Do you park your car in a heated garage? As for the e85 . Where I get mine it is testing at E95 right now so there is a difference.
I take it your vette is the car on E85?
And finally, is your vette red with Weld RTS rims?
Mine went down around 20 percent I would say. But the pros out weight that con IMO
A tune change is all that's needed with a stock car. A stock 3v motor will pick up about 10/10 rwhp/tq. E85 really comes to life with more cylinder pressure either through higher compression or boost.
Keeping all things the same a 4.6 3v making around 500rhwp will gain 35rwhp just on the fuel change and changing only the stoich in the tune. More gains are possible with more spark advance and more boost. Boost can be added to the limits of the motor because E85 won't detonate. Spark can be added until it starts making less power for the same reason.
E85 or even E50 or E30 are game changers for internal combustion engines. Ethanol reduces the threshold for detonation and cools the combustion chamber. It can't really be compared to gasoline with gasoline metrics like btus.
The oil companies go to great lengths to demonize ethanol. You can find plenty of people on here who have had great success with it. In fact it is my belief that having 10% ethanol is part of the reason we can have stock motors with 12:1 compression that run on 87 octane. There are other factors but the cooling and anti detonation effects of ethanol are part of the equation imo.
I've seen a few oil company advertisement that are made to look like news stories. Their only purpose is to demonize ethanol. Why? Because only one oil company has invested in ethanol production, the rest of them see it as something that cuts into their profits. This is the same reason they fought to have MTBE used as an octane booster. They knew how dangerous it was but they ignored that and said they just couldn't put ethanol in their product (MTBE is made from refining byproducts that are hazardous).
Sorry for the soapbox, it wasn't directed at you. I come from a farming background in corn country and get somewhat excited when ethanol comes up because most of the info out there just isn't correct. Have a nice day.
Thanks for the information. Regarding MTBE, the dangers were overplayed. I work in the Medical field (medical devices) and we developed a pump to dissolve gall stones the are made primarily of cholesterol (unlike kidney stones which are mineralized). We used pure MTBE pumped directly into and sucked back out of the gall bladder to wash and remove the gall stones. The biggest patient concern was if too much MTBE spilled into the digestive tract it would have an anesthetizing effect on the patient so we had to control the volume carefully. MTBE is an ether, so has the same effect as ether-based anesthesia. We searched the literature and performed toxicity testing and that was the worst thing we could find.
With respect to fuel, I understand your point of view on EtOH and I also understand the political power of the EtOH lobby, not to mention the government subsidies.
The government does subsidize the oil industry. Ethanol subsidies ended a few years ago. They were $.40 per gallon that a fuel retailer sold so they didn't really go to anyone who produced it, only to the petroleum retailers who blended and sold to their stations.
Well, it looks like some subsidies were allowed to expire while others were left in place or replaced with new ones. So it doesn't seem fair to say ethanol fuel production is not still tax subsidized.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/econo...15-budget-backs-costly-corn-ethanol-subsidies
http://www.taxpayer.net/library/art...or-corn-ethanol-and-other-corn-based-biofuels
Government subsidies should be used to get a new industry over the start up hump, but once that industry is self sustaining, the subsidy should be stopped. That includes oil companies in my opinion. If after some reasonable amount of time the new industry still can't self support, then as a taxpayer I have to conclude it's either a bad idea or will never be profitable. It's time to pull the plug.