For those using E10 or E85 gasoline in their modified Hondas or any car: Are you having or did you have any problems?

I ask b/c ~80% gas sold to gas stations in my state will be required to be at least E10 in a couple months. I was planning to do some upgrades to my motor internals, but if the negative aspects are true, I will have to cancel my plans.

I've been hearing back and forth statements about it, and I would like to get some thoughts from people who are actually using it.

Main things that I heard that concerns me are:
1) It corrodes the engine and fuel components.
2) Especially bad for older cars, since they are not fuel flexible.

 

im curious about this too. The octane rating for ethanol is higher so we coudl start running more compression or more boost. Anyone know what else if anything needs to be changed?

 

10% ethanol is fine. Cars are already federally required to support at least 10% ethanol, and the owner's manual of my '97 Integra says that it can handle it. As for E85, it's my understanding that you want to run a richer mixture of it with more ignition advance, and of course your fuel system needs to be able to tolerate that concentration of ethanol (I believe most modern cars will). It's also 105 octane for the price of 87.

You could certainly reprogram an OBD-0 or OBD-1 ECU to run E85, but the real problem I see is mixing. The E85 cars are said to have a sensor to detect the ethanol content of the gas tank and the computer adjusts accordingly. It wouldn't be impossible to add such a sensor to a Honda and modify the ECU to use it, but it would be a lot more work. You could just use a two-program switch... one program for gasoline or mix, and another for when I have only E85, and it would just be not ideal when there's a mix, but I wonder if it's bad to run E85 leaner than it's ideal ratio or if our 14.7:1 friendly gasoline engines can handle that...


Modified by Weston at 12:47 PM 2/20/2006