What's the real skinny with E85?
 

The one station in my market that I planned to use, just told me it is discontinuing it and changing the pumps to E15. An internet search pulls up a dozen stations in my market allegedly selling it, extolling its virtues and raving about how it's growing in popularity. In fact nobody sells it here now. The closest availability may be 50-60 miles and I'm not even sure of that.

If enough people wanted this stuff here, someone would be selling it. Looks like it had its day 4-5 years ago with high pump prices, but at least in my area there doesn't seem to be much demand.


I will say that just an OFT tune for 93 made a big difference. I was looking for another big jump with E85 today, but that's not an option now. Guess I'm in the market for a header.

One of the primary drivers for use of ethanol as fuel was our dependence on foreign oil. When we had to buy oil from Saudi Arabia, the corn lobby could push ethanol as a substitute.

But with the advancements in technology that allow oil to be pulled from oil sands and major reserve areas being opened up for drilling, we're no longer dependent on foreign oil. Now market forces take over, with consumers evaluating ethanol on its own merits rather than other factors propping up demand artificially.

The result is that people have realized ethanol is just not the superfuel it was marketed to be. It makes more sense in their daily lives to buy fuel that is mostly gasoline instead.

If I'm a station owner, I'm not going to tie up money and tank capacity in inventory of something few people want to buy.

I finally flashed the E85 tune on mine - only took six and a half years. The butt-dyno suggests it really does make a difference (this after having driven it with the basic OFT tune for years now). Gas mileage hasn't dropped significantly either and in my area E85 is about 2 bucks a gallon so I'm definitely breaking even in comparison to Premium, if not actually coming out a dash ahead.

Good stuff, the E95 is mo' better.

We have a locally owned company that is installing E85 pumps in almost all their stations. I can go anywhere in town and get it now. It’s always about $1/gal less than 93. My mileage dropped to about 22. It has a dramatic effect on the car though. I hope there is enough demand to prevent our stations from doing away with it. I don’t want to go back to 93.

I haven't found anywhere here where I can get it, and that's a big disappointment. We have a station chain called Racetrack here which had at least one station selling it, but discontinued. An aggravating angle is the misinformation on the web. Searches turn up a dozen stations near me supposedly selling it, but not one I contacted actually has it.


I wonder if the demand nationally is growing or diminishing. I suspect it may be the latter.

Sort of bizarre but my mileage has increased since flashing to e85 and filling with it this past week. I'm at about 170 miles and half way through my tank. (display used to say approx 31.x mpg and currently at 33.x).

Power increase is very nice.

I’ve seen people use GasBuddy to report ethanol free as E85. GasBuddy doesn’t have an ethanol free option so idiots think E85 is the next closest option which is actually the farthest from the truth.

What's the real skinny with E85?
 

The display isn’t calibrated for E85 unless you modify some tables. If you test manually you will find your mileage has gone way down and will go down even more on the second fill after the remaining 93 is gone.

I use Racetrac for about 95% of my fuel as they are scattered all around the Atlanta area, and most the corridors I drive out of town.

Almost all the ones that I use have e85. Some also have E0. They seem to have had a concerted effort recently to add both so surprised they removed it from yours. Their app shows you which stations have what. E0 is 87 and usually costs the same as E10 93.

I use E85 in our Suburban, which is Flexfuel, and can tell a difference over regular in it.

Miles driven/gallons to fill = mileage. I averaged 29 on 93, and four tanks in with E85 is coming back at 26.

Yeah mine went from about 28 to 21. One of these days I will change the calibration on the display to match my actual mileage. I don’t stress over it much though. I just drive until it needs gas. Hahaha

How is that accomplished? Mine has never been right even with 93 octane E10. It has always been way too optimistic.

I found two Racetracs which say they sell it, but the closest one is a 25-mile round trip. And I have one less than a mile from me with the nozzles zip tied to the frame and scheduled to be removed.

My E85 mileage is pure shit, because I can't help but wind out the gears constantly when I've got a tank of it.

A gas station near my work just got e85. Been running gruppe s headers with an oft tune on 92. Any risks with running e85 I should be aware of before I flash? Did some searching and couldn't find many problems with it.

Hello fellow Sarasotan...Sarasotian...Sara....whatever.

Anyway Citgo on Clark Rd has the juice you need. I've also heard Thornton's up near SR64 has e85, but can't confirm as I've never been there. I'm actually headed down to Clark to refuel later today.

Flash away.

Thanks! I checked stations on Clark yesterday, but must have missed that one. I'm headed down there right now.

Let us know how it goes.

isn't e85 bad/harsh for fuel lines and anything rubber?

anyone in socal who ran e85 and switched back to 91 have any issues passing smog?

You will have zero issues if you back to stock tune and stock exhaust with the cats still in place :)

if you are driving something from the 80's or earlier than yes. Modern cars have higher quality everything.

good to know :thumbsup:

true, but the 86 was never made to take e85, so i doubt the components were designed to take e85...and when something is doing what it wasn't designed for, issues happen....

There are people who have reported running E85 for 4+ years with no issues.

You're right about the Citgo, and Thornton's does have it at some of it+'s pumps. I just have to drive a half tank of 93 out of my rig now before re I can fill up at Citgo. I'm so glad you told me about that. I checked every station on Clark the day before, but somehow missed that one.

I have been running it for 4 years , along with a header and ECUTek , but i store it with a tank of 93 . Never had any problems and Blackstone oil report has come back good.

I know the $ per HP on this car is pretty expensive, but I've long been tempted to do a full exhaust and tune and I briefly thought I might as well throw E85 in there too while I'm at it. Someone had told me it was hard on the car/could foul it up, but with this info maybe it's back on the imaginary list.

There are a ton of people on this forum running it and I can’t recall a single person reporting any issues at all. I’ve been on it for one year now. All you need to run E85 is a tune and you can flash one with a $170 Tactrix cable. It’s by far the best bang for the buck for our car. I’d even do E85 before doing exhaust.

I haven't heard of any problems with e85 on this car other than hard starts in colder weather.

Personally I'm on my 4th tank of e85 and no real problems so far. Did have one p0462 code initially, but cleared it and it never came back. I'd agree it's the best bang for buck power mod for the car.

Not sure where you heard that but that is not an issue on our cars and that sounds like uneducated hearsay, best bet is to look on the forums for true evidence of it actually performing well.

I've run it for three years now with no issues. Even during the winter with a a few adjustments to the tune it runs pretty damn well above 30 degrees F. Highly recommend a set of headers and an OFT tune or set of headers and a flex fuel kit and tune.

It livens the car up nicely and the power is definitely worth it as is the smoothness throughout the rev range. Only downside I noticed was the MPG hit honestly, but in reality with more power your probably tapping the gas more and more for feeling adding to the mpg hit.

If you live in a colder climate it may be best to look into steve99 and waynos tips in the tuning forum to improve the cold start performance with e85. Or you may entirely swap back over to the 93 octane tune before the winter hits.

I believe it was a general statement from a buddy of mine that definitely knows more about cars than me. I'm glad our cars are fine with it, but maybe he just meant it can damage other cars. I will definitely keep this is mind.

There are two categories of vehicles that don't play well with ethanol in the fuel.

Cars made before about 1975. The further back you go the worse effects the ethanol has. This was mostly due to the fact that the majority of the hoses and seals were still made of natural rubber and other materials that would dry out very quickly if there was any ethanol at all in the fuel. They could literally dissolve in E85. These cars don't like unleaded fuel as it is so when you start adding ethanol they just say "screw you" and start to leak.


Two stroke engines well up into the late 90s. These are the engines that perpetuate the myth that ethanol is bad for newer cars. Boats, snowmobiles, etc that use two stroke oil to lubricate can have issues since the oil does not work properly with higher levels of ethanol. The ethanol washes the oil off of the surfaces where it should stick. This is why you will find that most marinas have ethanol free fuel.


Any 4 stroke engine built in the last 40 years or so can handle all the ethanol you can throw at it perfectly fine.

So you guys who run E85, if you're on a trip and can't find it, or you show up at your favorite station and they're out of it, or you're just on the wrong end of town where they don't have it when you need to fuel up and have to use E10 instead, do you reflash your car back to E10 right there in the gas station?

I'm interested in responses you'll get to your question. Instructions I got with my OFT says it shouldn't be left in a hot car. If that's a hard and fast rule, it could be a real problem. Especially for a black car in Florida.
:sigh:

I toss the OFT into the car if I'm making a trip where that might be an issue. As a general rule, I've been filling up when I hit the quarter tank mark (used to not really worry about it until the light came on). That gives me time to drive to a different station if I need to. Fortunately I have lots of options in my area - 7 stations within 5 miles or so, over a dozen within 10.

Typically yes. Sit and idle for a while, flash, drive. It's not a problem, at all. As others have said, it's the best 500 bucks you can spend on the car.

FWIW, mine has been in my glovebox in Florida for 3 years and so far so good.

I just fuel up with 93 and go when I don't have the option for ethanol. My flex fuel tune adapts on the fly so no reflash required.

EDIT: when I used to have my OFT, the process was put fuel in car, drive car down road, wait for fuel trims to drastically change, THEN reflash.

This is the correct procedure. You don’t want to flash it before the fuel trims hit 20