Talk:E85 in standard engines

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Sourcing and appropriateness

This article was created from a section of E85, the below comments were moved from Talk:E85#Length. The spun-off article is still 33K; it is rather wordy, however, so perhaps careful editing can make it more concise and thus shorter. -- Beland 03:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Length

This article is now 53K. The "Experimental", "Risk", "Aftermarket conversion", and "Air fuel ratio comparison" sections are long and somewhat dry. They seem to contain lots of information which is only of interest to people who are actually trying to run E85 in their cars, which may or may not be appropriate for an encyclopedia. They also seems to be somewhat repetitious. Can they be chopped down or spun off into another article or something? -- Beland 13:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Many of the people coming to this article are doing research and gathering information precisely to run E85 in "converted cars". I personally think it is highly appropriate as an encyclopedia entry.

I suppose someone could split out the information into an "E85 overview" article for the quick and dirty discussion, and an "in depth discussion of E85 as a fuel" but I believe that would be less useful than to have it all in a single article. I have no problem with long encyclopedia entries personally, some in the hard copy encyclopedias cover 10-20 pages of fine print, so this is pretty brief by comparison.

There is a tag in the article regarding the section on fuel mixtures possibly containing original research.

I produced the chart on comparable fuel air mixtures for my own use. It is a simple compilation of widely available bits of data from a multitude of sources. Some simple computations from basic chemistry and standardization of multiple references to typical fuel air mixtures used in many references involving E85. There is no single source that can be sited for the data and I consider the information public domain. It is simply a summary readily available information.

Information was compiled from 50 year old NACA studies on aircraft engine performance, public domain common knowledge in the automotive performance community regarding fuel air mixtures and their behavior, and mentions of actual fuel air mixtures used with E85 in various studies by universities, and the EPA to mention a few. Additional information for the mixture chart is drawn from personal experience of dozens of experimenters who have reported their tests and results to verious automotive and E85 specialty forums.

Much of that information is in my already referenced E85 faq on http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=803341 if anyone wishes to contact me directly they can through that forums PM feature. Also additional info on the personal experience of experimenters can be found on http://e85forum.com/ which is also cited as a resource in the text.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 32.97.110.142 (talk • contribs) 09:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC).

The Wikipedia:Article size guideline gives 32K as a good upper limit. The material on using E85 in standard car engines distracts from the rest of the article for general readers, including me, so I've spun it off. The official policy Wikipedia:No original research requires references for substantive material like this. If the facts at hand are well-known, then it should be easy to cite reliable sources for them. Multiple sources are perfectly fine. I guess the thing to do is to start connecting the references in that FAQ to specific claims in this material, using footnotes. Also remember when editing this information that Wikipedia is not an instruction manual. -- Beland 03:00, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I would like to comment about the use of the term "E-85" fuel throughout this article. Using the term "E-85" in refering to any other blend of gasoline and Ethanol that is not 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline (other than a few ppm of water) is not correct and is highly misleading. E-85 is 85% ethanol 15% gasoline give or take a few ppm of water, nothing less and nothing more. Any other concentrations of this type fuel should be refered to as percentage of the Ethanol and Gasoline, only and should not be called E-85 I.E. 47% Ethanol and 53% gasoline. Please refer to Department of Energy guidelines for E-85 fuel to verfiy these comments.

I re-removed the section on water contamination. This text, wherever it came from, was originally written to refer to E10 fuel. It was edited by someone to replace "E10" with "E85." The Ethanol_fuel article explains the situation here. E10 can become contaminated by small amounts of water causing phase separation-- the critical level is around the 0.5% mark mentioned in the deleted text-- but E85 does NOT have this problem until relatively high levels of contamination. Ethanol will go into solution with about 5% water, so E10 can hold about 0.5% water by total volume. E85, by extension, can hold a much higher fraction of water without causing phase separation. So let's not go stuffing this bogus text back in, okay? 24.7.127.106 20:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name change and relevence

I have used various mixtures of E85 and regular gasoline in my 1995 Toyota Celica for over 6 months. This car does have a high compression engine and premium gasoline is recommended. The car runs very well on E50(50% ethanol, 50% gasoline). Much more horsepower, and very little to no noticeable loss in fuel economy. Three tanks averaged 21.5MPG , while the EPA estimated is 20 city/25 highway. I understand that there are many variables to a true fuel economy study, and that my results don't really carry much weight. I just really think that the estimated 30% less fuel economy is completely false, and that this is only propaganda by the oil company to discourage the use of alternative fuels. Seriously, 21.5 MPG falls within the possible economy using regular gas. My driving style for this period of time included full-throttle starts and speeds at times 100MPH+. I am skeptical that I could get this fuel economy using regular 87 octane fuel, possibly premium, but who knows.

Now I think this article has promise, but needs major modifications. The focus should be more in converting older cars to be able to use E85 safely then to put it irresponsibly in a car that is just going to have mechanical problems as a result. I did have this happen to me when a fuel injector got clogged in my other car, a 1996 pontiac sunfire, when I used to high of a concentration of ethanol. Conversion can be accomplished on any vehicle, the complexity of this procedure does depend on the type of car and the year. Sources are available to cite to make this more relevant of an article.

Possibilities for name changes: E85 conversion E85 conversion in standard engines E85 conversion in older cars converting cars to run on E85

I don't really like the term "standard engine" and I really would like to do away with that. What is a "standard engine" after all. Is it an engine not specifically designed for E85? Current flex fuel cars aren't really designed to utilize E85 to their full potential, and really only have a modification to the ECU (electronic control until) which controls engine timing. This is why I feel that even cars that a marketed as "flex-fuel" still use a "standard engine".

Campb416 19:45, 22 May 2007 (UTC)