fuel sources all of the doubting Thomas's in this society may be in for a very rude awakening someday. Oil supplies are not inexhaustable. Ethanol can be produced from nearly any plant. Some are just easier to process. Corn and sugar cane are renewable sources. Oil is not. Well it is -- but it takes a couple thousand years and I can't wait that long. Where I live, E-85 is currently 60 cents cheaper than regular. 40 cents is the break even point. If the difference is less than that I burn regular.

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I wonder how my 1996 7.4 Mercruiser with 951hours will do running 9,700 rpms on E15??

We lease our land in Nebraska specificly to grow corn & soybeans for ethanol production-maybe with the corn prices nearly doubleing recently I can buy a new E85 6.2L

All joking aside if devoted every tillible acre of farm land in the US to Ethanol production it would only produce 20-25% of our fuel needs-with no food crops. - in South America they grow "Switch Grass" because of the bio-mass vs input cost to produce. We need other options- Alge farming is being studied as one option.plus it does not displace food crops.

But Wind, Solar, & Nuclear powers is where we are headed.
Think of the Chevrlot Volt car.

Re: E-15 was tested today

Wind already drives boats. Not very fast but it works -- when there is wind. Solar produces electricity as we all know, but a panel the size of your boat won't power a trolling motor much less propel the boat anywhere near fast enough to ski or pull a tuber. Nuclear -- there ya go. It does wonders on our aircraft carriers. In the hands of the average boater I can't think of a worse disaster. Chevy Volt? The first 80 miles is electric only and it isn't free or even cheap as that electricity the batteries contain has to come from somewhere. After that 80 miles we are back to gasoline again. Don't get me wrong folks. When I say ethanol is an alternative, I mean that should the oil supply run out or be disrupted, ethanol is a viable alternative regardless what it is produced from. This discussion was not and should not be construed as my contention that it is a cheaper and better alternative to gasoline, more economical than gasoline or trouble free. I merely intended to point out that it is just that -- an alternative. There is an operational electric airplane but it is not a viable alternative to the current crop of heavy lifters that run on jet fuel. Battery technology and other energy sources will come about but it takes time and unless you experiment nothing ever happens. Many of the technological advances we see are the result of government subsidies and research grants just like the production of ethanol. And farmers have received subsidies for years -- sometimes for NOT producing anything. But that enters the political arena and lets not go there. The end of the oil era is coming (maybe sooner, maybe later, but it is coming). Hopefully this country will be prepared for that day. Doing nothing is not a solution to an impending problem and all the wringing of hands won't make it go away. Cope friends -- cope!

Re: E-15 was tested today

With the money they spend on those cars they could go 200+mph on year old bird poop.

I don't have that kind of budget.

Re: E-15 was tested today

i'm the biggest proponent of e85 that you will find. I run e85 in my car, and get a SUBSTANTIAL kick in both horsepower and even more in torque vs 91 octane, and my mileage is nearly identical. But... That is with a turbocharged car and very specific engine modifications to allow it. The lower energy density makes very little difference because I can make it up with increases in boost and timing.

e85 in an engine not designed for it is a duct tape solution at best. The compression ratio is fixed, and in most cases, the max allowed timing by the factory ECU isn't enough for e85 to be useful. Same goes for the current crop of flex fuel vehicles. I don't know of a single e85 flex fuel turbocharged vehicle, and without that, you are stuck with a compression ratio that has to be safe to run 87 octane. The nascar engines were obviously specially designed to run it. (actually there isn't much difference in tuning between sunoco race gas and e85, so they may not have needed much special config at all)

And that isn't even mentioning storage concerns!

Re: E-15 was tested today

smokingcrater said:

e85 in an engine not designed for it is a duct tape solution at best. The compression ratio is fixed, and in most cases, the max allowed timing by the factory ECU isn't enough for e85 to be useful. Same goes for the current crop of flex fuel vehicles. !

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The ignition timing statement on Flex Fuel vehicles is not entirelhy true. The ECM and sensor system in GM flex fuel vehicles is capable of determining the actual mix of E-85 vs regular gas and indeed does control the added timing advance and injector pulse with accordingly. The day I took delivery of my Impala in 2006 I was leaving on a road trip so I topped off with E-85. Within a short time I noticed some strange tranny shift behavior. The service manager when hearing the complaint said you just topped off with E-85 didn't you! Until some programming was changed, the system could not decipher what the mix was if one added less than four gallons of fuel and that would send the engine management system into default mode. Haven't had an issue since. My car has a definite power advantage running E-85 and that doesn't come from the fuel alone. It is the added advance and ECU controls that provides provides the boost.

Re: E-15 was tested today

E10 stinks..E15 stinks way worser

Re: E-15 was tested today

Silvertip said:

.... Chevy Volt? The first 80 miles is electric only and it isn't free or even cheap as that electricity the batteries contain has to come from somewhere.

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From all I've read, energy cost for an electric vehicle typically is around 1/3 to 1/2 what it costs to drive with gasoline. Main reason for that is the high efficiency of the entire process of converting fuel into electricity, transporting electricity, and ultimately converting electricity into motion. Gasoline engines are horribly inefficient at converting energy into motion, wasting over 2/3 of available energy as heat.

After that 80 miles we are back to gasoline again.

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When I'm looking for a new car an all-electric is going to be at the top of my shopping list. I'm probably a near average commuter, driving about 45 miles total each day. That's well within the range of most electric cars, and would save me a ton of money on gasoline, plus the convenience of never having to stop at a gas station. Plug it in when I pull into my garage, unplug it in the morning, and I'm good to go for the day.

Many of the technological advances we see are the result of government subsidies and research grants just like the production of ethanol. And farmers have received subsidies for years -- sometimes for NOT producing anything. But that enters the political arena and lets not go there. The end of the oil era is coming (maybe sooner, maybe later, but it is coming). Hopefully this country will be prepared for that day. Doing nothing is not a solution to an impending problem and all the wringing of hands won't make it go away. Cope friends -- cope!

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Very true. It especially irks me that we're giving away billions of tax dollars in subsidies to oil companies, which happen to be making record profits.

Thanks to my educational background I'm a little more tuned in to this subject than most people care to be. It will be to our advantage to start finding a suitable alternative to fossil fuels sooner rather than later. In my perfect little dream world we'd all have high efficiency solar panels on our roofs, and we'd use electricity from them to power a hydrogen generator in our garage which could supply fuel for our cars and boats. Most of the technology for that already exists, but it's expensive, maybe the costs will come down someday. After the equipment is paid for it would cost virtually nothing to operate such a system, and we wouldn't be dependant on other parts of the world for our energy.

Re: E-15 was tested today

metriccrescentwrench said:

Thanks to my educational background I'm a little more tuned in to this subject than most people care to be. It will be to our advantage to start finding a suitable alternative to fossil fuels sooner rather than later. In my perfect little dream world we'd all have high efficiency solar panels on our roofs, and we'd use electricity from them to power a hydrogen generator in our garage which could supply fuel for our cars and boats. Most of the technology for that already exists, but it's expensive, maybe the costs will come down someday. After the equipment is paid for it would cost virtually nothing to operate such a system, and we wouldn't be dependant on other parts of the world for our energy.

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Other than the fact that the energy used to produce current solar panels is more energy than the solar panel can produce in its lifetime your plan makes perfect sense.

Re: E-15 was tested today

Silvertip, I can't believe you're saying NASCAR uses it so the old clunker should be just fine. But somewhere there is someone who will say just about anything ... :facepalm:

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26aftcab454,

Since I see that you are in Grapevine, do you ever listen on Saturday mornings to "Wheels" with Ed Wallace on KLIF 570? For years he has been saying that 10% ethanol is the limit on putting ethanol in a car engine not designed for more than 10%. I've even heard master mechanics on his show say that they see an increase in cars coming into the shops that are running rough when winter comes and ethanol content creeps over 10%.

I can't help but think that my Mercruiser would run worse with a higher ethanol content. Then again, maybe since it doesn't have all the computer monitoring that my 2010 Suburban has, maybe I won't notice a difference.

Re: E-15 was tested today

metriccrescentwrench said:

When I'm looking for a new car an all-electric is going to be at the top of my shopping list. I'm probably a near average commuter, driving about 45 miles total each day. That's well within the range of most electric cars, and would save me a ton of money on gasoline, plus the convenience of never having to stop at a gas station. Plug it in when I pull into my garage, unplug it in the morning, and I'm good to go for the day.

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I put 20,000 miles on my truck each year. I don't see electric working for me. Also, I never hear the Chevy Volt commercial say what it will cost to charge an electric car that is driven the average 12,000 miles per year.

Also, are there any electric boat motors on the horizon? I'd hate to think that I'd be run over on the lake by a boat that I never heard.

TexasVet

Re: E-15 was tested today

texasvet54 said:

Also, I never hear the Chevy Volt commercial say what it will cost to charge an electric car that is driven the average 12,000 miles per year.

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If you drive a gasoline vehicle that gets 30 miles per gallon, with $3 gas you're paying 10 cents per mile for fuel. A typical electric car will cost around 3 to 3.5 cents per mile for electricity. [/quote]

Also, are there any electric boat motors on the horizon?

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In fact there's at least one out there now. http://green.autoblog.com/2010/02/16/epic-boats-introduces-all-electric-wakeboard-craft/

It actually makes sense for a wakeboard boat like this one, instead of adding ballast in the form of fat sacks the batteries act as built-in ballast.

Re: E-15 was tested today

bruceb58 said:

Other than the fact that the energy used to produce current solar panels is more energy than the solar panel can produce in its lifetime....

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Certain radio and TV personalities are good at skewing facts to suite their agenda, and they do so very convincingly. For starters that statement is false, but even beyond that - think about how much energy it takes to explore for dead dynosaurs, pump them out of the ground, transport them, convert them to gasoline, transport that gasoline, etc. etc. etc. In the lifetime of a solar panel you'd be way way ahead of the game if you could supply fuel for your car from that solar panel instead of burning dead dynosaurs.

Now I did find one situation where your statement applies - solar powered 'gadgets'. They typically go to the landfill after 3 or 4 years, and in that situation a solar cell is worse for the environment than using rechargeable batteries.

Re: E-15 was tested today

Lets also set the record straight on engines running funny when using E-10 -- especially in cold weather. Don't know where you live, but I live in the tundra of Minnesota so you are assured "cold" has a totally different meaning than it does in most other areas of the country. We seem to get by just nicely at 30 below zero and provided the vehicle (any vehicle) has a decent battery, starting is not an issue nor is driveabilithy. Service shops, whether they are marine or auto based, have a tendency to blame lots of issues on Ethanol, especially if that area has just made the switch. Dirty fuel systems that are being cleaned up by the ethanol is the issue. What's the difference? Simple -- whatever failure you were "about" to have has now been brought to your attention. Had fuel systems been treated, filters changed as recommended those issues would not have happened.

Re: E-15 was tested today

metriccrescentwrench said:

Certain radio and TV personalities are good at skewing facts to suite their agenda, and they do so very convincingly. For starters that statement is false, but even beyond that

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You say its false and I say its true. What is your source? My source is a research Phd for solar arrays at UCLA. What's yours?