Gas or Gasohol?

J

Joey

New member
I was talking to my brother who is a well trained GM Technician, yesterday. In our conversation, he mentioned that the Gasohol made a rather large drop in fuel mileage in cars. Out here in Hawaii we have no choice. You get alcohol with your gas. My question is this, when doing long distance riding do you all see the difference in mileage buy using these different fuels? Is is worth it to have alcohol in your gas?
 
Ok, by definition, any gasoline blended with ethanol is technically Gasohol.

It does lower your MPG, but it's not that noticable. Is it a neewded thing? No, but someone thought so and now pretty much everywhere you will find E10 ethanol/gas.
 
I have a choice so my bike gets the best premium I can find. My truck is a flexfuel and the mileage on E10 is about 5-10% less than regular. With the E85 it is around 33% less miles per gallon.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I think we have E-10 out here, though it might be E-85 and I have a hard time breaking 38 MPG. Now I need to do some more research on the fuel we have. My brother was telling me that the E-85 does make a HUGE difference. Wow 33%! That would put me close to 50 MPG. Do you notice a difference in engine / oil temperature between the two types of fuel? Thanks for the input.
 
You can currently get up to 10% ethanol at the pump and it doesn't have to be disclosed. You do not want to run E-85 in your bike though. It won't make any more power, your fuel economy will be significantly worse, and it will corrode the fuel system. For a vehicle designed for it, the fuel economy loss isn't as significant, and items like the injectors and fuel lines are made of different materials so the ethanol doesn't corrode them.
 
You need an E-85 engine to run E-85, such as the flex fuel engines offered on some new model vehicles. Harley's will run on 10%, as clearly stated in your owner's manual. Your ethanol out there would probably be the 10% blended. E-85 Pumps would be clearly marked as such.

Yes, you will lose a couple of miles per gallon running 10% ethanol.

http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/new-fuel/files/reynolds-motorvehicle.pdf
 
What I was trying to say is that E10 and E85 give you 10% and 33% less miles per gallon not better. You do need to have a modified engine to run E85, I was just using it as an example of how alcohol is worse for mileage.
 
E-85...........bad stuff all around, extremely poor mileage, and very bad on engines not designed for it, but some senators cousins brother owns an Ethanol plant so they push it off on us because they can.
 
Gasoline: US gallon = 125,000 Btu/gallon

Ethanol: US gallon = 84,000 Btu/gallon

Less energy per gallon equals less MPG. It does burn cooler and helps with pinging, but I use all gas when I can find it.
 
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