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1
- #41
NickJ67
Mechanical
- Nov 13, 2009
- 86
In the UK a few years back we had a small E85 "moment" with flex fuel cars available from Ford (Focus), Volvo and Saab.
These were all equipped with fuel sensors ( I also have no idea how they work) to detect ethanol content and adapt to make the drive experience seamless. Saab made a bit more of it by upping the boost while running E85 quite a bit so that car at least had quite a bit more power on E85.
Trouble was that E85 availability was patchy (though one supermarket did make it available at all their stations) and it was priced the same as ordinary 95 octane petrol in spite of a government subsidy. There were some tax incentives available and a 20% rebate on the fuel but as fuel use was at least 30% more this wasn't a particularly great incentive! So not many cars sold. Not much E85 sold. Now they just dose ethanol into all our fuel at 5%,possibly rising to 10% in the future as is already the case in much of Europe. I think that in theory there are still flex fuel cars available new but I'm not sure where they find the fuel as since the subsidy lapsed in 2010 it seems to be more or less unavailable.
As an aside, while it was available, I messed up and unintentionally filled my late 60's Triumph with E85. Fitted with home-brewed electronic injection, my error showed up immediately (no float bowls!) and the car ran very badly. However, it was able to drag itself 10 miles home to a laptop. After upping the fueling by 30% across the board it did actually run reasonably well, but with a long trip planned for the next day I chickened out and drained the tank. My elderly Honda mower drank the rejected fuel over the next two summers and actually ran perfectly well on it apart from being very hard to start from cold.
I've not had any problems running the electronically injected Triumph on E5 or even E10, but on a continental trip last year, several other 60s Triumphs in our party had major issues after filling up with E10. All were carb equipped cars and mostly related to really bad vapourisation, with a couple of fuel pump failures thrown in. A couple of cars with Lucas mechanical injection also appeared unaffected.
Nick
These were all equipped with fuel sensors ( I also have no idea how they work) to detect ethanol content and adapt to make the drive experience seamless. Saab made a bit more of it by upping the boost while running E85 quite a bit so that car at least had quite a bit more power on E85.
Trouble was that E85 availability was patchy (though one supermarket did make it available at all their stations) and it was priced the same as ordinary 95 octane petrol in spite of a government subsidy. There were some tax incentives available and a 20% rebate on the fuel but as fuel use was at least 30% more this wasn't a particularly great incentive! So not many cars sold. Not much E85 sold. Now they just dose ethanol into all our fuel at 5%,possibly rising to 10% in the future as is already the case in much of Europe. I think that in theory there are still flex fuel cars available new but I'm not sure where they find the fuel as since the subsidy lapsed in 2010 it seems to be more or less unavailable.
As an aside, while it was available, I messed up and unintentionally filled my late 60's Triumph with E85. Fitted with home-brewed electronic injection, my error showed up immediately (no float bowls!) and the car ran very badly. However, it was able to drag itself 10 miles home to a laptop. After upping the fueling by 30% across the board it did actually run reasonably well, but with a long trip planned for the next day I chickened out and drained the tank. My elderly Honda mower drank the rejected fuel over the next two summers and actually ran perfectly well on it apart from being very hard to start from cold.
I've not had any problems running the electronically injected Triumph on E5 or even E10, but on a continental trip last year, several other 60s Triumphs in our party had major issues after filling up with E10. All were carb equipped cars and mostly related to really bad vapourisation, with a couple of fuel pump failures thrown in. A couple of cars with Lucas mechanical injection also appeared unaffected.
Nick
