see here
I just read this on Pistonheads…
I guess some kind of additive will have to be considered?
Oh dear 
…
I guess I’ll have to sell up and buy a sensible car…
We all have a sensible car already Jon
E10 is 10% ethanol (it doesn’t make any difference how you make that ethanol), 90% petrol. Lots of 1990+ Miata owners have been running on this for a number of years, without any major impacts. The biggest gripe is the worse fuel consumption when running on this fuel. Some report an issue with knock, so on early cars, you might need to back off from the 14 degrees BTDC.
10 US states have mandated E10 and above for several years now (some, upto 10 years now).
If you contact Mazda, they will tell you they’ve never tested to 10% on the NA, only 3%. They aren’t going to do any more testing on the NA. But, luckily, several thousand American owners have for you.
For example
http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=296764
http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=290666
E15 is 15% ethanol, and in the US has been approved to run on all cars built after 2000. Some Miata owners have to use this, in some states, and again, report no problems.
I read that some Brazillian MX5 owners are having to use 25% ethanol; MPG in a Mk1 is quite bad. Still, no reports of Mk1s spontaneously catching fire there. One particular owner imported a US spec car (a 1992), and has been running it for 13 years, unconverted, with no issues, on 25% ethanol. He’s also not had any problems with water absorption.
E85 is 85% ethanol, and plenty of Miata owners have converted their cars to run on that.
Sounds like scare mongering.
Ethanol can cause a variety of problems in vehicles not designed to run on fuel with higher conentrations of ethanol including:
- Fuel tank and fuel line corrosion - ethanol can absorb water a bit like brake fluid
- Other corrsion and damage - certain other metals and materials like hoses etc can be adversley affected by excess ethanol in fuels
- Overfuelling - this can cause bore wash, washing the oil off of the cylinder bores thus increasing wear
- Pre-ignition and evaporation - flash point is different so excess heat can cause fuel evaporation, vapour locks and starvation
The majority of fuel sold in the UK will continue to use the same amount of ethanol in it as it does now. We don’t have a huge supply of Ethanol to top up our fuel with which is why some parts of the US have loads of E85 outlets whereas other areas have none.
I’ve seen the references that somehow ethanol will be corrosive to metals. Pure ethanol is corrosive to magnesium and some aluminium alloys, in much the same way as water is. Water though leaves an insoluble oxide layer, which, to an extent, limits the extent of corrosion. Pure ethanol does not, since alkoxides are freely soluble. But ethanol rapidly absorbs water, being hydrophillic. So its difficult to imagine gasohol in a fuel tank, coming out of a pump on a forecourt, being entirely free of water. This water content may well mitigate the corrosive effects of ethanol.
I read in a recent motoring publication [but havn’t had it confirmed] that Super Unleaded would NOT contain the higher ethanol content.
Anyone with an old motor bike who’s used tank sealant beware as ethanol attacks most of the old sealants, also if it’s fitted with a fibreglass tank ethanol attacks a lot of the older resins used, as a friend has found to his cost.
We’ve always been told driving and alcohol don’t mix, but there’s now a distinct possibility we could all be driving around tanked up on tequila, according to the usually very sober Guardian.
Researchers at the University of Oxford have suggested that agave, the hardy plant from which the bitter liquor is distilled, is an ideal source from which to create the petrol substitute ethanol, as it has a far lower environmental and social impact than conventional ethanol-making crops.
This comes as no surprise to Crave. We’ve been aware of tequila’s benefits for years, but writing a white paper on the subject the morning after an extensive bout of experimentation has usually taken a back seat to figuring out why our brains feel as if they’ve been used as a fat person’s trampoline.
Thankfully, scientists have stayed sober long enough to do the research we couldn’t. They’ve found that, like many biofuel crops, agave-derived ethanol is potentially very eco-friendly, as any CO2 emissions created by cars burning fuel made in this manner are offset by the plant absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere before it was harvested.
Crucially, unlike corn, sugar cane and other crops used for biofuel production, agave isn’t consumed by humans and can be grown in marginal or desert land. This means there’s a far lower risk of food prices increasing, wildlife being lost and workers being exploited. Sure, harvesting ethanol in this manner might increase the price of tequila and possibly annoy a few scorpions, but it’s a price that just might be worth paying for carbon-neutral motoring.
Agave biofuel trials are currently taking place in Australia and some experts, according to Science Daily, are already plotting to reclaim abandoned agave plantations in Mexico and Africa, where agave was used to produce a type of fibre used in rope and dartboard creation.
It all sounds brilliant to us. Just imagine a future where motorists can drive to the local bar, stick a giant straw in the fuel tank, down the lot and never run the risk of drink driving home because their tanks would be empty. That’s the kind of world we want to live in. Tequila, you make us happy.
Feel free to share your appreciation for this wonderfully versatile drink in the comments section below.
Alan
It’d be nice to quote where you copied that from.
Millers produce an additive, available from Moss. EPS, claimed to be new for 201 so may be suitable as an additive for E10 petrol for those that want to use it.
Any supercharged/turbo charged '5s be very careful. A mate over here ran his sc Mk1 on etho by mistake, and apparently it sounded like a bucket of bolts from the knocking. It’s been at the pumpos for a while over here and my partners little Getz runs nicely on it and suffers no fuel economy problems. The one big + point is that Qld could be self supporting in the stuff, we grow huge quantities of sugar cane which is a prime source
Some real world experiences of E10 and early MX5s
http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?p=5521634#post5521634
Increased useage of ethanol is going to be a bigboo boo
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091214101408.htm
Actually not “is” but “might”. This was a preliminary study:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/Ginnebaugh2010.pdf
In any case, its not exactly news that E85 will increase ozone emissions; there are studies going back to the early part of the last decade saying more or less the same thing.
A substantial portion of the health impact projections were based on the assumption that by 2020, we’ll all be using E85 fuel; that is patently not going to happen. And the report is entirely dependant upon various modelling packages. What the authors are not qualified to comment on is the overall impact of E85; while there is probably no dispute that there would be an increase in ozone production (though there is a huge dispute as to the extant of those emissions), there is no serious analysis undertaken as to the health and societal benefits of reduced NO and CO emissions. The reduction in benzene emissions should not be under-estimated, since benzene is a potent class 1 carcinogen. None of the authors are Physicians.
The closest to a critique of this paper is in a recent research project update issued by North Western, who carried out actual emisson monitoring in the field, in Brazil. The work is still ongoing:
http://isen.northwestern.edu/doc/pdf/Booster_ASalvo.Sep10_Progress.NarrativeReport.pdf
An interesting recent study looking at the relative emissions of hybrid vehicles versus biofuel vehicles:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/2/024011/fulltext/
Provided you can get electricity generation to be low emission, hybrids will be better. But the authors hail from Texas, which has its own particular story in low emission power generation; wind and solar power generation there has been spectacularly successful, though mainly I suspect due to a generous State subsidy, and lax planning laws (no view to spoil in Texas).
This really has nothing to do with running your MX5 on ethanol; I suspect the main drivers for the switch are more to do with national strategy, than global emissions (the overall impact on health, when a full EHSIR is compiled, might well indicate only a slight change). There are many many ways to make ethanol (besides growing things in fields), but not many ways to make petroleum, all of which require, at some point, extracting blck stuff from the ground, or deep undersea, often in very hazardous regions. Oil prices often spike due to actual or perceived shocks (war). Food prices (corn, sugar beet) can also spike due to bad weather, blights etc, but the latter can be mitigated by having multiple sources of ethanol; plant-produced, landfill-produced (POET), oilgae etc. Its lucky that Ethanol is comparatively easy to produce, and seperate, biologically. As long as you can produce a sugar, or a sugar-like molecule, its dead easy to produce ethanol using the oldest biotechnology known to man.
What Wavell said in 1940, in respect of oil, is still very true.
And nothing to worry about for older MX5s. Brazillian MX5 meet in Sao Paolo; lots of older Miatas, all looking in fine fettle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7eZeFDcQ-E&feature=player_embedded
Unless you go out of your way to avoid it, you will already be filling up most of the time with E5, E10 or something in between. Has anyone noticed problems with earlier MX5s? Older cars than the MX5 have certainly had problems but they seem, so far, to be fixable. Carburation had been affected on some but not others. We are having problems with a down draught Zenith and have not yet fixed it, though the car is still being used on the road. It is difficult to get the engine to idle properly and it is prone to stalling. There have been reports of fuel lines, seals and petrol tank sealants being affected but none of these would apply to even the earliest MX5, I would have thought. Shell have advised the use of a stabilising additive if fuel is to be stored in a petrol tank for a long time. That would only apply if you lay the car up for a period. E10 does seem to shift ‘varnishing’ from fuel lines, that is to say it removes the deposits which non-ethanol petrol left. These can bung up fuel filters, but the filters are easily cleaned or replaced. The only real problem for MX5/Eunos would seem to be the possibility of E10 upsetting the mixture or needing a change of ignition timing because the flame front travels at a different speed. Have any of the professional MX5 mechanics found problems? Over to the experts or we are just passing on anecdotal “evidence.”
I have been reading some disturbing articles recently in the press regarding the intention of the government to allow the ethanol content of petrol to increase to 10%. 15% is proposed in the USA. I have also been scouring the internet for information and there is a great deal available. This decision makes a good deal of sense politically and no doubt financially to many people, but the vast majority of the information, would you believe, is skewed, biased even with some hints of vested interest. So, sorting the wheat from the chaff is proving difficult. If I am to believe what I read, Mk.1 owners are about to encounter some rather serious problems with more ethyl alchohol being added to petrol. Ethyl alchohol is a very efficient solvent, should we be concerned? and if so, about what? I post this to ask if there are any members who are chemical engineers or the like who may have information nearer to the truth than the press articles I have been reading. On a lighter note, if the content were to be further increased then at least we could drink the stuff, until a stealth tax was imposed! Opinions and information are invited, the more the merrier.
Hasn’t this been gone over before?
oops wrong link!