Alright, so I took an Environment class this year and my professor talked about this one website (Alcoholcanbeagas.com if anyone is interested). Granted the guy that runs the website can seem like a fruitcake at times but brings up some valid and great points.

Anyways he talks about how most vehicles can work their way up to about 50% e85 without any conversion. But also on his website, for about $400 he has a little kit (not sure if its new injectors or a computer bypass or what) that allows your vehicle to run on 100% alcohol, or regular gas or any mixture in between.

I was wondering if anyone uses E85 through a conversion or otherwise. I apologize if this post ends up looking like an ad for the website, but I'm genuinely curious about what other people think.

Anyways for anyone who doesn't know E85 is 85% ethanol, made from corn. It's close to carbon neutral for the environment and usually 60-80 cents cheaper than regular unleaded. On top of that you get a tax write of for using it, which makes it even cheaper. I live in central Illinois so there are E85 stations in nearly every semi-big town.

 

Yes E85 is less costly than the E10 found in most filling stations, better for the environment, has a higher octane rating, and alcohol is renewable. The problem is that a gallon of alcohol has fewer BTU or calories than a gallon of gas. To run a vehicle on E85, you need about 26% more fuel:
http://zfacts.com/p/436.html So, you would need bigger injectors to run strictly E85, and you would need to reset the ECU to learn how much fuel to deliver. The problem is when you switched back to E10, then you would get too much gas, run rich, and get poor MPG.

About the only way to get close to a break even is if you can raise the compression pressure (via compression ratio, or turbocharging/supercharging) to take advantage of the higher octane.

Do your research and then buy a flex fuel capable vehicle if you think it is worth it to run E85.

 

Did some reading about E85 a few years ago, If I remember right E85 gets lower mpg so it zeros any money savings, you have to replace all rubber hoses and such in fuel system because E85 will break them down and production of E85 causes about the same amount of pollution as burning oil base fuels. Do lots of research before you spend your dollars. In todays world science is tainted by politics. IMO if E85 was a good deal companies with large fleets like UPS, Fedex would be switching to it as they retire there older trucks.

 

A majority of some company's with bigger fleets are switching their trucks to propane. I worked for Schwan's in their warehouse and all of their trucks are propane. I know of a guy on another jeep forum who is building, I believe a TJ, to run on propane...E85 is really overrated. Yeah, you drive by a gas station and see it's a buck cheaper, but the cost to redo all of your rubber lines...not worth the trouble

 

The only reason e85 is any cheaper is because of the Federal Govt. stepping in and subsidizing the corn fuel. With out the subsidies e85 would be close to $2.00 more per gallon than the current pricing. I will stick with good old gasoline as long as I can.

So more expensive to produce and makes a less efficient fuel. Seems like a winner to me.

Oh and guess where that subsidy money comes from? Yup your pockets.

 

I have never used e85 in my jeep but I have to in my air-cooled vw bug. It helps the motor run cooler which in turn means my engines are lasting longer per tear down after each season. Now e85 does use more fuel than gas but for me the cooling in the car is more important than the mileage. If you want to convert your jeep to something other than gas I would recommend propane.

 

going e85 is impractical like e85 itself fuel that could be food (i like my tortilla chips)
I assume you want to do this for the environmental friendliness of it but it would be smarter to go diesel and veg conversion as labor intensive as it may be but you get to convert wasted oil and such too fuel way cooler

 

People need to get over the environmental friendliness of any type of currently available fuel. Anything you do will never overcome the pollution created when your car is made. Ethanol is just a bunch of political bs brought to you by none other than, corn fuel lobbyists in Iowa and other ethanol producing states.

 

E85 is plentiful where I'm from... but the 25% drop in price doesn't quite cover the drop in mpgs. If the fuel sytem and motor were engineered to run e85 full time (read FULL TIME, not the flex fuel crap!) you would get better mpg and more hp. Increased compression and advanced timing coupled with the extra mass of fuel makes for a good machine, not something I would jump into without the proper tuning equipment though. Improper tuning for ethanol heavy fuels will destroy a motor QUICK. Might build a motor up for it someday, not looking forward to paying for the custom pistons and programmable ecu though!

Joe

 

i would never run e 85...even if i had a flex fuel car. imo ethanol is such a waste...there are so many better choices out there to be researching, yet we dump so much money into ethanol subsidies which to me is like just throwing money onto a bonfire

 

I have no real input one way or another except to say that if you DID decide to run E-85 in an XJ there is a fuel injector readily avaliable that would allow you to do it. The 0 280 155 789 injectors are a direct swap for a 99+ XJ and would require only changing the electric plugs on an earlier model but those are easily avaliable at any salvage yard.

If anyone is willing to try I happen to have a few sets of the 789's for sale. They will burn E-85 OR regular unleaded gas by the way.

 

i would run it if i had a motor setup to do so. cool thing about e85 is it burns alot cooler and cleaner so you can raise the compression ratio up and make more power. with a properly tuned and setup motor you can make alot more power than a 93 octane.