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[J.J.]

A story about a local converting his HD to handle E85.

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2008/05/23/news/local/doc48363b6bc5991521778039.txt

[amigo Jorge]

interesting 

[IRyde]

Just curious.  Does anyone know if E85 is readily available?

[grc]

Just curious.  Does anyone know if E85 is readily available?

It is becoming more available all the time, but I wouldn't consider taking any trips with a 5 or 6 gallon fuel tank and a bike optimized just for E85.  If you notice in the story, this bike wasn't converted to true "flex fuel" status, it was just retuned for the correct AFR using E85.  A true flex fuel vehicle includes a sensor that determines the current ratio of alcohol and sends that information to a special ECM that can adjust the target AFR on the fly.  With a true flex fuel vehicle, there would be no problem if you couldn't find E85 and had to run gasoline.  With the simple solution in the subject article, if you are forced to run regular gas, it will run very rich.  

BTW, I wouldn't take a lot of what was said in that article as gospel.  There is absolutely no way, for instance, that you would get the same mpg on E85 that you got on pure gasoline.  And I don't think 3000 miles is enough experience with the change to be making comments like it is a myth that you need special fuel system materials.  I'll place my faith in the years of testing done by the auto industry, which has resulted in special materials throughout the fuel system on flex fuel vehicles.

Jerry

Try this site for more up-to-date info on availability:
http://www.e85refueling.com/
                                                                       

[Buvy]

I'm giving real serious thought to getting an E85 truck to replace my aging 2001 gasoline truck.



http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/

It sure would be nice if Harley would make an E85 upgrade for existing bikes as well as produce new E85 bikes so that as stated in the article we are not 100% dependent on availability of E85 or have to dyno tune our rides to run on E85.  Also let's face it you can run E100 the reason they put 15% gasoline in there is simply to make it toxic as E100 is moonshine this means a drunk can't run up to the pump and get loaded.

I used to be anti ethanol as an alternative fuel source but now that I've done a little research into the subject it's amazing the number of renewable sources we have with the most fascinating being growing cattail marshes to treat sewage then harvesting the cattails for ethanol.  That's a win-win scenario if I've EVER heard one.  Can you imagine how many jobs we could create locally?

Blows my feeble mind.

Oh and as a Harley owner there are two issues to deal with

1) Ethanol burns much cooler than gasoline thus you wouldn't have all the overheating issues with our air-cooled bikes - AWESOME

2) The harmonics of ethanol burning are vastly different from that of gasoline so we would lose the classic harley rumble - NOT AWESOME

I would give up 2 for 1 personally but when you throw in all the adders of creating jobs locally, keeping the money here locally and out of the middle east's grubby hands, dropping the price for end users, and helping the environment by cutting pollution substantially I couldn't see any Harley rider hanging on to #2 but I could be wrong.

[FLSTFI Dave]

My .02, E-85 sucks and is not cost effective.

I have a 2007 Chevy Impala, that is an E-85 flex fuel car.  I got it thinking how great it would be to be able to run E-85, and save money.

It costs a whole lot more per mile to run it on E-85.

On gas, on the interstate at 72 mph I get 31mpg, just over 496 miles per tank.

On E-85 I get 22 mpg or just over 352 miles per tank.

Every place I have seen E-85 it costs the same as regular and sometimes 10 cents less a gallon.

[timo482]

around here - minnesota - e85 costs about the same as gas in the large cities - and costs 30+ cents a gallon less at the country coops. part of that is the coops are who make the stuff, part of it is e85 is trucked or hauled by rail - its not pipelined anywhere so if a station is close to a ethanol plant its very very cheap - at the coop in cologne mn yesterday e85 was 1.60, regular gas was 1.95 - thats normal for that area & that coop.

the actual reason for e85 is not cash in your pocket

its NO cash in the pocket of people that hate the US. when ever you burn gasoline you are paying about 70+ cents a gallon out to some oil king who has publicly said they want to kill us all and will use cash from us to do so. you are paying folks in Venezuela or nigeria, you also are paying folks in mexico, Saudi arabia, russia, etc for there oil. NONE of them have any interest in helping us out.

dont buy e 85 to save cash - buy e85 to deprive those countries of revenue. [e85 also uses up corn that they used to buy at a subsidized price from the US - ie taxpayers in the US pay to purchase US food & ship it to folks for free & then we buy oil from them & then they shout out "death to america"] as for me id much rather burn the stuff in my car & let them keep there oil.

also of course the alcohol replaces the lead and mtbe.. so... its is greener in that regard. e85 is over 100 octane, if you ran nothing but it you could run 12 to one compression, no problem.

to

[skreminegul07]

From the research I've done on this subject.  First, the taxpayers are subsidizing the production of ethanol, the senators from the area did a great job.  Secondly, Ethanol production is not environmentally friendly as one might think.  Third, this artificial demand has driven up the price of corn that has caused the prices of many foods to go up, which ironically cause to double the animosity in the rest of the world that rely on US exports of grain, add that to the loss of revenue to many countries due to oil prices falling...not good.  Lastly, you get at least 10% less mileage so you have to buy more which offsets any gains.

my .02.  Any time the government is helping you, you lose 2X the gain, unless you are not a citizen, of course.  Maybe we could save gas by have illegals pull our trucks and save diesel?

[FLSTFI Dave]

The countires we import crude from in order are:
Canada
Mexico
Saudi  But Saudi and Mexico frequently switch places.


I do understand not wanting to put money in un friendly countries hands.  Yet ethanal by corn will never come close to replacing even 15% of our imports.

Ethanol has been a big boon to the Corn farmers, as it has driven up cost of Corn and all other produce.  Farmers switch to corn for the subsidies.  It has also driven up the cost of feed for cattle and such.  Driving all food prices higher for US in the USA.

Ethanol for corn is a net energy loss, it takes more energy to make it, than it produces.

Milage is closer to 20 to 23% less on ethanol.

This is another case of our government pushing a bad product, with a poor consumer value.

Ethanol from sugar cane, is much less expensive to make, also uses less energy to make.  Yet we do not do that in the USA, but Brazil and several other countries do.

Ethanol has a much lower BTU content than Gas.  100 octain ethanol will not produce as much power as 89 octain gas.  See octain is not what give the fuel energy, it is what prevents predetonation, and enables fuel to burn cooler.

[timo482]

here is a table for oil imports for dec o8
CANADA   2,033
SAUDI ARABIA   1,394
MEXICO   1,126
VENEZUELA   1,028
NIGERIA   869
ANGOLA   553
IRAQ   519
ECUADOR   252
ALGERIA   235
BRAZIL   208
KUWAIT   194
COLOMBIA   148
CHAD   105
CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE)   95
AZERBAIJAN   78
   
i agree that it would be better for us to make ethanol from something other than corn.
i agree that we subsidize ethanol production
but you must then also agree that we subsidized corn for export and subsidize the shipping of same corn. while paying full price for the oil we purchase.

id still rather burn it and keep all the dollars here - sorry about that.

now if i can just figure out how to do the flex fuel magic on my bike......

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