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Date:         Mon, 7 Nov 94 14:56:19 PST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Dave Kautz <dkautz@hpsidms1.sid.hp.com>
Subject:      Re: Ethanol

> David Carment writes:

> A Gas company up here in Ottawa has Ethanol blend at the same price as > regular. I asked him if it was good for air cooled engines and his answer > was it has 15% higher octane, runs cleaner and cooler. Any opinions, > advice, experience with using ethonal blend for air-cooled Vanagon engines? > > BTW its 55 cents CDN per litre up here.....DC > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > There was an interesting article in _Porsche Panorama_ about oxygenated fuels about a year ago. On vehicles with oxygen sensors, very little changes except fuel mileage which drops (there's less heat available in Ethanol). On vehicles without O2 Sensors, exhaust emissions were shown to drop along with driveability and fuel economy. The air to fuel ratio for ethanol is different than that for gasoline (numerically lower) so unless one can richen up their mixture the engine effectively runs lean.

There was also considerable discussion of the corrosive nature of the oxygenators. Although not as bad as methanol, Ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline. The article suggested using gasoline containing MTBE (Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether???) because it is less corrosive but I have not been able to find a gas station employee yet who could tell me what their company was using as an oxygenator. The article said that ethanol smells sweet and MTBE smells like formaldehyde. I think all gasoline smells like sh*t, so I haven't followed this up.

Dave Kautz '74 Westfalia sh*t.


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