You Tube Video on Ethanol and Old Cars

[Steve Moskowitz]

http://www.youtube.com/user/HVA8669229397 Our friends at HVA sent this to me today. Please do not let this get inot a political discussion. Moderators will be instructed to take it down or lock if that is the case.

[A. Ballard 35R]

Hope this isn't too political, Steve, but I have felt for quite a while that politicians holding federal office should never be allowed to ride in or in any way use antique cars to promote their political careers. Simply said, ANY person who promotes the use of corn to run internal combustion engines should be denied the privelege of riding in our antique cars, period.

[R Walling]

When I plumbed my last project I used fuel injection hose with a plastic liner.

[Bleach]

Petition signed at HVA website. Has anyone else?

[Dave@Moon]

For the life of me I will never understand how very large sections of the country (several whole states) can have virtually nothing to burn for 30+ years except 10% ethanol gas, but when it gets to other areas it's suddenly such a huge problem that even remotely related parts (vacuum advance diaphragms???) are being affected to a devastating degree.:confused: There's no doubt that some early cars' components are incompatible with ethanol and need to be replaced, and the water-absorptive properties of ethanol require special care. However, I think it may be being blamed for more ravages of time than anything it's doing itself.

===========

I've mentioned before on this forum that in the late 1970s & 1980s the only gas station chain in the whole state of Iowa that did not use 10% ethanol was the (fairly rare) Conoco brand stations. I spent this weekend in Galena, IL (within 10 miles of both IA and WI) at the Triumph 6-Pack National TRials. Accross the street from the Ramada where we stayed was a convenience store selling Conoco gas.

They still at least present the image of selling ethanol-free gas in that area. Their regular and premium were not listed as containing ethanol, but the mid-grade was. The price reflected this, in that the regular and premium were 14 cents higher than any other station in town, but the mid-grade was the same price as others' regular. That made for a price structure where 89 octane mid-grade gas was $3.65/gal., and 87 octane regular was $3.79/gal. (The mid-grade gas was almost certainly 87 octane gas with ethanol blended from a separate, underground tank.)

However nowhere on the pumps did it mention that regular and premuim were ethanol free, only that the cheaper mid-grade contained 10% ethanol. The Conoco web site makes no mention of ethanol either. If you're of the opinion that ethanol is bad for your car, you might seek out the Conoco stations along your way (and pay the premium for it), but it might still be for naught. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

I bought the mid-grade.

Edited September 29, 2011 by Dave@Moon
2nd typo, added last line (see edit history)

[Guest Kattosha]

just looked up Conoco, they don't say one way or the other about ethanol, however they do say

" Conoco contains over two times more detergent additive than the EPA mandate. That means it helps your car maximize its mileage, lower its emissions and helps it perform more like the way it did the day it was made. "

I don't know if this is good or bad, guess it depends what those additives are

[Guest Bob Call]

Nearly all Conoco and Phillips stations in this part of the country (Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas) and Valero stations sell ethonal free gasoline. Most have a curb side sign advertising "Real Gasoline" I don't know about other areas but in NE Oklahoma this real gas is the same price as the 10% ethanol blend.

[Guest Mochet]

Ironic that these mid-western Corn Belt stations advertise "ethanol-free" gas.

Phil

[Dave@Moon]

Ironic that these mid-western Corn Belt stations advertise "ethanol-free" gas.

Phil

It's only one station, and they don't "advertise". In fact you have to infer it from the price (which is higher due to long-standing state tax breaks given to ethanol). To be blunt they could be charging extra for nothing just to give the impression that the fuel is ethanol free.

[Guest Skyking]

Besides all the problems viewed in the video, nothing was stated about poor gas mileage. I've had my '62 Buick for 22 years and I see a huge difference in mileage.

[John_Maine]

I don't know - maybe it's because we've had ethanol here in Maine so long, I don't have anything to compare to but I found a book my uncle kept of his gas mileage in the '71 LeSabre I now own. The mileage in that book from 30-35 years ago is not significantly different than what I get, pretty much 11-13 mpg average, 8-10 in town and maybe 15 on the road if I'm lucky. My '72 LTD gets 11-14 in town and 16-18 on the road, pretty normal for what I remember those cars usually got. My '66 LeSabre with a 340-2 was pretty comparable to the LTD. I'd say these mileage figures are pretty much within the norm for these particular cars - whether there's ethanol in the gas or not.

[rons49]

Not only is ethanol less efficent than pure gasoline, but the indirect cost of using a corn based product for fuel instead of food or staples is a crime. How does the increased cost of food and corn by products affect all of us?

[trimacar]

The video was instructional in nature, that there'll be damage to older materials in a fuel system that aren't put together with materials that will "resist" ethanol degradation.

I always thought this was somewhat exagerated, until at the ACD meet, my fuel pump decided to quit working on my '37 Cord.

Upon disassembly (on Ninth Street in front of the Auburn Hotel, has to be a lasting memory), the fuel pump diaphragm was distorted in a strange way, still solid, but had ripples in it which was enough to keep it from pumping. Just not natural, so I blame the gas mixture.

I believe ethanol is one of those things that makes some people feel good (green), some people don't care, and some are aggravated if they do the math and figure out loss in mileage vs. cost of real gas, and all that grain (ummm, hate to use the G word, but farmers get subsidies, and am sure that growing grain for fuel has Guvment dollars attached).

Less cost, but less miles per gallon, and millions of dollars in parts to fix old cars. Oh well, that's good for economy I guess...

[Dave@Moon]

I don't know - maybe it's because we've had ethanol here in Maine so long, I don't have anything to compare to but I found a book my uncle kept of his gas mileage in the '71 LeSabre I now own. The mileage in that book from 30-35 years ago is not significantly different than what I get, pretty much 11-13 mpg average, 8-10 in town and maybe 15 on the road if I'm lucky. My '72 LTD gets 11-14 in town and 16-18 on the road, pretty normal for what I remember those cars usually got. My '66 LeSabre with a 340-2 was pretty comparable to the LTD. I'd say these mileage figures are pretty much within the norm for these particular cars - whether there's ethanol in the gas or not.

Unless there is something wrong with your car (i.e. not tuned correctly), E10 should reduce your gas mileage by no more than 5% (ther norm is 3-4%). If you're starting with 10 mpg, your loss will be at most 0.5 mpg. There's almost no way to detect that small of a change. My 25 mpg TR6 doesn't lose enough gas mileage to matter either, barely 1 mpg.

Back when ethanol was not a constant presence here in Ohio, I used to notice a 2-3 mpg drop in my Prius, but only because my mileage is so high to begine with. It's still only about a 4% change.

The horror stories of 20-30-40% mileage drops are probably the result of cars that need to be tuned more in keeping with today's fuels. It's posible that some cars will need to be rejetted, but most just need to have the fuel mix adjusted (preferably with a visible flame tool like a Gunson's Colortune { Gunson Colortune for 14mm Spark Plug }) Either that or the (unrelated) much lower vapor pressure of today's gas is causing losses in the fuel system unrelated to combustion.

[Dave@Moon]

Not only is ethanol less efficent than pure gasoline, but the indirect cost of using a corn based product for fuel instead of food or staples is a crime. How does the increased cost of food and corn by products affect all of us?

Corn is (and always has been) a transitional feedstock in ethanol production. Without it, it would be almost impossible to implement the infrastructure for large scale ethanol production once cellulosic production begins.

Also the current corn-based production process is now about 40% more efficient than it was only 4-5 years ago. The industry as a whole (including agricultural production uses) now produces over twice as much energy as it consumes. Cellulosic ethanol should at least triple that, hopefully quadruple it to match the sugar cane processes used in Brazil.

The more that is put into ethanol production, the sooner it will stop effecting food production and prices. The longer people resist it, the longer it will do damage to our food supply.

[trimacar]

Dave, I've read and re-read your post, and still not quite sure what position you've stated. Corn a feedstock is not the same as ethanol production, and I don't understand how people are resisting it....we don't seem to have much of a choice.

As far as mileage goes from other posts, do the math when the ethanol gets to 80% or more, cost per mile is more expensive, and that fuel is being sold now in parts of the country.

One cannot discuss fossil fuel and not get into politics. It's the reason we have troups in numerous areas overseas, it's the reason our American troups die, it's the reason that ethanol even was entered into the equation (and there are guv'ment programs to support that grain production). It drives our economy, and it drives our foreign policy.

Keeping this to an antique car discussion, the guv'ment has decided to allow this diluted fuel in the sham of being "green", we have to adjust and adapt the antique cars we own to allow us to drive with this mixture.

[Dave@Moon]

Dave, I've read and re-read your post, and still not quite sure what position you've stated. Corn a feedstock is not the same as ethanol production, and I don't understand how people are resisting it....we don't seem to have much of a choice.

Corn is the feedstock for the fermentation process that makes ethanol. That's all that means. That will soon change, however.

As for resistance, there are any number of ways people try to fight this. The simple fact that people are looking to go out of their way to avoid ethanol (if only in their own head) is the most obvious, but there are other more insidious ways. They all involve exactly the kinds of things that Steve very deservedly doesn't want discussed here. Suffice as to say there are as many "fact" sets as there are financial interests in the game, and they all have their own mouthpieces and motivational talking points.

[Richard Lichtfel]

It is good to hear from all the experts on ethanol gas that it doesn't affect the engine or mileage, I would like you to tell that to my 1970 Dodge Challenger. I went to Illinois a couple of years ago and filled it with 92 octane gas, not knowing it had ethanol in it. I barely made it home, it was missing and stalling when I came to a stop. I thought something had happened to the engine and took it to my mechanic. He checked it over and couldn't find anything. I told him I had gotten gas from a major gas station in Illinois and he said Ethanol. Don't ever use that in this car. I filled the tank with 92 non-ethanol and ran the ethanol through and the engine cleared up.

My Peerless is a low compression engine and all the parts are brass, I thought ethanol gas wouldn't hurt it so I tried a tank. The gas perculated so bad that the engine stalled everytime I stopped. Fortunately there are plenty of rural taverns in Wisconsin where I could stop and let the gas cool off.

[vermontboy]

rons49 hit the nail on the head. Very difficult to keep the politics out involving ethanol as it has such a costly effect on all of us.

[Guest bkazmer]

rons49 hits a key and non-political point:

a gallon of ethanol has 70% of the fuel value of a gallon of gasoline. (heats of combustion corrected for density)

That's the thermodynamics.

So on energy content alone, 10% ethanol gas has about 3% less energy.

[Dave@Moon]

So on energy content alone, 10% ethanol gas has about 3% less energy.

Which is a rough measure of exactly how much more fuel you'll need to accomplish the same task (e.g., how much your gas mileage should drop).

[Dave@Moon]

It is good to hear from all the experts on ethanol gas that it doesn't affect the engine or mileage, I would like you to tell that to my 1970 Dodge Challenger. I went to Illinois a couple of years ago and filled it with 92 octane gas, not knowing it had ethanol in it. I barely made it home, it was missing and stalling when I came to a stop. I thought something had happened to the engine and took it to my mechanic. He checked it over and couldn't find anything. I told him I had gotten gas from a major gas station in Illinois and he said Ethanol. Don't ever use that in this car. I filled the tank with 92 non-ethanol and ran the ethanol through and the engine cleared up.

My Peerless is a low compression engine and all the parts are brass, I thought ethanol gas wouldn't hurt it so I tried a tank. The gas perculated so bad that the engine stalled everytime I stopped. Fortunately there are plenty of rural taverns in Wisconsin where I could stop and let the gas cool off.

Again, this is not something new. If you lived in Illinois (or Iowa, or Nebraska, or....), you'd have to be running your Challenger (and everything else) on 10% ethanol for the the last 30+ years. Are there no Mopars in Danville? No 'Cudas in Des Moines? No Classics in Chicago? Did every Corvette that drove to Bloomington, IL for the last 30 years of the Bloomington Gold Show get stuck there, marooned by ethanol?

Cars should run fine on this stuff, period (the replacement of older/incompatible rubber bits and guarding against water absorption not withstanding). They have been for decades. If a car doesn't, it might just be the car's fault.

In 1980-1983 I ran a 1960 Ford Falcon 32,000 miles in Iowa on nothing but 10% ethanol fuel. I had no choice, that's all there was. Granted it was a small straight six, but there were no meaningful adverse effects. My college housemates {1973 Cutlass (350 c.i.), 1966 Ford Custom 500 (352 c.i.), and 1967 Dodge Dart (318 (c.i.)} didn't have any either. In fact I never heard boo about problems with ethanol at that time (& this when almost nothing was fuel injected), and since there was essentially nothing else to use there would have been a lot of boo to go around if there were any serious problems.

[R W Burgess]

As usual there are different opinions on this subject, which generally end up going political.

Dave, can I suggest that you put up that old link from last year that shows the free-ethanol gas stations around the country.

That should close this matter!

Wayne

[Aaron65]

Like Dave said, here in the Midwest (Michigan in my case), there aren't many non-ethanol options. It's pretty much 10% or nothing. I've just jetted everything up one step. The big problem I've noticed is harder hot starting over the last few years, but that could be due to any number of chemical changes in gasoline. Don't get me wrong, I think what they're selling as gas is junk for old cars and anything with a carburetor, but it may not be just the ethanol speaking.

[Guest Skyking]

In 1980-1983 I ran a 1960 Ford Falcon 32,000 miles in Iowa on nothing but 10% ethanol fuel. I had no choice, that's all there was. Granted it was a small straight six, but there were no meaningful adverse effects. My college housemates {1973 Cutlass (350 c.i.), 1966 Ford Custom 500 (352 c.i.), and 1967 Dodge Dart (318 (c.i.)} didn't have any either. In fact I never heard boo about problems with ethanol at that time (& this when almost nothing was fuel injected), and since there was essentially nothing else to use there would have been a lot of boo to go around if there were any serious problems.

Just for curiosity, did you or your friends let these cars sit around for weeks on end and have the same results?? If yes, then I find it hard to believe.

Edited October 1, 2011 by Skyking (see edit history)

[Dave@Moon]

Dave, can I suggest that you put up that old link from last year that shows the free-ethanol gas stations around the country.

Wayne, I've found that web site to nearly useless in any area where ethanol is pervasive (which is most of the country now). In the 3 states that surround me every retail outlet listed on it is either a marina or an airport, neither of which legally can't sell me road fuel.

If political action is called for, it is changing that fact that should be the most effective. Virtually no one wants to wipe antique cars from the road, no matter how "green" their political opinions are.

[Dave@Moon]

Just for curiosity, did you or your friends let these cars sit around for weeks on end and have the same results?? If yes, then I find it hard to believe.

Of course not, they were daily drivers for us. Of the 4 of us the guy with the '67 Dart probably drove the least, and even he was filling his tank every 6-8 weeks. I usually went 3-4 weeks between tanks. However I'm sure there were plenty of people in Iowa in 1981 with '32 Fords and the like who did exactly what we all do with our antiques, yet there was never a peep of trouble that I heard. (And being an environmental sciences student, I definitely would have heard something.)

However I made that statement in response to the idea that pumping 1 tank of E10 into a car would produce instant Armageddon. Long term storage issues are a whole different kettle of fish.

There may well come a day soon when pump gas is not usable in an antique car. I've been predicting that day for some time now. However that day is not here yet.

[DavidAU]

Interesting to see in our local paper (Brisbane , Australia) today that a lot of petrol stations are removing E10 pumps as they are not selling enough to warrant keeping them. The State Government regulations on the Gas supply companies are that E10 must be made avalible at at least 10% of their fuel outlets but there are no regulations to say you have to use it.

A TV channel did a test a few months back with three identical small cars with identical fuel loads on a race track. One had E10 in it, one had regular 92 octane in it and the other had 97 in it. They drove steadily around the track until they ran out of gas and the first to run out was the E10 followed by the regular fueled car and then the high octane fueled car.

As E10 is about 5 to 10 cents cheaper here per litre than regular and 97 is about 10 to 15 cents per litre dearer than regular the calculations were made on fuel price verses milage covered and in end, the cheapest car to run was the one using the expensive high octane gas as it covered more miles than the others for the cost of the gas. The E10 was the dearest fuel to use.

Edited October 2, 2011 by DavidAU (see edit history)

[carbking]

When "gasohol" was introduced in the 1970's I was a proponent. I did the math, and the 3~5 percent loss in power seemed reasonable. However, since that time, I have had to deal with literally thousands of customers with issues, and no longer am a proponent. These issues involve idle, drivability, loss of power, loss of mileage, damage, etc.

I have also run my own tests on my own vehicles (we used to be able to buy non-ethanol laced fuel here in Missouri).

From my own tests, I have found using 10 percent ethanol:

(A) mileage loss on efi cars is much worse than with carburetors. Back to back one thousand mile tests (same driver, same general driving) produced approximately 20 percent fuel mileage reduction on efi vehicles. A fuel injection specialist told me this was common, and due to the high oxygen content of the ethanol confusing the O2 sensor, thus causing the computer to call for more fuel. Incidentally power actually increased. 0-60 times were reduced on these vehicles using the E-10.

( mileage loss on 1960's and 1970's high performace engines was less proportionately than mileage loss on older vehicles. Without any proof, my gut feeling (I am not important enough to advance a hypothesis) is that much of the energy in the high octane ethanol (pump octane 116) is wasted on the older low compression engines due to incomplete burning of the slower burning ethanol. Mileage losses on my 11:1 compression engines was only about 3 percent. Mileage on 7:1 compression engines was up around 6 percent. Both of these with no jetting changes. However, for driveability, we now recommend a 10 percent increase in fuel jetting in ALL circuits of a carburetor. This of course reduces the mileage accordingly, but does allow the vehicle to be driven normally in ambient temperatures below 90 degrees.

I have no intentions of typing a book here, and thus won't discuss all of the driveability issues that we have encountered.

I wish those that would claim the E-10 can be used WITH NO MODIFICATIONS would be sentenced to a week answering our telephone from prospective customers!

That being said, the stuff is probably here to stay unless the medical (byproduct of the burning of alcohol is aldehydes and acetylaldehydes) problems ban it. In the meantime, we need to share information on how to live with it.

The best thing I can say from a carburetor standpoint is we now have fewer issues with customers living at 5000~8000 foot altitude. The recalibration necessary for E-10 is just about the same recalibration (in the opposite direction) that we used to have to modify normal carburetors for high-altitude use.

Jon.

Edited October 2, 2011 by carbking (see edit history)

[1957Birdman]

Has anyone tried one of the additives that are available which are supposed to neutralize the bad affects of ethanol on old cars, marine engines, etc.? Sta-bil makes one, but I think there are others. If these work they may be the best short term solution to the problem.

[Guest Skyking]

So now in reality, we are paying more for fuel, getting less mileage, putting in additives $$............. Can't tell me the oil companies are stupid. and, are they acting alone??

Edited October 3, 2011 by Skyking (see edit history)

[Dave@Moon]

Has anyone tried one of the additives that are available which are supposed to neutralize the bad affects of ethanol on old cars, marine engines, etc.? Sta-bil makes one, but I think there are others. If these work they may be the best short term solution to the problem.

Admittedly my oldest running car of late is only a 1975, but I've never had any reason to try any of them. We've had nothing but E10 to burn here for at least 6 years, and rarely anything else before that. Other than making sure the tank is full during any storage over a week and using regular StaBil over the winter, I've not yet seen any need to do more among my cars or any of my friends'.