Alan forwarded:
The SEMA Action Network (SAN) is urging the United States
Congress to support a provision to prevent the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using designated
funds to increase the amount of allowable ethanol content in
gasoline to 15% (E15).
then added:
Some of our cars will end up with dissolved fuel lines if
there is too much ethanol.
Yes, that's an issue, but the BIG problem is that no L-Jetronic, Motronic or
similar, closed-loop fuel injection system was EVER designed to operate on
that blend of fuel. The more alcohol that is added to the fuel, the more
fuel must be metered into the intake charge to make the engine run right.
On 100% gasoline, your carburetor or fuel injection system must meter about
6.7%, by mass, of fuel into each charge of air the engine ingests. On 100%
alcohol, it must meter about 14%, or about twice as much fuel. A mix of the
two falls in between. If your engine is carbureted or open-loop fuel
injected (like SPICA), you'll find that your engine runs significantly
leaner on the E15 fuel mixture. If it was adjusted to run just right on
100% gasoline, it may run so lean on E15 that it stumbles and loses
driveability. In the case of the closed-loop systems (L-jectronic,
Motronic, etc.), many of them may not have enough control authority built
into their algorithms to deliver enough fuel to keep the engine running near
stoichiometric mixture. In other words, those systems, too, may end up
making their engines run overly lean. This will be especially true at high
power levels. So it's entirely possible we'll see people whose cars no
longer work correctly.
On top of that, EVERY car will get lower fuel mileage on E15. Brilliant,
huh?
This isn't something any engineer or scientist would push. It's obviously
being pushed by the alcohol industry and by non-technical people who have
been duped by the hype.
Rich Wagner
Montrose, CO, USA
'82 GTV6
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