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Ethanol Free Gas?

9K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  Wally2005 
#1 ·
I bought a new 300C about two weeks ago and wonder if there are any advantages to using ethanol-free gasoline. If I were storing the car for several months, I would definitely fill it with the non-ethanol fuel, since E10 gas can degrade rather quickly. But for ordinary use, I wonder if there's any reason to pay about 10% more for the enthanol-free product. My first tank was mid-grade with ethanol, and I am currently working thorugh the second tank of enthaol-free. I don't notice any difference in performance; mileage may be better, but that could be driving circumstances as well. Thanks for any observations.
 
#2 ·
Yes. Ethanol burns hotter, Engines do not like heat. It breaks things. Also, since it burns hotter, it burns faster.
 
#3 ·
You should definitely see an improvement in gas mileage. There are not as many BTUs per gallon of ethanol as in real gasoline. You should see an improvement enough to pay the extra 10%. If it were available in my area I would definitely use it myself. The ethanol does nasty things to a lot of the rubber compounds used in the fuel system.
 
#4 ·
How can it both "burn hotter" and have "less BTU"...that makes no sense.

Online i found this:
76,000 = BTU of energy in a gallon of ethanol
116,090 = BTU of energy in a gallon of gasoline

and this article on engine basics.com (i can't post links yet) saying E85 burns cooler: E85 Vs Race Gas | Cooling advantage and tuning Ethanol[/url]

so in fact you should use full gas if you can find it and you should get better mpg. However if you wanted to get a CMR tune for E85 you could probably get some of those differences worked out.
 
#5 ·
It burns hotter because you use more of it. I recently made a trip to Iowa where you can buy Ethanol free gas. My mileage increased from 23 MPG up to about 26 MPG when I was using the Ethanol free gasoline. It dropped again as soon as I came home and was forced to use 10 percent Ethanol again.
More BTU's, more MPG. It's called Physics. But Politians don't understand the real world.
 
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