Quote:
Originally Posted by jblmr2
It's always been my understanding that non-ethanol gas will produce better mpg than ethanol "enhanced" fuel. Back in the day when all gas was gas, not a gas ethanol mix, I got 2 to 4 more mpg. Around here non-ethanol is hard to find and usually goes for a premium price. You have to do some number grinding to determine if its worth while.
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Yes, ethanol has less energy per unit of volume than 'straight gas' so you will see a mileage decrease as you need to put your foot down a little more to go the same speed. It also corrodes certain rubbers used in older cars and soaks up water which could be bad but typically neither is a problem as most people drive newer cars and we typically burn enough fuel all the time for the moisture collection to ever come to anything meaningful.
Ethanol is more knock resistant so you can run more advanced timing and higher compression ratios to compensate for the lack of energy per volume, that's why E85 tunes show such good gains on stock everything else (Sprint/Outlaw racecars run straight ethanol). And since it is renewable it is likely that ethanol in some form is here to stay to subsidize fossil fuels, it's only cheap now because of government subsidies but the fact that we can grow it and process it on this continent are not something to laugh at.