E-85 Gasoline/Ethanol blends. OK for Subaru Turbo?

Read your owners manual. It will tell you which fuels are acceptable and which ones aren't. I don't think Subaru allows more than 10-15% ethanol. I wouldn't use the E85 especially on a brand new vehicle. If there are engine problems resulting from the fuel the warranty will not apply and you could have some expensive repairs. Definitely not worth saving a few cents per gallon.

There are only a few cars that I know of that take E-85 fuel. Ford Ranger

3.0L FFV and the Ford Taurus. They are both well marked with the E-85 symbol on the exterior. Fuel mileage is greatly reduced when using this fuel.

See

See for a list of compatible vehicles. Blair

Some more information on this topic here:

Blair

Hi,

I wasn't aware of any vehicles outside the Ford family that are currently FFV compliant, and you can tell them from a distance by the big stickers advertising that fact! I'd definitely check w/ Subaru for something ok'in it in print before running it in your new Forester. As others have said, the potential warranty issues aren't worth it, and the reduced fuel economy probably means you're saving just about nothing...

Rick

Lots of info here for you put together by a knowledgable guy:

Pretty confident the fuel system will not disintegrate, but you would need to upgrade to larger injetors and deal with a possible check engine light warning about for evap emissions sensors if running high concentrations of E85.

Steve.

Nope, the E85 is 85% ethanol.

And it only has like 60% the BTU energy of gasoline so there will be a price/mpg trade off in addition to possible damage in vehicles not designed for it.

Carl

Edward Hayes wrote:

Ethanol fuel was foisted on us by agricultural interests led by Archer Daniels Midland. It probably takes more energy to make the ethanol than there is in the ethanol. It is not cheaper to make but tax subsidies make it profitable for the ag. interests. Look at it as partially burnt hydrocarbon - there is less energy and subsequently lower mileage. The oxygenate requirement pushed by ADM led the oil companies to use MBTE with the subsequent problems therein. There is also phase separation at certain ethanol contents and need to transport separately. If EPA would get its act straight and just let the oil companies give us good none polluting gasoline, it would be a lot cheaper.

I mostly agree. The maketplace is being warped by subsidies. Plus, although it is now something of a waste product from ag., it would be a shame to think we ever get to the point we're growing food for CARS instead of people!

Carl

Frank Logullo wrote:

Sounds like it needs to cost 60% of pump gas or one is getting fooled by the pricing as one should get around 60% of the milage on gas. To keep it simple if I'm getting 10 mpg on gas at $2.50 gal I would get around 6 mpg so I would need 1.67 gal of E85 so it would need to cost less than $1.50 gal or gas would be cheaper overall.

WEll, I shoulda stated that ethanol (pure) only has about 60% (IIRC) the chemical energy of petroleum fuels. Exactly what the other 15% of E85 is, and wht 'energy' itbrings to the mix I dunno. But yeah, that needs to be figured into any price comparison. To make matters worse, it is subsidized by the gumint - so those of you who can't or don't use it are helping those Ford drivers save a little money - maybe.

Carl

nothermark wrote:

After reading all that, I will stick with conventional gasoline. Thanks to all the responders.

Seems sort of right. Ethanol is corrosive to rubber and some metals. But, it is really good for turbo applications since you can run significantly higher boost pressures with it. One of the other downsides, is that ethanol will remove all of the oil from inside the cyclinders and it dramitically reduces the viscosity of the oil in the crankcase from any blow-by. But, there are special lubricants you can get; you can't use conventional oils for very long.

It also takes a lot more of it to get the same kind of power as you can from gas.

Ok, gonna play devils advocate here, even though I don't personally use E-85.

Yes, the ethanol market is currently subsidized, but with all the tax breaks that the oil/energy industries get you could say they are subsidized as well. As for the comment that it would be a shame to grow food for cars instead of people, think about it this way, isn't it also a shame if we don't start looking for alternative sources of fuel/energy? If it is a renewable energy, how can we really go wrong? Yes, our current technology uses about as much energy to make ethanol as ethanol will make, that technology won't get more efficient until the process is perfected more and more research is done with ethanol production, without subsidies/grants that technology will never advance. I like the idea of ethanol, I don't think in my lifetime that I'll see ethanol take over for gasoline, but I do think it will become much more common since it is more of a stable commodity than is crude oil.

Oh, by the way, the byproducts of the corn used for ethanol can also still be used for feed for cattle so really we are killing 2 birds with one stone, we develop an alternative to gasoline AND provide feed for a food source for humans.

Now, what I'd like to know is this, does high octane fuel (say 104 unleaded, non-oxygenated) have the same BTU as "normal" 89 octane found at the pumps? Or is it safe to say that since high octane fuel is harder to ignite that its BTU is lower than pump gas? I don't know those answers, I'm just throwing them out there to the group for discussion.

-Chuck

----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl 1 Lucky Texan" Newsgroups: alt.autos.subaru Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2005 10:39 PM Subject: Re: E-85 Gasoline/Ethanol blends. OK for Subaru Turbo?

Well, I'm not aware of any or to what level the oil industry is subsidized, I do know it is and has been taxed at several levels, including some complex 'old oil/new oil' taxes at the well head. I doubt corn is taxed as it comes from the field. You can;t tax businesses anyway - they view it as a cost of operating and just pass it along to the little guy in higher prices (hidden taxes) usually (or layoffs due to automation or moving overseas,etc.)

I'm not sure we know what the formaldehyde caused by combusting alcohol does in the atmosphere yet, maybe someone can educate me about that.

As for the difference in BTU between petroleum fuels, I'm not sure. I think the higher octane just allows an engine design to 'recover' the energy better by avoiding knock at the higher compression required. Probably not much difference.

Carl

iksalama wrote:

Again, playing devils advocate here. Subsidies for the oil industry:

I haven't really found any info on formaldehydes effect on the environment.

E-85 has 87,250 BTU/Gallon whereas Gasoline is 114,000 BTU/Gallon. According to everything I can find on google, traditional gasolines (including leaded race fuel) have approximately the same BTU's.

Well, I don't think ethanol producers should be taxed either. But NOT paying a tax (which will just be passed along to the consumer if it is a business we're speaking of) is not the same as getting a subsidy. It seems particularly harsh for the gumint to force a recently unemployed oil field worker to PAY someone to make ethanol.

Still, the whole market is very complex.

I wonder if we would allow Kansas and Illinois to join OPEC? ;^)

Carl

iksalama wrote:

I agree, there are differences between taxes and subsidies, but if you look at that link you will see how the oil industry is subsidized.

Well, we could post conflicting sources all year.

It would be interesting to compute (if possible) the BTU/subsidy ratios but it would still be tricky to draw a conclusion.

I just wish both these fuels - as well as any other transportation alternatives, were allowed to compete without some buearacrats trying to 'pick the winner' or a Congressman trying to 'bring home the pork'.

I worked in an oil related field for 12 years before being laid off - I know that, as soon as a tecnology begins to look like a viable alternative OPEC will just reduce the price enough to kill the incentive. I get headhunters calling me with position eveytime the price jump 5-10% ,throughout the intervening 17 years, but I know, if I go back - say - now at $66 a barrel, in a few weeks or months it may go down to $54 a barrel and Id just get laid off again.

It's a poor parasite that kills its host, and OPEC knows just how much blood to remove and keep the host alive. They know that Americans would pay 5$-7$ a gallon. At present we are not even paying an historically high price - that was 1980-81 ($92/barrel inflation adjusted).

I feel that eventually we will have a mix of alternatively fueled vehicles on the roads. I just don't see E85 being one of them - certainly not soon.

Carl

iksalama wrote: