So my truck is flex fuel and up until now I hadn’t been able to find a station that offered Ethanol, but this weekend came across E85 at the Turkey Lake service plaza on the turnpike. It was only $2.26 a gallon so I decided to take advantage.
I did some reading on it and I guess the E85 gets worse gas mileage and doesn’t provide as much power to the engine though. It seems the only advantages to it are less effect on the environment and cheaper price.
Just thought I’d share.
[B I’m honestly surprized you did not have probs related to your first fill up with ethanol in a g.m product. I do fuel sampling and pump calibration testing for dept of agriculture in fl. It has been a major problem for g.m vehicles here in fl. what has been occuring with g.m’s is this ,the owners are running fuel tanks low 1/4 tank or lower at time of fill up.ethanol based fuel cleans like the proverbaly “white tornado”.with the tank low on fuel the ethanol will blast dirt & debris off the bottom of the fuel tank and also mixes with condensation in tank accumulated from running low amounts of fuel over time.then when vehicle is started and driven a few miles will act like contaminated gas (water or dirty gas) sometimes running rough and sometimes making vehicle break down. the bad part is the mechanics will say its water in the gas so they can run up the repair costs when all they actually have to do is change out the fuel filters.yes you are correct though the mileage is less by a couple of mpg with ethanol based fuels.[/b]
I had half a tank of regular and put in half a tank of the E85. I better not run into any problems since the engine is supposed to be designed to accept E85.
switch to CPN (compressed natural gas) and there are tax incentives. I’ve been told it’s cheaper, performs well, and is a lot cleaner. I don’t know how much it cost to have a pump installed at your house and that might offset the savings.