Just asking... Fox news just aired a segment where there is a growing debate concerning ethanol (about 10%) in every gallon of gas, and those who prefer ethanol free gas.

They interviewed a fat cat EPA guy who was saying that most people want pollution free gas ... that immediately fired off the DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER WILL ROBINSON early warning system in my brain so I decided to go a googling and found that ethanol does indeed damage our car engines:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/car...e-damage-engine

So yet again, the government is dictating terms:

1. High Gas Prices when government could easily make it cheaper by allowing more drilling

2. Introduce additives to the gasoline that lowers the total energy output per gallon and in the end shortens the lifespan of the vehicle so that you will have to buy more costlier, less fuel efficient cars more often and hopefully force you into an economic situation where you give up on cars and ride buses, trains, bicycles, or some other 'GREEN' form of public transportation.

I am about to buy a new car. I have been thinking about the price of gas and this is leaning me towards the Honda Prius V . I chose the V (Five) because I need some cargo room to carry rockets, radio control planes, packages, groceries, stuff.

I am now going to make an active search to see if any gas stations in the Phoenix area sell ethanol free gasoline and purchase from there. Even if it costs me a bit more, I think I am going ethanol free from here on out.

Jonathan

I wouldn't recommend a Honda Prius, since Toyota makes the Prius?

You may need to do a bit more car research.

I want my Jetta turbo diesel back but at over 500,000 miles on Michigan roads I just had to say goodby.

BTW the engine from my old Jetta diesel was purchased from me and now resides in a guys fishing boat.

He threw the car away.

__________________
"I'm a sandman. I've never killed anyone. I terminate runners when their time is up." Logan from "Logan's Run"

http://sandmandecals.com/

In have a friend that bought an electric Leaf. He swears by the $20 a month cost and in his case he has a Lincoln Town Car for longer trips.

I have another friend that got one of those electric/gas cars and also swears by it and offers that if he needs it he has gas.

I drove a Jetta diesel and a Rabbit diesel for many years and it is an interesting lifestyle to only fill your tank twice a month and not care how much it costs.

I drove the Jetta to Danville, IL launch from LA, CA and filled the tank in St. Louis, MO. That was a strange feeling to essentially never need fuel.

VW TDI is beyond awesome and if they would put one in a truck or van format I would be all over that for the company. I almost bought a TDI delivery van when I went to Mexico but there was no legal way to import it.

Jerry

Here you go Jonathan. http://www.poi-factory.com/node/29903

Federal law requires adding ethanol to gasoline in many (most?) metropolitan areas in the name of cutting air pollution. Well, it doesn't actually mandate ethanol, but after MTBE fell out of favor, ethanol is the only realistic alternative.

On the way to NARCON, I made a side trip to St Louis to pick up some old computer equipment for my collection. That took me through East Oklahoma. There were some stations along that route which touted no ethanol in their gas, at a higher price. Since my vehicle goes about 10% farther on pure gas, a quick mental calculation showed me the higher price was not worth it. The only benefit would be longer range, but I already get around 400 miles per tankful of gasahol.

One thing is worth considering: some cars have computer engine controls which can adjust operating parameters to take advantage of higher octane fuel for higher performance and mileage. If the percentage of gain in mileage is more than the percentage increase in cost for premium fuel, it actually makes financial sense to buy the more expensive stuff. Back when gas was a dollar a gallon, a twenty cent spread on price between them was astronomical. At three to four dollars a gallon, twenty cents is much smaller.


Bill

__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill!

If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too...

Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit.

: countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ;

Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding...

Nuther link.

http://pure-gas.org/

Yeah, Ethanol is really bad for my GSE. That is my 77 GMC Motorhome I take to launches. I've replaced all the fuel lines with Stainless and only have ethanol rated fuel lines where flexibility is needed. The Quadrajet was rebuilt with (hopefully) Ethanol proof stuff. Only my fuel pump (which is new) is in need of replacement. I'll be installing two in-tank electric pumps next fall to replace it and deal with vapor lock. Other than the Vapor Lock, that Olds 455 Runs Great. Who needs Fuel Injection!

__________________
-Chr$
NAR 79536 TRA 15040 L1
Superstition Spacemodeling Society (SSS) Treasurer
www.sssrocketry.com
SAM 0488
"Prefers Plastic Nose Cones"

Driving a Rocket V8 to a rocket launch...


Bill

__________________
It is well past time to Drill, Baby, Drill!

If your June, July, August and September was like this, you might just hate summer too...

Please unload your question before you ask it unless you have a concealed harry permit.

: countdown begin cr dup . 1- ?dup 0= until cr ." Launch!" cr ;

Give a man a rocket and he will fly for a day; teach him to build and he will spend the rest of his days sanding...

Yuuuuup!

__________________
-Chr$
NAR 79536 TRA 15040 L1
Superstition Spacemodeling Society (SSS) Treasurer
www.sssrocketry.com
SAM 0488
"Prefers Plastic Nose Cones"

Get ready... they just approved 15% ethanol blends...

Ethanol can work... it's worked running cars on 100% ethanol down in Brazil for decades. It's all about HOW its done... the materials and stuff...

The problem I have with ethanol is the US's stupid reliance on CORN (grain) based ethanol... this is just stupid, because in terms of energy equivalence, it takes 4 quarts of (largely imported) oil to produce 5 quarts of finished ethanol. You dump a 56 pound bushel of corn into a distillery, ferment it, and process it, and get some ethanol and 44 pounds of dry distiller's grain (DDG) animal feed as a byproduct (well, actually it's heavier because the mash that comes out of the fermentation process is full of water, making it wet distillers grain, (WDG) which is still an excellent animal feed-- WDG, when dried, is DDG, suitable for storage and delivery over long distances, unlike WDG which is best used in-situ). Now, the fermentation process uses up the starch, which is converted into sugar and eaten by the yeast that then p!ss out alcohol as a metabolic waste product... but the protein in the grain is untouched... so actually the protein is concentrated and the DDG is pretty much comparable to crushed soybean meal in feed value, making it MUCH more valuable than the original corn... which is why the big agribiz companies LOVE grain ethanol so much... they're taking "cheap" corn, fermenting it, producing high-priced fuel additive ethanol, and getting higher-priced animal feed (though less of it) as a byproduct... win/win/win...

But it's still stupid... people get the mistaken idea that we should replace our entire motor fuel system with ethanol... to do that would require not only about 3-4 times the land presently in cultivation, with ALL of it dedicated to growing corn for ethanol, but ALSO require 4 times as much imported oil in order to grow, harvest, haul, process, and deliver that much ethanol... somehow raising our oil imports 400% doesn't seem like a good idea to me!

Ethanol works in Brazil because they use SUGARCANE ethanol... Brazil grows more sugarcane than they can possibly use, due to the tight restrictions on table sugar production set by the quotas of the international sugar compact, which was set up to prevent the total collapse of the sugar prices from overproduction. SO, sugar production factories in Brazil merely add fermentation tanks to their production facilities... if they're producing table sugar, they send the sugar liquer to refining towers and granulators... if they're producing ethanol, they send the liquid sugar to the fermentation tanks... in goes concentrated sugar-water and after the fermentation, out comes 100% pure ethanol... no by-products to deal with, and much higher output of ethanol... In fact, the process is SO much more efficient than Grain ethanol, that basically you get three gallons of ethanol for every gallon of oil energy equivalent you put into the system...

The US USED to be one of the largest sugar producers on Earth... now the industry is practically dead, except for a few holdout areas in Louisiana and Florida along the Gulf Coast... heck this area used to be a HUGE sugarcane producing area, (hence why the suburb of Houston is called "Sugarland", but the industry died here in the early part of the 20th century). Sugarcane is a fairly easy crop to grow (though planting and harvesting is more difficult than "grain" is) and better suited for ethanol production... but ADM and Cargill can't get rich off sugarcane ethanol, so that's why you don't see it in the US. Heck, between sugarcane production in the south (sugarcane is MUCH better adapted to growing in the Deep South than corn is, actually) and sugar beet production in the north, we could, with some 'incentives" from the gov't, produce a LOT more ethanol and reduce the demands for oil imports using the more efficient sugarcane and sugarbeet produced ethanol over grain ethanol... but of course that would cut into the big multinational agribiz's profits, so that will never happen... Instead, the gov't subsidizes ethanol production, paying the big agribiz's to produce it and sell it cheap to the oil industry (which they also subsidize for "requiring" them to buy and blend in ethanol), meanwhile when sugarbeet producers in the Midwest have a bumper crop and produce too much, Uncle Sam issues them "sugar certificates", which are basically ownership papers on a specific amount of sugar, based on the yield and quality of their crop (say if their crop would have produced 200 tons of sugar, they get ownership of 200 tons of refined sugar that Uncle Sam owns in a warehouse somewhere). The farmers then have to sell these "sugar certificates" on the open market, thereby keeping the traders and speculators happy as they rape the farmers on the price due to the "surplus" of sugar production, and then Uncle Sam simply lets the sugarbeets rot in piles outside the sugar plants, since they don't need to produce more sugar since they've already produced up to the nation's sugar quota under the sugar compact...

Neat huh... the whole thing is just a big moneymaking scheme from top to bottom... everybody is in everybody else's pocket... THAT is how the system (this country) works...

As for ethanol and engine damage, well, I've got 263,000 on my 2002 F-150, and a lot of those are pretty hard towing miles, so I must be doing something right...

Later! OL JR

__________________
The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!