Ethanol Anyone?
 

I am in the market for a Cobra. I am still trying to determine whether to buy or build. With the ever increasing fuel prices, and the low gas mileage of any Cobra worth its salt, has anyone every considered running one on E85? Is it possible? What would be required? How much would it cost? What MPG do you currently get in your baby snake?!

Great question!! I have wondered about this since super 93 topped $3.50 a gallon. Perhaps Keith Craft is best suited to answer this question.

Joe S

I had a stock mustang EFI engine in my FFR and got 20mpg average.

They say the Ethanol 85 shows better performance than normal gas.
The down side is you have to use more of it (meaning poor gas mileage).
I feel sorry for the big block guys they will never be able to leave there driveway.

I found this... doesnt make ethanol look all that appealing afterall...

http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm

This form of ethanol is when Corn is used as the engergy source. Corn is very inefficient and utilizes a lot of nutrients to grow.

According to an article on MSNBC recently, a new version of Ethanol utilizing prarie grass will produce 4 to 10 times the energy of today’s corn ethanol. If this comes to fruition, it will be a very attractive fuel alternative (just like biodiesel). Plus, we can keep some more jobs at home!

Brazil is 100% independent from foriegn oil now due to ethanol base "flex" cars that let you use either gas or ethanol. Here is the article if you care to read.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12676374/

There is no heat energy to alcohol. Unless you run 25 to 1 compression you make very little horsepower with alcohol. Fortunately I've been in on this ruse since it started and have made a lot of money owning ADM.

The easiest way to beat the higher price of fuel is to run a tall high gear. My Windsor gets well into the 20s MPG on the highway. By the way, where I live gas is still cheaper than bottled water and soda. Nobody is complaining about the price of those products.

Bob

Pepsi runs about $2.50 a gallon and bottled water is 57 cents a gallon. Nobody I know drinks a gallon for every 25 miles they drive.

This is an extremely complicated subject to discuss as there are pros and cons to this product.

Firstly, ethanol is expensive to produce and no one would be making any of it for fuel purposes if the governemnt wasn't offering subsidies. Secondly, it isn't efficient and does nothing to reduce (never mind eliminate) reliance on petroleum as it takes more BTUs to produce it from corn than the final product yields. What that means is that more energy mainly in the form of petroleum is consumed in the production of ethanol than is produced.

However since MTBE is being removed from gasoline right now, ethanol is the only viable substitute that is readily available. Ethanol also burns very cleanly but yields poor mileage.

Much research has been done over the past two or three decades on developing an ethanol from cellulose process. It can be done in the lab and in pilot projects but it is still years away from economical full scale production.

By the way, Brazil isn't such a good example right now. They have reduced their ethanol level from 25 to 20% in gasoline and have eliminated import duties in an attempt to keep alcohol supply in balance with fuel demand. Brazil makes their ethanol from sugar cane and the price of sugar is at, or near, a 20 year high so the sugar cane is being sold as sugar and not being used to produce ethanol.

Wayne