E10 fuel (10% ethanol)

My point was that methanol is not equivalent to ethanol, rather it is considerably worse. Drop for drop, methanol is far more toxic than ethanol. It is a too common cause of blindness and death from adulterated moonshine.

Methanol - Wikipedia

 

The change in the fuel blend is likely just enough to push an existing fault over the edge and set a code. Fairly common problem on Toyotas is that the upstream air - fuel sensor gets slightly biased. This throws off fuel trims by 8-10% and drives the downstream sensor rich (high voltage - over 900mV) and throws a P0138.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Moons back, the authorities added methanol to the ethanol as well as bittering agent to discourage drinking it diluted with what ever and avoiding the high alcohol taxes and regulation.
The methanol was removed from the mentholated spirits because the authorities found themselves in a rather difficult position. While knowing full well those with a serious alcohol problem were buying metho as a cheaper alternative, and part of that group were the indigenous population, they were going blind because of the effects of the methanol that the govt had mandated be added to the ethanol and as a result they were leaving themselves open to serious legal issues.... they removed the mandate but left the bittering agent.
Metho is not dyed purple in Australia and is clearly labelled, "contains minimum 99% ethanol"

T1 Terry

 

I don't recall hearing of the U.S. removing methanol from similar products. The last I heard, Sterno still contained methanol.

 

Where do you buy the clear 'metho'? Is it commonly available in hardware stores, supermarkets, service stations, and camping/outdoors stores?

 

No kidding; ethanol is the alcohol in beer, wine, hard liquor, albeit diluted. Pure ethanol is very unpalatable; more than twice the concentration of typical hard liquor. An example of near-pure ethanol would be 190 proof (aka 95% ethanol) Everclear.

Everclear - Wikipedia

 

All of the above. 1 ltr, 4 ltr and I believe 20 ltr drums, although I've never boght a 20 ltr drum of the stuff. We use it for cleaning down the surfaces before applying Selleys Armourflex to hold the aluminium angle onto the RV roof when installing solar panels. We also use it to clean up, smooth the uncured surface and get it off where ever it ended up that it shouldn't be ... If there was even the slightest bit of methanol in it, it would cause the edges to fry up. Before the methanol free metholated spirits was easily available, we had to buy it from the fuel distribution people as "lab grade" to avoid a reaction with the sealants we used.
When the Armourflex is cured, we use mineral turpentine to lift it, the Sikaflex 10FC we used before required methanol to remove it once cured.

The first distillation from a home still has a very high methanol content, not suitable for drinking but it makes a great window cleaner ..... not that I have anything to do with home stiles mind you

T1 Terry

 

Well, just for curiosity, it seems that, contrary to what happens in the UK, here in Portugal the mandated e5 and e10 are reversed - e5 is used for 95 octane, and e10 for 98 octane.

I like that, because it means no stress for my classic cars (e10 can be bad for old rubbers)

 

The removal of lead from the fuel was more of an issue for the older vehicles. I remember when the switch from leaded fuel first came into play in Australia, there was a device that could be fitted in the fuel line going to the carby. It was basically a block of tin with a serpentine passage through it so the fuel could absorb some of the tin on the way through and this acted as a lead replacement.
My '74 VW Kombi runs on E10 91 octane when not running on LPG, it has a mechanical fuel pump and twin carbies, no sign of the E10 doing any damage there and it has been running the E10 since it became available and has clocked up well over 200,000km using it, so the whole thing about E10 affecting the rubber components in older vehicles might also be one of those urban myths spread by the fuel companies.

When they removed the sulphur from diesel, that caused real issues on the older fuel systems rubber components, maybe there was a bit of a cross over there .....

T1 Terry

 

gasoline = x mpg , very plentiful, easy to refine and stores well

gasoline with ethanol added = x mpg minus 10-20% depending on the amount of corruption, doesn't store well, very corrosive

I'm not really sure why governments feel the need to reduce the efficiency of fuel efficiency and increase costs at the same time, .... maybe it's because that's what they do to everything they touch ?

it's a really good thing there are YouTube videos that show how to use water to remove the useless ethanol from gasoline, so that it can be pure again

 

The American petrol lobby appreciates your ardor for their product I'm sure ....but I'm guessing they might want you to check your math so that you do not look so uninformed.
If there's only a roughly 3.3% energy delta between E0 and E10, why the "10-20%" mpg delta?

That part nearly caused me to have to change out my keyboard!

For a "pure" product, gasoline comes with a lot stuff mixed into it: metal deactivators and antioxidants to keep it from separating into gum and liquid, oxygenates to make it burn more completely, and corrosion inhibitors.
That's just for the "pure" gas..... then fuel retailers add detergent packages which prevent gasoline particles from building up in cars's fuel systems and intake valves....and THIS is gas that people on FREE soil can buy.
I'm not even going to hazard a guess as to what they do with fuel behind the tinsel curtain!!

I recently acquired a recently thrown-away Honda generator whose owner thought that his or her (it was probably a "his") practice of using E0 meant that the carburetor was impervious to "gumming up"
....they call it THAT for a pretty GOOD reason!

If I stick my head out of the rear door of my office, the closest gas station is....literally...a "pure" gas station.
I did "purely" non-scientific experiments with my first company Prius to see if I could detect a difference between their "pure" product and the the stuff that is sold in "top Tier" (clean, modern) gas stations.
Why not?
Their car.
Their gas card!

Neither of my two company cars could ever tell a difference, tank over tank, and I've always been mystified that somebody would put up with all of the disadvantages of driving a Prius, and then WILLINGLY give up what is probably the second biggest ADVANTAGE to driving a Prius - which is fuel cost savings.

So.....
Does one ever "need" E0?
Sure!
Some older products...like my 'new-to-me' Honda em2200x might have when it was built...
Maybe not so much now that I've repaired it.


But....A PRIUS???
Hardly....

My faith in Toyota to make well engineered cars is sorta like my faith in my beloved government to make wise decisions.

It's been shaken up pretty badly lately, but I'm guessing that when says in their manual and even on the gas cap that "E10" is OK to use then THEY are at least putting their money where their mouth is......which makes them a little bit wiser in my book than other people who put their mouth where other people's MONEY is.....


YMMV....

 

gummed up pure gas is a blessing.

corrosion from ethanol means replacing float needles, lines, bowls, jets and needles.

if you haven't seen the difference yet, maybe you don't want to ?

thanks for checking my math... ethanol contaminated gas gets me about 40-43 mpg, while pure gas (I'll keep using the word 'pure'as it seems like you really like that reference) nets about 49-52mpg... shrug, at some point I'll have to let someone else fill up the car a few times and not tell me which one was used so it will bea fair comparison... hmm... that's not a bad idea.

I laughed when you mentioned gas lobbies. that's good humor right there. if I mention you benefiting from corn lobbies for your comments, will you laugh too ? :-D

congrats on the Honda generator , those things are sweet. be glad it was using pure gas for the gummy uppy process and not the corrosive corn garbage. you'd have to do a lot more to make it run, if it were. please don't mistake your current opinion of corn corrosion as a good idea in the Genny !

 

My turn to laugh I'm guessing. I am a mechanic by trade, one of my specialities was carburettor rebuilding and fuel system upgrading for performance cars where the original system just couldn't supply the quantity required while maintaining the required pressure.
I 12 yrs doing this for a living, I saw no sign of this "corrosion of ethanol" on any type of float, needle and seat or fuel line. I saw a lot of water damaged components, but because ethanol actually absorbs water and holds it, the only way water can actually get to the concentration required to do damage is not having a product in the fuel that can absorb and hold it in the mix. My guess is that is what you are calling "pure gas" .
They recommend not using fuel containing ethanol in devices that will sit for long periods of time unused where the fuel is open to the air ..... not a modern vapour trapping and filtering type fuel system, including those used on recreation boating because they fall into the same open to the atmosphere fuel storage method.

Put as much spin on your posts as you like, but please try to keep it factual .......

T1 Terry

 

twelve years working in carbs, and haven't seen this ? very interesting.



i would love to start breaking open some banks of carbs and NOT see this for a change.

 

In the USA the proponents of Ethanol in fuel to supply oxygen for combustion of pollutants are the Corn Farmers lobbyists. The same folks who poison people with High Fructose Corn Syrup which is now in virtually all foods that otherwise require sugar even though corn is a very environmentally unfriendly crop to grow using massive amounts of increasingly scarce water.

Oil Refiners would gladly use alternatives like butanol or other oxygenated compounds that are not hydroscopic and which can be transported by pipeline if they could but regulators have so many rigid geographic smog formulations that they get stuck using EtOH.

Now they are promoting E15 as the minimum. God help us.

 

e15 ??? yuck !

if these weren't true, I'd be in favor of using domestic sources (like corn) for fuel:
1 higher corrosion rates on all surfaces vs gasoline
2 lower energy content
3 higher production costs
4 higher diesel/ water / land usage
5 detrimental effects to older fuel lines, plastics, rubbers, carbs

when the corn lobbyists figure out how to solve those problems , I'll be happy to use it. until that time, I'll enjoy using gasoline.

 

We have a temperance movement in the US that's probably a little hard for folks down on Oz to understand....and absenting facts, the anti-alky crowd sometimes comes up with all manner of zany urban legends to repeat....and yes.
....Most of them don't even OWN a device with a carburetor or have any idea what hygroscopic(***) really MEANS.



Fun Fact:
We still have "dry" counties in the US.
QUITE a few of them in fact....and in the US, a 'dry' county probably means something different than it does in other nations.
Dry county - Wikipedia

I've LITERALLY had people walk up to me while putting petrol in my motorcycle (06, VRSCD) and tell me:
moron: "You know that alky crap will mess up your carbs...."
me: "The bike's fuel injected"
moron: "...'stuff attracts water.."
me: "That's really not what hygroscopic means..."
moron: "Well.....it will rust out your gas tank!"
me: (reaching down and thunking my plastic** fuel tank)
"...don't think so..."
(**) high density polyethylene (HDPE)
(***) corrected from "hydroscopic" which I mistyped earlier.
Hygroscopic relates to humidity.for an uncle....
I'd blame Apple's horrible spell checker, but it was probably my own fault.

We still have people in the US that think that "pro"wrestling is real and they faked the moon landing.....and Bill Gates is using the Covid vaccine to either microchip the global population or eliminate a large portion of it - depending on whom you listen to.

So.....
We use corn in the US to fatten cows (sileage) fatten kids (HFCS) or make hooch.
We have such a dizzying amount of food overabundance in the US that obesity ranks high in the top 5 for health problems all by itself, and it's a major contributor to most of the rest of our health problems.

I don't recall the last time we sent troops abroad to defend our access to corn.

Using corn for fuel is probably the most RESPONSIBLE- thing you can do with the stuff! - besides maybe not grow it in the first place...

 

GOD helps those who help themselves.
This mysterious proposal is for 15% to be A 'maximum'...not THE 'minimum.'

That's why all of those stickers on all of those gas pumps do NOT say "at least 10%"


As of this posting the minimum is E0 (because P.T. Barnum was RIGHT!)
....and 'up to' E85 is the available 'maximum'. (YMMV)

 

you might have missed the tiny picture I posted above. i have 8-10 carbs on various pieces of equipment and mooorsicles. it's always bad to open one and find the kind of CORN GARBAGE that is seen in the above picture.

did you miss the list of things that need correction also ?

 

Only the part about it being tiny.

No not one.