MS3 Fuel and Ethanol...? Issues???

[AutoXRacer]

I went to the gas station this afternoon and I found this new warning label on the pump!!!!

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f19/Milkywayman22/Mazdaspeed%203/1224071423.jpg

What does Ethanol do to our cars? Does it affect optimum tuning for power? Is this safe to use in our boosted cars?

(help)

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!(yippy)

[neox.286]

damn super premium for $3.149!!!!

our premium (91 octane) is freaking $3.599!

lucky lol

[amascio]

Here in Houston we've had 10 per cent ethanol in our gas for some time.

So far, all my cars have digested the stuff sweetly.

Some have complained that their gas mileage was off a little, but my cars are doing OK.

One good side effect is that if you spill the or get it on your hands, the smell is not as punget. Cheers!!

[VermZ06]

Here in CT we've had it in all or most of our gas stations for about two years. I first started putting in in my MSP and definitely noticed my mpg were suffering because of it. For some reason ethanol is just not as efficient as straight up gasoline. Although I do here that the ethanol mix is actually better for turbos because of a cooler burn. Henry Ford's first cars were actually made to run on ethanol, but once he realized how much cheaper gasoline was to produce, gasoline was the way to go.

[Haltech]

You have to remember than Ethanol is alcohol and will burn twice as much as gasoline if used 100%. CA uses it but in a smaller percentage but calls it " Oxygenated " fuel. Your fuel economy goes to shit real quick winter-spring out here.

[SPEED305]

I went to the gas station this afternoon and I found this new warning label on the pump!!!!

[IMG]http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f19/Milkywayman22/Mazdaspeed%203/1224071423.jpg

What does Ethanol do to our cars? Does it affect optimum tuning for power? Is this safe to use in our boosted cars?

(help)

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!(yippy)

what gas station was that? i saw that for the first time yesterday @ a HESS. i wonder if this is all base gasoline has this ethenol?

[clos561]

i pump a tank before and realized the sign after i was pumping...didnt effect my car...so id say no

[3.slow]

E-85 has a really high octane above 110. Ethanol added to the gas is good for our cars and prevent them from detonating, but gas mileage does suffer.

[BoostedSpd6]

just my 2cents here id actually use the ethonol stuff while tuning because of the cooler burn that does occur..someone should test this out with some true gasoline and some ethonol and see if they get different results on the dyno

[3.slow]

Higher octane rating on E-85 means you can run more boost, WAY MORE BOOST if fuel can keep up. Why do drag cars run nitro methane? So they can raise compression to get more power without detinating

[jp4130]

You cannot run anything higher 10 percent in our cars; E85 will not run properly in our mazdas.

[Haltech]

You cannot run anything higher 10 percent in our cars; E85 will not run properly in our mazdas.

This is true. We would need larger injectors, fuel rails, etc. The motor has to have different rings as well as the pure alcohol will eat through most gasoline parts and seals.

[boost_me]

damn super premium for $3.149!!!!

our premium (91 octane) is freaking $3.599!

lucky lol

lucky you my premium 93 is upto 3.70 in nyc!

FAWWWWK!

thats all i use

[Haltech]

At least you can get 93 out of a pump! We get 91 and pay almost a $1 more for this crap!

[neox.286]

yea, your paying 10 cents more for 93

we dont even get 93 =P

I wonder if its even legal in california....theres probably some bs reason why it isnt legal to run higher than 91 octane gasoline in california.....just like it being legal to have limo-smoked glass but not ANY kind of tint-film on your glass, no matter how light (wtf??)

but yea I am lucky for 3.60/91 octane cause if you go a little more south and check out the gas stations by Interstate-5 some of them get up to 3.77 for 91 =(

[AutoXRacer]

So then the less than 10% ethanol in our cars is OK...?
Just mileage will decrease...?

How about our horsepower...? Will that decrease too?

[Haltech]

yea, your paying 10 cents more for 93

we dont even get 93 =P

I wonder if its even legal in california....theres probably some bs reason why it isnt legal to run higher than 91 octane gasoline in california.....just like it being legal to have limo-smoked glass but not ANY kind of tint-film on your glass, no matter how light (wtf??)

but yea I am lucky for 3.60/91 octane cause if you go a little more south and check out the gas stations by Interstate-5 some of them get up to 3.77 for 91 =(

Yea, its called C.A.R.B California Air Resource Board went after our 92 octane with MTBE in it and said that its a contributor to smog. Our new fuel hasnt proven to clean the current air here. The problem lies within the Valley's of CA and traps all of the pollutants the factories and refineries put in the air, but they have been blaming cars for the smog. We need huge fans to blow that shit into northern California!

[driver311]

stupid discussion been gone over for years now. its fine run it. they wouldnt sell it if it was bad for your car. I been running it in my turbo cars for 9 years no.

Ps. put it this way. It was in my car when I dynoed 311whp with two mods. LOL

[SwampAss]

Our 93 Octane is $2.95 :-p

[happy and angry]

Mazda says we aren't supposed to use fuel that is more than 15% (at least that's what it says in my manual) ethanol by volume, so I suggest we stick to the manufacturers specs.

That said, I hate ethanol as a fuel alternative. It's not cleaner in the long run because it has less energy by volume than gas, so you burn more to do the same amount of work. It's not cheaper because of the way it drives up the price of commodities. It's just an attempt to create a new market and to eliminate a dependancy on foreign oil.

[Mocoso]

Yea, its called C.A.R.B California Air Resource Board went after our 92 octane with MTBE in it and said that its a contributor to smog. Our new fuel hasnt proven to clean the current air here. The problem lies within the Valley's of CA and traps all of the pollutants the factories and refineries put in the air, but they have been blaming cars for the smog. We need huge fans to blow that shit into northern California!

You really think if they shut down all the factories and refineries our air would be clean? and you think my 'steam' theory is lame...

[kura808]

uhh we had a chemistry lab once in high school...we had some ethanol and put it in a cup...a few minutes later like 20 mins? i forget..anywayz it melted a whole through the cup. in conclusion, ethanol aint that great for rubbers and plastics. <-rubber hoses and plastics are found in cars haha. also ethanol shouldnt be used on classic cars

o yea it was in our local news too when they started switching to ethanol. it was kinda shock for us i guess.

[driver311]

there is no power loss. LOL ive comared 91 octane and 93 octane with ethanol and not much power difference at all. it was actually a little higher with the ethanol blended gas.

Like I said already, its fine just run it.

[BLACKMS3]

Damn, where the hell has everyone been? 10% has been used for a few years now across the country....

I didn't think there were any pumps without it ......

[Sierra117]

E-10 wont do anything. Everything in DFW is E-10, from low to high grade.

E-85 may not hurt your performance, but it will eat your lines, your piston rings, everything. It will destroy your mileage, and your fuel system. E-85 is a hack off, and the sooner the general public realizes it, the better.

[Haltech]

You really think if they shut down all the factories and refineries our air would be clean? and you think my 'steam' theory is lame...

Damn straight it would clean up our air! I see you dont know much about the energy game, do you? If i operate some kind of plant, but only use 75% of my alloted yearly gross pollution, i can SELL it to another plant and they get my credit. So, this isnt exactly CLEANING the air. They let it go on for years, instead of forcing a company to clean up. Its been aired on several channels in the past that CA cars cannot run any cleaner than they do now, aside from the use of electric cars. Sure, you could impose cars/trucks to run on E85, but than comes a conversion cost, larger gas tanks and E85 stations, no to mention, where the hell in CA are they going to grow all that corn? E85 works only if designed into an automobile from the ground up. It does have a good bi-product for making animal feed. However, do you think the current oil companies are going to just walk away from there stake and loot? Somehow, the same oil companies are going to try to get into the E85 game, leave the prices the same, if not more and continue on.

They have said that cars now only contribute to 46% of the pollution here in socal. The rest comes from industrial, who's smog requirements are much lower than it should be. When companies are targeted as gross polluters, they wave the " i cant afford to convert to cleaner equipment " foul. Or... they say in order to clean up their act, they will have to charge the consumer over 30% the price we are currently paying for the product. Its all politics man, that's all it is. These gross polluter companies give kickdowns to all of the politicians in this state.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the CARB where the money is for everything they charged companies after he was elected, they came up empty handed. That should bring up serious reg flags to any resident of this state. Since than, Arnold has been in battles with CARB. It seems every month they are swapping scandal stories back and fourth. If you want to clean up CA's air, the CARB isnt going to be the ones who help do it, thats for sure.

Yea, your steam statement was pretty lame, but you took the award for your theory on shutting down factories. Los Angeles has a largest industrial, chemical, power, and refinery root setup in this state.

[jammypwnzor]

haha i have limo tint..............................

[Haltech]

E-10 wont do anything. Everything in DFW is E-10, from low to high grade.

E-85 may not hurt your performance, but it will eat your lines, your piston rings, everything. It will destroy your mileage, and your fuel system. E-85 is a hack off, and the sooner the general public realizes it, the better.

It may be a hack off, however, the end gross pollutants of E-85 outweigh gasoline and we dont have to deal with the political bullshit or price wars to get oil to produce it.

[neox.286]

haha i have limo tint..............................

haha

dont jinx yourself

I got busted recently for 35% on my front windows....

[Sierra117]

It may be a hack off, however, the end gross pollutants of E-85 outweigh gasoline and we dont have to deal with the political bullshit or price wars to get oil to produce it.

If your only argument for E85 is polutants, then sell your car and get a hybrid or hydrogen car. And if you think there is "no political bullshit" around E85...then you must live under a rock in California.

[BLACKMS3]

Currently throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, there are plans to produce 12 large scale plants to produce E85 exclusively...

Wait until they all get running and see how much your corn on the cob goes up!! LOL!

Aside from all that, alot of racers have started using straight Ethanol as it's much, MUCH cheaper than buying race fuel... it IS corrosive, but you can take steps to minimize the damage created. Alcohol has been used in racing for a LOOOOONG time...

[AllLostThings]

We've had ethanol in gas up here since way before I got this car. I noticed on my old IS300 it damaged my mileage a bit. Having it in hte Speed3 since day 1 I'd say it does affect it a bit. Even when I'm really easy on the gas (when there is snow) I still don't get 28mpg ever.

[Haltech]

If your only argument for E85 is polutants, then sell your car and get a hybrid or hydrogen car. And if you think there is "no political bullshit" around E85...then you must live under a rock in California.

I could car less about poluntants in my cars. If that was the case, i would own a fricken hybrid. What im telling you is that is what is going to adopt the shift to E85 and if you think it isnt going to happen anytime soon, than you need to find a bigger rock than where you are currently living. There's ALWAYS going to be politics when it comes to Energy, however at least it will be on our soil and not dependant on someone else's.

[Mocoso]

Damn straight it would clean up our air! I see you dont know much about the energy game, do you? If i operate some kind of plant, but only use 75% of my alloted yearly gross pollution, i can SELL it to another plant and they get my credit. So, this isnt exactly CLEANING the air. They let it go on for years, instead of forcing a company to clean up. Its been aired on several channels in the past that CA cars cannot run any cleaner than they do now, aside from the use of electric cars. Sure, you could impose cars/trucks to run on E85, but than comes a conversion cost, larger gas tanks and E85 stations, no to mention, where the hell in CA are they going to grow all that corn? E85 works only if designed into an automobile from the ground up. It does have a good bi-product for making animal feed. However, do you think the current oil companies are going to just walk away from there stake and loot? Somehow, the same oil companies are going to try to get into the E85 game, leave the prices the same, if not more and continue on.

They have said that cars now only contribute to 46% of the pollution here in socal. The rest comes from industrial, who's smog requirements are much lower than it should be. When companies are targeted as gross polluters, they wave the " i cant afford to convert to cleaner equipment " foul. Or... they say in order to clean up their act, they will have to charge the consumer over 30% the price we are currently paying for the product. Its all politics man, that's all it is. These gross polluter companies give kickdowns to all of the politicians in this state.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger asked the CARB where the money is for everything they charged companies after he was elected, they came up empty handed. That should bring up serious reg flags to any resident of this state. Since than, Arnold has been in battles with CARB. It seems every month they are swapping scandal stories back and fourth. If you want to clean up CA's air, the CARB isnt going to be the ones who help do it, thats for sure.

Yea, your steam statement was pretty lame, but you took the award for your theory on shutting down factories. Los Angeles has a largest industrial, chemical, power, and refinery root setup in this state.

You can rag on me all you want on the steam theory as it was meant to be sarcastic but you didnt read what I posted in this thread. I'll reword my question given you threw all this data my way (and yes I know all about the power game and the carb uselessness)

Do you really think removing 50% of the pollutants in LA is going to give us CLEAN AIR?

You seem to think it will to which Im telling you "No it wont.. "will it be cleaner yes obviously but its not going to be "clean".. all it would do is remove us from the top 10 worse air quality but it sure as hell isnt going to put us in the 10 best air quality....

Arguing we have to fix the factories and screw the cars makes as much sense as the guy saying we have to drive all hybrids and leave the factories and refineries alone... reality is we wont have clean air unless BOTH are addressed... if you find this theory lame then by all means award me with your lame theory award...

[chriscecc914]

ethanol can cause a motor to blow if the timing is not conservative. ive heard of it happening on a few supercharged stangs.

[redspeed3tk]

danm i love Pennsylvania no corn in the gas yet!! brother lives in Virginia and they have it and he gets 4-5mpg better with the gas here.. i think 87 should have it but leave the 93 straight fuel... we pay more for it leave it alone

[StewRat]

A quick google search would reveal the answer to most of these questions, Ethanol has a higher octane rating of about 129 in pure form, however the energy density of the fuel is about 27% less than petrol fuels. What this means is that without modifications to your car you will see decreased fuel efficiency, but slight power increases. On the other hand, for all of us who like to tune our cars, that super high octane rating will allow us to run higher compression ratio's and lean out the car further than gasoline alone would allow, and since most people with modified cars can accept the loss of efficiency for a gain in power, there should be no problems. However, if your still worried about efficiency you could always use this extra power to run higher gears and spread out the ratios so as to allow lower RPM cruising.

[i12drivemyMP5]

Ethanol takes more energy to produce than you get out of it. That in itself makes it retarded. The factory that already pollutes more than cars has to pollute even more now to produce something that we'll get less out of in the end. Less mileage equal more fillups & only oil companies win. We can get non-ethanol'd gas if we drive 2 counties away. Not really that practical but a treat on road trips to get some unbastardized fuel on occasion. Car loves it.

[StewRat]

I think the point the ethanol lobbyists are trying to make is that even though your seeing around 27% less efficiency, your using 85% less gas, and that should net less total pollutants from our vehicles seeing that ethanol doesn't produce byproducts other than water, heat, and carbon dioxide. Ofcourse, like you pointed out, the total production value is not nearly as efficient as the end product. That's not even getting into the debate on whether the world economy can support the strain on food supplies and farm land added by increased demand on crops like corn and sugar cane which are the main derivitaves of ethanol.

I think for the sake of this message board's purpose, the Mazda Speed3, that one could safely say, anything concentrated higher than 10% ethanol is bad, and even at that, 10% ethanol is worthless from a performance standpoint when considering it against higher octane race fuels or nitrous oxide, which have more available knowledge base on how to safely extract the benifits in their market.

[MS3-oholic]

I remember watching Discovery channel and they were talking about alternative fuels. They said if we covered all the land either in the U.S. or on earth(cant' remember) with corn and make it into fuel, it would only equal 10% of what we use in oil based fuels. It isn't an energy source the world could sustain based on current demands. Plus if a pest, drought, or disease wiped out the corn crops, what would we do? There would be water shrotages from the damand of the much larger farms and with more pesticides being used to keep the crops from failing, those pollutants would end up in the ground also.

[Hirudin]

Heh, this thread is all over the place... I'll make it worse!

- I put ethanol fuel in my car twice, I went from 23ish mpg to 20ish for both tanks, I'm now on the next tank (no ethanol) and I've gone 130 miles before hitting the half-way mark on the fuel gauge. I expect to get 23ish mpg again now that I don't have ethanol in my tank.

- Another thing about ethanol is (most?) fertilizer and pesticides are petroleum products as well. Not to mention the lack of farm land and junk.

Check out "A Crude Awakening (http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/)" if you want to get more confused... Netflix has it.

[yashart_mp3]

Having it in hte Speed3 since day 1 I'd say it does affect it a bit. Even when I'm really easy on the gas (when there is snow) I still don't get 28mpg ever.



agreed: I have 640 miles on my MS3. I don't think ive broken 20mpg, no matter how easy I drive this thing... (shifting at 2k, less than 1/3rd throttle, cruising on the highway)

[Sierra117]

Wide spread ethanol use will also drive up the cost of beer!

[Powerslave]

from what ive read its like a racing gas you get more power with about 10% the emissions of regular gas BUT you get about 20% poorer fuel econamy, plus it can hurt 3rd world econimies cuase they will grow corn for gas and cuase people to starve...

[Sierra117]

plus it can hurt 3rd world econimies cuase they will grow corn for gas and cuase people to starve...

Because right now their bellies are full of scrumptious and delicious food...

LOL...

[AutoXRacer]

I've gotten gas a few times since I've been to this gas station (Citgo) last and I haven't seen this label in any other gas stations (Mobil, Sunoco, Chevron, 7-eleven)... (huh)

[yashart_mp3]

switched to Shell gas and couldn't be happier. Finally getting gas mileage that resembles what the damn window sticker said I would get when i bought it

[Sierra117]

switched to Shell gas and couldn't be happier. Finally getting gas mileage that resembles what the damn window sticker said I would get when i bought it

Shell gas FTW. Its all I use. They also have the best comercial in the world.

[jp4130]

switched to Shell gas and couldn't be happier. Finally getting gas mileage that resembles what the damn window sticker said I would get when i bought it

Did I Get redirected to a prius forum.(dunno)