| Author | Message | ||
     Bob_thompson |
Ok, so we may or may not believe E10 gasoline (up to 10% ethanol added) is good for the environment but after some research I did, it seems somewhat of a scam. Now in my research I believe the winter and summer blends are probably more important due to their different additives and still a reason for the gasoline companies to adjust for the change overs, i.e. raise prices. Making gasoline out of food products just does not seem wise also and maybe just another excuse for a more greener fuel, Ya right! I want a happy engine, especially my 1125R, in all my vehicles and gas engine equipment and right now thats unpredictable due to the limited stations, only 12 here in all of Utah, carrying E10 free premium fuel which many engines require. Read these few links to get a better perspective of just what is good and bad about E10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel http://www.fuel-testers.com/find_ethanol_free_gaso line.html http://www.fuel-testers.com/list_e10_engine_damage .html To summerize; I believe we can find compromise between clean air and fuel efficiency and yes, even using fossil fuels, until we develop CNG which seems to be the way to go right now due to its great qualities and abundance. Your thoughts are always wanted and respected but please, no politics, just some good common sense input. And I might add in closing; with EBR's race ECM, my 1125R seems to run just fine..........so far, with 91 octane E10. All I can find locally and on my rides. | ||
| Aesquire |
Advantage for adding booze. It is a fair substitute for the previous oxygenator, that turned out to be highly carcinogenic. It is a way to stretch the fossil fuel supply, with a renewable resource. IF you have a variable compression engine, you can get very good power out of it. You can make it from garbage, which is nigh awesome. Disadvantages. It holds water, leading to corrosion problems. Ethanol itself causes corrosion problems. It reduces mileage, since ethanol has less energy per pound, or gallon. So you need bigger tanks to go as far. ( A buddy flew ultralights cross America on booze. They needed a chase van w/trailer to carry the fuel. They had sponsors. The rule on pt 103, ( ultralight airplanes ) restricts the size of the fuel tank, so they had to stop more often.. no choice. ) Most engines don't have a supercharger, and/or can't run a variable compression ratio, so you get less power per than regular old school gas. The Morons in Congress... ( sorry, politics ) made rules and tax incentives so we DON'T make booze from garbage, but from FOOD! Cretins. And that's bi-partisan. The side effects of this are felt in your pocket each time you eat, and around the world as food got more expensive. This has a very real probability to cause mass death in war and civil war. ( in fact it HAS been a factor in civil war in at least 3 countries so far. ) BUT this isn't a knock on booze in gas, but on bad laws about booze in gas. It's not "deregulation" or "no laws" that is the problem, it's bad laws and bad regulation. Bad laws are bad.... duh. CNG for car fuel? not a great idea. By putting all the bets on one fuel, you make that fuel more expensive and screw everyone. nat gas is best used in home heating, and chemical feedstock. Right now the only fossil fuel electric plants being built, ( and darn few of them ) are natural gas. You want to cook, heat, drive and light up the country on the SAME fuel? Bad idea. There is also the minor problem of crash protection with CNG. It may not be a lot harder than with gasoline, but it's probably heavier. You NEED more power plants to have electric cars. Not would like, need. If you push electric power over to safe nuclear, ( pebble bed, Thorium, etc. ) so you take that drain off the fuel stream, maybe, maybe, you can convert some of the cars to CNG and not screw yourself. It might be better to push garbage and agricultural waste into ethanol or methanol production and make all cars flex fuel on whatever we decide is most effective. I was for booze as fuel, until we made it out of food. That's a deal breaker. I'm amazed it hasn't collapsed yet under the weight of sheer dumb. The only reason it hasn't is the politics. You pay for it with your tax dollars. From a pollution standpoint. It take roughly a gallon of diesel to make a gallon of booze to put in a car to burn. The total environmental effects with the current system are WORSE than before. ( and if you're all atwitter with the idea of nuclear power... you've been misled by a generation of propaganda. There is not a commercial nuke plant in America that's base design isn't older than I am. I'm old. The plant that melted in Japan? Old. We've known for years how to make a nuclear plant that won't melt down or fail catastrophically. The Navy runs them all the time. We know how, it's politics, and religious fanatics that keep us from cheap, clean ( no carbon, zip, nada, if that's your religious bag ) renewable power. ) | ||
| Aesquire |
You are also right that winter/summer blends are a major factor. Especially with diesel. My Cyclone ( carb! ) runs just fine on E10. I do have to clean the carb more often. But I don't have that big a choice. NY runs E10. We do need some rationality with the gasoline blends. When there is one Blend for Chicago and another for Ohio, that's just petty bureaucrats, and corruption over riding the science of clean gasoline. It's insane to have multiple standards in multiple states. We may not want to follow Kalifornia's lead on this, but there should be a rational, science based reason to pick fuel blends. | ||
| 99savage |
Aesquireabout said it all, will dispute that carbs need to be cleaned more frequently when running E-10 but pretty much nailed it, especially about N power. Some of the older gaskets & seals were not designed for continuous exposure to alcohol and the problems with older engines, expectantly marine engines were real. - But we have been using "dry-gas" forever. However, Iowa is an early primary state and we are stuck w/ corn derived ethanol until some more important state figures out how to grow saw grass or sugarcane in a more commercially viable manner. - This is political, bipartisan political but political. (e.x.: We could buy ethanol made from sugar cane from Brazil for thee than the corn based from Iowa.) | ||
| Beugs |
My 1125 HATES ethanol, pings like crazy. I recently started a job in NW Iowa, where I am originally from, and it is damn near impossible to find E10 free premium. It's hard enough to find premium period. I still live in SD and have had to swing into MN on my way home to get fuel when my light came on cause I knew a station that had pure gas. I think if something as "great" as ethanol is such a brilliant idea, then it should be able to survive on it's own without my tax dollars funding the junk. | ||
| Ridenusa4l |
how do yall find E10 free stations? Jake | ||
| Stirz007 |
Without getting into the politics related to food supply vs. stretching gasoline supply, especially this year (given the poor corn crop), I'd offer this anecdote: I did some work for a local refinery recently. They HATE the stuff, and not for the reasons you'd think. The stuff wreaks havoc on pump seals and gaskets. They had to replace a fair amount of equipment and piping more than once over the last couple of years. The plant manager told me he was dreading the day the gummint mandates E30, as he expects a large outlay in new infrastructure just to handle it. That said, I've experienced none of the problems with mowers, weedeaters and other 2 stroke equipment that some have had. I guess Bob and I are lucky we live in a relatively cool and dry climate (no green funk so far). No issues with the bike either.  | ||
| Stirz007 |
"how do yall find E10 free stations?" Forgot to post linky: http://pure-gas.org/ | ||
| Ulyranger |
I could make a healthy living rebuilding carbs on small engined ope here in NY, and many shops do. This idea that ethanol is fine for all engines and doesn't harm anything is hooey. I have thirty and fourty year old chainsaws that i would simply put on a shelf at the end of the season, now there is a whole procedure to go through or else it's rebuild time in the spring. This crap does NOT work like dry gas, go put a partially filled container in your truck and look in the bottom a month later, what do you see.......fun experiment. E10 is an awful idea and does NOT save anything.....except some politicians' jobs. There are better alternatives, cleaner, cheaper, easier to make..... | ||
| S2pengy |
The goverment is already got e15 in the works; I received the following from the AMA;; On Sept. 10, the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency addressed to Administrator Lisa Jackson. The congressional letter is seeking answers from the EPA on its recent decision to mandate consumers purchase at least four gallons of fuel from certain blender pumps that dispense both E15 and E10 gasoline-ethanol blends. To date, no manufacturer has introduced a mass production motorcycle or all-terrain vehicle designed to operate on E15 fuel. The letter had a Sept. 24 deadline to respond. To date, the EPA has not responded to the congressional letter. As the American Motorcyclist Association previously reported, the EPA revealed the requirement to the AMA in a letter dated Aug. 1, responding to AMA concerns that E15 -- a gasoline formulation that contains up to 15 percent ethanol by volume – could be put in motorcycle and ATV fuel tanks inadvertently when consumers use blender pumps. A blender pump dispenses different fuel blends through the same hose. “With E15 gasoline, our members who make a concerted effort to fuel their motorcycles or ATVs with E10-or-less gasoline may be unknowingly refueling with residual fuel left in the hose,” Wayne Allard, AMA vice president for government relations, wrote in a June 20 letter to Jackson. “Unlike an automobile or SUV with a large fuel tank, the residual fuel left in a fueling hose could be detrimental to the performance of motorcycle or ATV engines due to the small size of their fuel tanks and the higher concentration of ethanol that would, therefore, be present in the fuel,” Allard wrote. “In addition, the use of E15 will lower fuel efficiency and possibly cause premature engine failure,” he wrote. “Use of E15 fuel voids many manufacturer warranties. In off-road engines, the effects can even be dangerous for users.” Byron Bunker of the EPA National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory responded to the AMA on behalf of Jackson. “EPA requires that retail stations that own or operate blender pumps either dispense E15 from a dedicated hose and nozzle if able or, in the case of E15 and E10 being dispensed from the same hose, require that at least four gallons of fuel be purchased to prevent vehicles and engines with smaller fuel tanks from being exposed to gasoline-ethanol blended fuels containing greater than 10 volume percent ethanol,” Bunker wrote. “Additionally, EPA is requiring that retail stations that offer E10 and E15 from the same hose and nozzle use additional labeling to inform consumers about the minimum purchase requirement,” Bunker wrote. “Since motorcyclists and ATV users, as you suggest, have relatively small fuel tanks, they should pay careful attention to the labeling of blender pumps to ensure that an appropriate fuel is chosen, in this case E10 or E0,” he wrote. The problem with the new EPA policy is that not all motorcycle and ATV gas tanks hold four or more gallons. “Not only do we find it unacceptable for the EPA to mandate that our members buy minimum amounts of gas, but the EPA answer simply won’t work because of the sizes of many motorcycle and ATV gas tanks,” said Allard. “Furthermore, off-highway riders take containers of gas with them on their trips, and most times those containers are much smaller than four gallons. “The EPA needs to come up with a better solution,” he said. “The EPA also needs to back an independent study to determine whether E15 is safe for motorcycle and ATV engines.” The AMA has repeatedly expressed concerns to government officials and federal lawmakers about possible damage to motorcycle and ATV engines caused by the inadvertent use of E15 when the new fuel becomes widely available, and has asked that motorcycles and ATVs be part of any scientific study into the effects of E15. In October 2010, the EPA approved the use of E15 in model year 2007 and newer light-duty vehicles (cars, light-duty trucks and medium-duty passenger vehicles). Then, in January 2011, the EPA added model year 2001-2006 light-duty vehicles to the approved list. Riders should pay attention to this list because no motorcycles or ATVs are currently listed. The AMA is concerned about E15 because it burns hotter than gasoline that contains a lesser amount of ethanol. In engines not designed to dissipate that extra heat, damage in the form of premature wear can result. Although this is a concern in all motorcycles, it's particularly problematic for air-cooled engines found in many motorcycles and ATVs. Moreover, use of E15 may even void the manufacturer warranty. Since the approved list includes many light-duty vehicles in use today, refineries, distributors, and fueling stations may choose to offer primarily E15 gasoline because of this action by the EPA. The new EPA policy should concern all motorcyclists and off-highway enthusiasts because this can affect the availability of gasoline with less or no ethanol (E10 or E0). Please send a prewritten message to the EPA asking Jackson to respond to the congressional letter that seeks answers on the recent decision by the EPA to mandate consumers purchase at least four gallons of fuel from certain blender pumps that dispense both E15 and E10 gasoline-ethanol blends. Also, please join the AMA to help us fight these efforts. More members means more clout against our opponents, and your support will help the AMA fight for your rights – on the road, trail, racetrack, and in the halls of government. To join, go to AmericanMotorcyclist.com/membership/join. | ||
| Xl1200r |
To be fair, corn is kind of a lousy food, anyway. | ||
| Cowboy |
Corn should be used to make good bourbom ONLY | ||
| Teeps |
CNG is good until this happens. This was a case of arson. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cle anmpg.com/photos/data/500/CNG_car_rear_2.jpg&imgre furl=http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/general/t-cng- honda-civic-car-fireexplosion-dialup-warning-many- photos-7555.html&usg=__3HAl7nWS6FhfM0VYVgLQsufQ7RM =&h=434&w=606&sz=138&hl=en&start=1&zoom=1&tbnid=kc CyXjBeHl4MnM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=136&ei=VgprUJWiFoTtsgat n4GwDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhonda%2Bcivic%2Bcng%2Bex plosion%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dopera%26sa%3DX%26rls% 3Den%26channel%3Dsuggest%26tbm%3Disch&itbs=1 | ||
| Aesquire |
Hey! I like Fritos! Corn on the Cob, too. Tortillas, Corn Bread, Pop Corn... Corn is great food. Corn Syrup even has a place in cooking... helps prevent sugar crystallizing... BUT... using corn syrup in everything is probably going to be found to be the cause of adult onset Diabetes, Erectile dysfunction and believing Al Gore. I Do agree that good bourbon is a fine use for corn, don't get me wrong. It's just corn alcohol belongs in a jug, not a gas tank. My objection to CNG in cars is simply that we use it in chemical feedstock, home heating, and power generation. The Power Generation plus automotive use will jack the price up and make it impractical. Booze for cars from algae? fine. Switch grass? maybe. Garbage? awesome. Food? Insane. I found out they now have a formula for sta-bil for gasahol. I used to clean the Cyclone's carb every other spring, now it's every spring, and sometimes after a few weeks riding layoff. ( vacation, injury, etc. ) | ||
| Stirz007 |
To be fair, corn is kind of a lousy food, anyway. Maybe for some, but I likes my bacon, beef and chikken....they are fed corn (among other things). I'm not liking the pending doom of a bacon shortage...... | ||
| Xl1200r |
Corn-fed swine, poultry and beef is kind of a lousy food, anyway. (you're making this too easy!) Don't get me wrong, corn makes some yummy things as Aes pointed out, but it's an unnatural food for almost anything living on earth (especially humans) and should be eaten sparingly. Instead, you'll find that something like 90% of the food in a typical grocery store contains corn on some level. Yes, the amount of corn syrup being used doesn't help the diabetes situation, but it's likely more widespread by the over-consumption of carbs in our processed-food-only diets these days, promoted by gov't subsidies (on things like corn) and that abomination that is the food pyramid - a piece of bread or a spoonful of sugar, your body doesn't know the difference. So, yes, I think it's stupid to burn food for fuel, but I think it's even stupider that we grow corn on the level that we do, and use for all of the things we use it for, in the first place. | ||
| Ulyranger |
I don't we have too much corn now.............. | ||
| Anonymous |
ethanol is great. people arent. its not made from corn. and when it is, the protien used in food products isn't consumed by the process. the bio techs have developed new strains of microbugs that can turn worthless crops into ethanol. an engine tuned for ethanol can produce good power. see alcohol funny cars... they've been around for a long time. ethanol engines dont carbon-up. oil changes are pretty clean affairs. i could go on. but i'm just some guy on the interwebs. even if i held a phd, the oil propaganda machine has already set your mind. its part of the human condition: why change your mind when its easier to choke to death on filth? | ||
| Sifo |
Is there a valid reason that the above post is by "Anonymous"? | ||
| Reepicheep |
First, you shouldn't post anonymous without a good reason, and fear of feedback isn't a good reason. Secondly, I think your assumption that the only (or for that matter, the majority) of the propaganda machine is the "big oil" side. "Big Oil" can make money selling big oil, they don't need to lie. "Big Green" can only make money selling fear. That's where I, as a critical thinking engineer not affiliated with "Big Oil" see the worst propaganda these days. Take your own assertions for example... 1) It is made from corn. They just just put a big plant in the town I grew up in (Greenville Ohio). They put it there because if you stand on top of it and look all directions, you see nothing but corn. So you loose less diesel carrying corn around to turn it in to ethanol. 1...) The protein content of corn varies from 2.86 to 3.7%. 3% protein from corn will won't go far. 21% of corn is carbs or fat, that's what people live on. So you are talking about decreasing 85% of the food supply derived from corn (if you can figure out how to get the remaining 3% protein out without it being toxic from the fermentation process) 2) Claiming new strains that may or may not exist in labs and that may or may not be economically scalable is propaganda. Just in case you are wondering.  When these strains and processes show they can economically produce significantly more energy than they can consume, and you won't need to propagandize *anyone*. You can just set up a factory and make yourself stupidly rich producing ethanol, which will be so cheap we we will be happy to burn it in or purpose built ethanol consuming vehicles. That isn't the case now, the only way ethanol works is if men with guns force me to buy it. Doesn't that bother you at all? 3) Engines tuned for ethanol can produce great power... forget the funny cars, look at the Saab 9-5 built for it. It smoked the gas version of the 9-5. When ethanol makes sense, there will be a lot of cars built for it, and we will be happy to buy them. The problem is that ethanol doesn't currently make sense. And it doesn't appear a chicken and egg problem (if we had more ethanol cars ethanol would be cheaper). It would be the other way around, 1 gallon of ethanol is a net lose, trying to scale the solution up to 100 gallons just makes it that much more of a loss. 4) Since when has carbon been a problem in engines or oil? Modern engines simply don't have unsolved carbon problems. I've run many motors to where they are worn out, and the only one that may have died as a result of carbon was a 2 stroke leaf blower. And any engine oil life benefits are more than offset by the ease with which ethanol turns to brown jello in a fuel system when it sits for any length of time. So even if there is an oil life benefit (ethanol will run cooler, so there might be) it's got to be at best a wash in terms of overall maintenance hassle. Welcome "guy from the interwebs". There is great information out on the net (I harvested several important facts above from Wikipedia), you have to combine what you read with very critical thinking and common sense. Soybeans and corn are Gods own solar energy factories. They are incredible. Till a field, plant them, and do just basic maintenance and you have acres of self replicating little solar collectors with built in batteries. Done as only God can do it, with an efficiency and resiliance man can only dream of. In fact, oil is just "corn" (or other biomass) anyway. It's just really old and naturally refined in a way fermentation simply can't touch in terms of results... provided you give hydrocarbons a several million years head start. Most people here would love to see a practical and workable bio-fuel. Our beef is that we haven't seen one yet. I'm personally hoping for hydrogen producing algee, but I think our only real hope is clean nuclear. We should stop deluding ourselves and start figuring out how to do that before we run out of fossil fuels. | ||
| Hootowl |
"its not made from corn. and when it is..." Make up your mind. Actually, it sounds like you already have, facts be damned. | ||
| Sifo |
its not made from corn. and when it is, the protien used in food products isn't consumed by the process. This line alone contains such a wealth of misinformation and irreverent information to question any worth in further discussion. | ||
| Aesquire |
Clean Nuclear is ready. The Propaganda machine set in motion decades ago, is not. ( long winded nuclear power rant deleted. It was great, and well researched... but too long and wordy. You are welcome. ) This generation's waste may well be another's mine, as we see with poultry waste being used to make biofuel, or the mining of garbage dumps for plastic to be used as feedstock for chemical plants. In the future, high energy plasma, and laser sorting, will allow the breakdown of garbage into elemental groups, and the amount of gold and platinum group metals in dumps will make it economical... But don't tell the Greenies! They'll get all nostalgic for the good old days when diapers were buried....  ethanol is great. people arent. I'm guessing Anon.. is having a bad day, is as cynical as I am, or is a greenie propagandist. I invite him/her to join the discussion, openly. its not made from corn. Really? Tell that to Heaven Hill. http://www.heavenhill.com/age-gate.php Or try some Rain Vodka. Corn is massively used in food to fuel in the US. It's the sugar content, not the protein. Yeast doesn't care from protein, ( oversimplification ) since it isn't growing any muscles! Yeast likes candy... candy is dandy and liquor is the quicker result. The REASON we use corn is political, and economics. The Politics makes it economical, only because it is subsidized, massively. With your money. Corn to fuel is so inefficient that we don't know if it's a positive in the energy cycle. It's not profitable, or it wouldn't be subsidized. The downsides of those political decisions is the displacement of other food crops for booze-corn and the mechanical problems of alcohol transport. You can't ship alcohol in the existing oil pipelines, it's too hygroscopic. That's why it has some of the corrosion problems in handling and carb/injector use. You have to truck alcohol, and that takes fuel. Farmland used for booze-corn isn't being used for wheat & rye, so we've put a crimp in the planetary food supply ( If America stopped exporting food... it's armageddon. ) that has led to riots, revolutions, and as we are watching, War. ( Turkey & Syria. Egypt and Israel. Tunisia, Libya, ...... ) So.... I'm all for booze, despite its many disadvantages. Once the problems are worked out, it may be rational to use E10. But it's not instant or free, by any means. Just like the transition from lead in gasoline is not yet complete, ( those old Lycomings, you know ) the transition to gasahol is going to take time and lots of money. And that money comes from the consumer, always. an engine tuned for ethanol can produce good power True! I can even convert, for a few thousand dollars, my Cyclone to run on booze. The S&S alcohol carb is available, plus higher compression pistons, and the only downsides, from my point of view is that my range per tank goes down, quite a bit, and there just isn't any place for me to tank up. If all I was doing was riding half a tank out and return, I could make my own booze in a solar still from ag waste. But what if I want to go to Boston? Screwed. And an alcohol tuned engine cannot be used with gasoline. The compression is too high. Flexfuel designs are still less efficient, until we use variable compression ( probably turbocharged ) engines to self tune for the available fuel. No matter if your goal is energy independence from foreign oil, cleaner air, or Fear of Global Cooling, food to fuel is bad. You don't just burn the booze. You have to burn the diesel to make the food. Today it looks very close to one gallon of diesel to one gallon of booze. That's more than twice the pollutants. More than twice the CO2. And it probably turns out you imported the oil to make the diesel to make the booze... When they get the bugs out of the algae/ switchgrass/unicorn fart conversion, THEN we got something. The current admin's plan to make fuel so expensive that stupidity makes sense is criminal. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/41219614#4 1219614 Corn. | ||
| Hootowl |
"Or try some Rain Vodka" Or Tito's. Even better Double Gold Medal winner, and made in Austin TX in copper pot stills. Distilled six times. |
