I've had this new flex-fuel truck for eight months now, and drove about 1,100 miles a month. I burned E-85 about half the time and premium most of the rest of the time. Yeah the alcohol is cheaper than premium gas but also your mileage goes down when you use it. The folks that sell it tell you it works out to be a bargain, but I really wanted to know how they actually stack up on a money-per-mile basis. Today I finally plugged all the data into a spreadsheet to get some answers. Bottom line over the eight month test is that when I ran E-85 it cost me six cents a mile more than running premium gas (almost always Chevron). Even at the relatively little bit I drive, that's more than $60 a month. I could put that money toward beer or bait or something more useful, and I also wouldn't have to fill the truck up so often.

Then I see in the news that the federal subsidy for ethanol is expired, so I don't expect the price of E-85 to go anywhere but up for the foreseeable future. To hell with it.

Happy New Year!

 

e85 is basically a make work project' that doesn't make sense for any other reason,
imho
well, nice to have larger injectors if you are gong to put a blower on your truck

 

pulling almost 19mpg on e85 cruising at 75mph in my truck. it's all in the tune. true you will not see the same mpg that you would on pump gas, but you won't get away with cranking 36 degree's of timing at 2k rpms while wide open either.

i run it because i run the timing i want to. being detonation limited pisses me off when i know what it's capable of taking.

thats just me. i like my corn fuel

 

I don't believe it was ever intended to save any drivers money. Its a "green" thing and also allows car companies to take a huge boost in mileage "credit" towards the CAFE.

 

E85 is worth huge power gains in FI applications and also a decent gain in NA applications in bad DA. It also seems to burn cleaner. Other than that unless you have a high compression setup to run it I don't see benifit. It can be tuned to get within a couple of mpg of gas if you get the tune right.

 

That's the hidden benefit I really would love to use one of these days!


Hell yeah - for what you're doing with it it's perfect.


Agreed. I'm just glad to finally know how bad a deal it is for the way I use it.

 

Wish we had e85.. Heck with the price, more timing IMO.

 

It's all in you what your looking to use it for. If I didn't have e85 local to me I would have never put a turbo on my truck. Once you tune on e85 for performance, it's next to impossible to want to go back to skunk 93. I added 5 degree's on my stock timing curve (out of boost) just to help move this 80E around. Then had to run a 93 tune to get me by a couple times when I was out of town and the truck was horrible in comparison.

 

I enjoy the e85 occasionally around town... Lol ... Also with the tune and the flex fuel the truck adjusts the timing accordingly when it senses the corn it changes the timing... I like the fact I can run it when I want and still get the power... Best of both worlds ... I was told its anywhere from 10-15% more power

 

Love e85 for boost. But I will have to say, the mileage does suck pretty bad, even with all of that added timing. 8-9 mpg in town compared to 12 on 93.