Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General E85 fuel

Well, after some reading and wondering, i filled my tank with E85 last week. Drove 200 miles on the enthonol fuel and then filled my tank with regular gas. Here are my findings:
The ethonol was way cheaper (about 50 cents less per gallon)
The ethonol fuel didn;t give as much power
the car ran rough when cold (which is normal for my car)
Fuel economy went down somewhat (19 MPG city with ethonol, 26 with regular)
Check engine light came on with codes P0171 and P0174 (both banks running lean)

Crusing on the highway the car drove like normal. Accelerating it felt like a 4 cyl rather then the V-6.

Normally i do get a CEL regularly (P0420 catalyst efficiency failure) and upon cold starts it runs rough, but the E85 made it run worse when cold, after 2 miles it worked fine.

Anyone have any other info or feedback on E85. It worked in my car, the car didn;t seem to notice a 50/50 mixture, but a full tank made it a little upset. Please do not run this in your car unless you are aware of any risks. I won;t be responsable for you damaging your car. I figured i would give my contour a taste of a "new" fuel

E85 eats up rubber parts in your car that aren't specced for it, either. I'm wondering if you'll run into more problems down the road. I will NEVER put that in my car.

yeah e85 in an older car is a bad idea. you have to have all rubber gaskets around the head and block. if you had performance issues then you made a bad choice. e85 = better then normal gas. right now only flex-fuel vehicles and newer gm's can handled e85 fine

You should not run E85 unless you engine was designed to use it. No Contour engine was built to use E85.

The seals and gaskets on the vehicle should be able to withstand some ethonol, it says it can run an enthonol blend commonly used which is 10%, so it should be able to withstand it to a point. I have read that older carborated cars its not a good idea because of all the rubber and whatnot used in the carbs. Other sites a read people are successfully running 50% E85 and 50% gas in their cars that were not approved for E85 and none reported any negative effects yet, so thats why i figured i would try. The issue is i can;t adjust my timing as much as it needs for E85, the E85 cars can convert how they run for the fuel to get most efficiency. On the vehicles designed by ford (starting with the 95 Taurus 3.0L) for the E85 it's hard to believe that engine has totally different gaskets and seals as compared to the normal 3.0L. But then again i didn;t build it so who knows. I figured most new engines are physically ok to handle it, but the ignition and comptuer system is not.

i'll report if i have any negative effects down the road

So I take it you don't give 2 sh!ts about your car lasting.

Well, lets hope thats not the case. i just figured i would try out the new fuel...in the upper midwest area they have had E85 available for a long time and all the reading i've done on various sites such as this one don;t report any damage from E85 fuel even if the car was not specifically made for it. People speculate negative effects, but i didn;t see anyone who actually had any major problem because of it. If it's a cheaper, cleaner burning alternative...i figured i would try. Previously i ran several ounces of 100% pure alcohol in the fuel, which is supposed to break up the fuel molecules in the gasoline and make it burn more completely. i had no negative effects from that either.
the car has nearly 180,000 miles on it and is still very powerful and gets good fuel economy. i plan to keep it for as long as it goes, then get rid of it.
If todays vehicles are built to handle 10% ethonol blends, the seals and engine should be built to withstand higher concentrations...

So how much cheaper is it for E85? I hope you are saving more than $20 a month.

amoco (now bp) started with adding alcolhol as a cleaning agent in its gas, along with other cleaners. its great for that purpose, but a car not designed to run higher amounts cannot handle it. search google, there are a few sites out there that tell you the ups and downs.