Negative, fuel cost per mile will not increase significantly...the e85 is 1.91 whereas regular is 2.69 at the cheapest, with ethanol being around .75 or .70 as efficient it does NOT raise my cost

 

Hey Matt, what's wrong with your truck?

 

The only issue i see with running E85 is if you have a tuner in your truck. They are NOT meant for use with the E85 blend unless specifically stated. i know for a fact Superchips doesn't even have an E85 tune. This came right from one of Ron's posts.

 

I don't understand why not to mix them. If your truck will run on E10 and E85... why wouldn't it run on E43 (I made that up because really you could have Eanything since you are just changing the ethanol to gasoline ratio). We freely swap between the two in the Suburban.

 

Its got a crazy banging in the engine bay (it only happens when driving and you cant target it in the truck), drivers side rear door wont unlock unless you do it manually, driver side front brake randomly locks up ON MY NEW TIRES lol and my trailer harness running lights wont work

I agree with you dirty, im sure running it with a tuner would really screw it up...E85 is like 105 (i think) octane yet produces less power so it seems like a different timing could really screw with the engine. I dont have a tuner so no worry

its not randomly mixing, its the first blend. The truck has to learn the e85 and you cant just fill her up with ethanol your first tank. you are suppost to run full gas, 1/4 gas 3/4 ethanol,and then full ethanol (at any point that you begin wanting to use ethanol). After that learning cycle you can use any blend

 

Some interesting info about E85. I didnt know it was that cheap. No stations around here have it.

 

Not according to my manual it says different on the learning cycle. You must have a quarter tank when switching between the two both ways. So if your running e-85 you must have a quarter tank before putting in regular and vice versa. This is in my 2008 manual.

As for cost savings for me it's not worth it. The cost of e-85 vs regular just doesn't come out on top money wise cause there is very little difference in price. If you so happen to live up north were it is highly subsidized by gov it may be worth the while since it can be as low as a dollar and some change. But down here in ga at least where I live it's only about .50 difference last I checked.

 

The 70% is not about "efficiency" , it's about alcohol having less energy per gallon. Gasoline has 114,000 BTU/gallon, E85 has 81,800 BTU/gallon. That's 71.8% the energy of gasoline.

$2.69 x 0.718 = $1.93/gallon. So assuming there is no extra inefficiency in running E85, you will break even on fuel cost/mile. But your mileage will be 11 MPG or less, and you'll be lucky to get 250 miles on a tank. With no cost savings and more frequent fill ups, I don't see the benefit.

The only reason E85 is even $1.91 is because of heavy government subsidies (read free money for corporate farms) so you are actually paying more than $1.91 a gallon, you just pay the extra to the IRS and the rest of us pay too even if we don't use E85. So no cost savings, fewer miles per tank, and promotes government handouts of our money; I think E85 is a real loser.

 

well we will see what my mileage is...And the moose, i barely get 12 now

 

The people who have drunk this Kool-Aid will not be swayed. The rest of us are subsidizing this boondoggle. If the users had to pay the real cost, they'd drop ethanol in a heart beat.