Quote:
Originally Posted by Dzmitry
Not sure why people believe flex-fuel would be more of an issue than straight E85. In any case, to give a general answer to your question, I don't see why you would need to run 93 through your car. E85 runs cleaner through your fuel system than 93 and helps eliminate carbon buildup, etc. I don't believe there is any actual reason out there for why 93 would be used to "clean up" after long E85 use, certainly none that I have ever read or run into.
The only thing you really need to care about when running E85 is proper care of the vehicle. I assume you are aware that E85 wants to absorb moisture - which can lead to corrosion and such for fuel system components. So take better care of these components (check them / change them more often than typical service intervals may require). Clean your injectors every 30-40K miles maybe. Replace the fuel pump at a shorter interval than recommended - and maybe with an aftermarket that is meant to handle E85. Inspect fuel lines and regulator at times.
The easiest care I can think of to have less worry about all these components is just doing the right things to avoid any water buildup in your fuel system. Don't leave the car sitting around for long periods of time being the big one. Keep your fuel topped off as much as possible is another big one - don't drive the car to empty all the time, and in general avoid it.
The benefit of having flex-fuel in my opinion is just simplifying the worry about some of those things. Because gasoline doesn't absorb moisture, so you reduce that risk (that's pretty much the #1 reason in my opinion that flex-fuel has the upper hand). It also adds benefits in dealing with cold starts. Aside from all that, there isn't much more that I can think of off the top of my head. Flex or straight has proved to work completely fine. Ethanol, in general, just requires a little more care and maintenance to help avoid any future issues.
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Thanks for the help/information. Not sure I understand the person who suggested the e10 occasional clean out vis-a-vis the fuel pump. Either the e85 is going to cause the fuel pump to go or it isn't, right? How would running an occasional tank of e10 "clean it out" and prevent that? It doesn't make any sense to me.
Don't misunderstand what I am saying about flex fuel - I think it is fine assuming everything is working properly. But I think using it and frequently changing what you are running (thus constantly changing your tuning) is more likely to run into an issue with having the wrong tuning than running the same fuel all the time. Of course, it does have the benefit (which probably outweighs my issue) of being able to change tuning depending on the ethanol percentage of the e85 you are running (given it technically can run 51% - 83%).
Understand what you are saying about water and leaving it sit for long periods with e85. Good news is it gets driven frequently and the longest it has ever sat is one week. The drives are generally exactly the kind you would like - commute for 25 minutes on mostly highway miles.
As for the fuel pump, other than getting stuck somewhere in an inconvenient location (which I am not too worried about), don't see why I would ever change it before it fails (if it ever does). It's not a "maintenance part" and other than above, its failure is not otherwise dangerous to other parts of the car.
Also not sure about the advice of cleaning injectors. Seems to me like e85 users should be on a longer, not shorter, interval for cleaning injectors than e10 users would be, right? Am I missing something? How do yo clean injectors?