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My neighbor works for a petroleum service company (he fixes stuff at gas stations). Anyway he showed me how they test for ethanol and it is very simple. In a 100 ml graduated cylinder place about 30 ml of pump gas and fill with water to 100 ml, cork and shake. The ethanol comes out of the gas and dissolves in the water. Check the change in volume of the gas and that amount is ethanol.
It looks like AZ is finally changing their state statute to follow the ASTM standard.
In my city, there are stations that buy e85 from the gas fueling terminal and that tends to always be about 70% ethanol year around (I think the state statute here still says a minimum of 70%). There is one company that has blender plumps at their stations and they have tanks at all their stations that store E98. They blend that E98 with gasoline at the blender pumps to get E85. These stations change the blend ratio on their blender pumps in the spring and fall to get the required vapor pressure for the season. In the summer it is always about E83-84 according to my sensor.
If I lived in AZ, I would call The Jet Industries and express my displeasure at them selling E54 even though the ASTM standard allows this.
Well this blows. I wonder how long until that makes it's way to the east coast?
What is the justification for the change anyway? Is it the oil companies finally getting their way or the subsidies on the ethanol killing the pricing? Just curious...and the even bigger concern is what happens when stations just decide to do away with it all together?
Ugh this sucks.
And as mentioned above, it would be very wise to pick up a tester. I bought one on ebay years ago and I test my fuel every time I fill up and it has saved my motors a couple times now.
There are no subsidies of ethanol. The Volumetric Ethanol Tax Credit expired at the end of 2011. The Renewable Fuel Standard remains in place to provide a way to limit the monopoly of oil.
Depending on how much timing/boost your E85 (say it was E80) tune is running, you may need to pull some timing, and you will for sure have to adjust fueling.
No change in timing or fuelling. The necessary increase in enrichment was handled automatically by the increase in gasoline content. On 76% ethanol, I was at about 12:1, and on 60%, I was at about 11.3:1. Now going to 50% may require some fuelling and timing adjustment, but my guess is that it will have minimal impact for the average E85 tune. Kill-mode tunes will likely have to give up a little.
Kill-mode tunes will likely have to give up a little.
I thought this was the only tune to have...
From my experience different cars like different afrs. I know that sounds weird but I would pick up ~20hp going from an afr of 11.0 to 12.0 on my dsm with e85. But again, now that you speak the words "kill tune" I guess my tunes are all like that
So yeah, changing the content would bug me. I would retune it. But Im like that.
No change in timing or fuelling. The necessary increase in enrichment was handled automatically by the increase in gasoline content. On 76% ethanol, I was at about 12:1, and on 60%, I was at about 11.3:1. Now going to 50% may require some fuelling and timing adjustment, but my guess is that it will have minimal impact for the average E85 tune. Kill-mode tunes will likely have to give up a little.
I could see an average E85 tune running 17-18* of timing out the top turning into a kill mode tune on E50, and pulling a degree or two of timing could help keep things happy.
