Pawnees powered by Motor fuel .

Doug Hoffman wrote:
Bruce wrote:
Regrettably the matter is a little more complicated.

South Africa has recently gone through the process of banning TEL and
all of our fuel is effectively somewhere around E85. Sasol produces a
lot of our fuel from coal, and Alcohol is a cheap bye-product.

So - does the addition of alcohol cause older vehicles problems? Our
experience has been: You can count on corrosion to older fuel
injection systems, damage to fuel pumps, rubber seals that don't,
filters that suddenly clog with all the gunge that the ethanol
dissolved off the bottom of your tank - and a host of other problems
mostly related to the water that ethanol invariably introduces.

Yep. The reason is the equipment was designed to run on 100% gasoline.
Start adding alcohol, known to be corrosive to certain metals and to
destroy old make gaskets and seals, and bad things happen. All fuel
system components must be upgraded to survive, at a minimum.


snip

And yes the energy density is lower, so the fuel consumption
deteriorates slightly.

Not slightly. E85 has just 65% of the energy content of gasoline. So
you can only drive 2/3 as far on a gallon.


Most vehicles built in the last ten years to fifteen or so for the
world market are resistant to alcohol and have no problems.

I am highly skeptical that "most vehicles built in the last 10-15 years"
can use E85 without serious side effects(E10, no problem. They were
designed to handle E10. E20? I'll let you experiment with E20 in your
new $40,000 car. Let me know how it goes.). This includes engine
mechanical damage on E85. At least for the vehicles we get in the US.
First, the closed loop fuel delivery system of a non-E85 design will not
have the range of authority to add enough fuel. A lean miss and very
ragged running/loss of power are likely. You could put a hole in the
piston or ruin the catalytic converter. Chances are the check engine
light will come on. Second, the metal corrosive and gasket
incompatibilities are still there, *unless* the vehicle has been
specifically $upgraded$ to tolerate such a high concentration of
ethanol. There is even a special engine oil specified by the auto
manufacturers for use in their E85-compatible vehicles. The fuel and
the engine (and I include the fuel tank, pump, lines and all fuel system
components when I say the engine) are a closely matched pair. Mess with
that and one is inviting trouble.

Read the owner's manual. Call your dealer. Write to your vehicle's
manufacturer. You needn't take my word for it.

Or perhaps you get a very different type of vehicle in South Africa than
we do in the US.

We do - they have been putting alcohol in petrol here since the early 90s so the
local parts manufacturers have modified what they supply. Also the additives are
not simple ethanol, the local refiners have a number of patented products they
can get out of the Fischer-Tropsch process. There are very few USA vehicles on
the roads here - most are european/japanese design with the
koreans/indian/chinese being introduced over the last few years. All of them
work fine on our fuel. 91-97RON unleaded and LRP depending.

Our winch engine is a prehistoric Ford Windsor 302 - it runs happily on LRP
although we did have problems (performance,and lean running) and had to increase
the jet size when the alcohol content increased. We also had to replace all the
fuel lines as they disintegrated reasonably smartly.

My $40K car is a Volvo XC70 - 2.5l petrol turbo - not the "multi fuel" version.
So far so good - 3 years no problems. My previous car was a Renault Scenic -
that went through 4 fuel pumps in short order till they worked out a $1 filter
had corroded in the alcohol...