2005 Insight and Ethanol?

Hondo · 08-15-2009, 11:56 PM

As new owners of a 2005 MT Insight, my wife and I are curious about about running ethanol in any percentage in our car. I am in the process of building a column still and would appreciate any input re this. Thanks.

Hitech · 08-16-2009, 08:25 AM

10% seems to be no problem I think higher might throw a DTC due to excess trim.

Hondo · 08-16-2009, 01:06 PM

Hey Hitech, thanks. I remember reading that Honda has been offering total flex fuel cars in Brazil for a number of years now that feature a computer that automatically adjusts to run on anything from straight gas to pure ethanol. Rumor was that they would offer it here in 2010, but apparently the factory changed their minds--or had it changed for them. Could push more than 10 per cent but worry about the lean burn in the manual tranny engines...Funny that the Ford Ranger has had flex since the mid nineties and Honda is lagging here.

jkbrushaber · 08-16-2009, 02:02 PM

As far as I have looked into 100% gas vs. 10% ethanol vs. E85, your loss in mpg will pretty linearly correlate with your cost savings. Plus, the ethanol is more corrosive to your fuel system/engine. How much???

I do know that I have just recently switched from E10 to 100% gas in my 2006 5sp Insight, and have seen an increase in mpg. I definitely noticed it became easier to get into and maintain "lean-burn". You can check fuelly.com and look at my numbers.( jkbrushaber red car) It is hard to compare filllup to fillup, since temperature, wind, rain etc. can have significant effects. You can definitely notice the decrease in winter months. But if you compare last summer to this summer you would be comparing the two different fuels pretty directly. To be honest, I think this summer has been cooler and more windy than last, so my current numbers should be even better than they are.

I was getting about 75mpg last summer with E10 and about 80mpg now with 100% gas.

**satchel** · 08-17-2009, 10:59 PM

My colleague Andrew Downie in Brazil just sent me the latest estimate of the comparative energy balance of corn ethanol versus sugar cane ethanol, according to the Brazilian sugar cane industry, UNICA.
"For each unit of fossil energy used to produce Brazilian sugar cane ethanol, 9.3 units of renewable energy are generated, an energy balance that is over four times better than that of ethanol from sugar beet and
wheat, and seven times that of corn ethanol."
It's worth bearing in mind during the current debate over renewable energy and the impact on food prices.
- David Adams
(source:The ethanol energy balance: corn v sugar cane. Latest estimate.)

Gasoline gallon equivalent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No corn squeezings for me while people are eating dirt cookies. I look for another station when I see ethanol on the pump. Besides, the drop in mileage is never made up in the price.

BillR · 09-10-2009, 12:57 PM

The Manitoba government just anounced that they're going to add an additional 78M dollars to the 30M that they've already invested in an ethanol plant here. They mandated last January that all regular grade gasoline must contain 10% ethanol. It took me until June last year to figure out what was wrong with my car! I switched to mid-grade or premium to get my gas milage back up to what it should be. Also, the price didn't change when the ethanol went in. I was paying the same price to get 10% less fuel economy. Add that to the cost of producing the ethanol ($108,000,000.00 so far in Manitoba) as well as the fact that we're turning food into fuel..........

I expect that this ethanol thing will be relatively short lived when people start to get hungy. Rather than mandating that gas should contain 10% ethanol they should have mandated that all vehicles should burn 10% less fuel!

My rant for the day...

jkbrushaber · 09-10-2009, 09:31 PM

Satchel-

Can you clarify how/why the SOURCE of the ethanol makes any difference? Ethanol is C2H5OH, a pretty simple organic compound. You can make it be fermernting any sugar source... grass, corn, beets, cane, apples, wheat, etc. Once purified, it is all the same. The yield of ethanol, per pound of source material and efficiency varies with the source material, but the energy yield when burned will always be a constant.

If gold is $1000 per ounce, it is $1000 per ounce. It doesn't matter where you got is from. Grandmas dresser, a stream, or a mountain. Its still $1000 per ounce once purified.

Am I missing something?

**satchel** · 09-10-2009, 10:01 PM

It takes energy to produce ethanol. It takes seven times as much energy to produce it from corn as it does from sugar cane.
The gold in the stream is fairly easy to get at and close to pure. The gold in the mountain is buried and mixed with a bunch of worthless rock, you have to dig it all out and extract the gold. What's going to give you the better return, panning the stream or mining it from the mountain?
You could say grandma's gold is sugar cane ethanol, beets/wheat are the stream and corn ethanol is mining the mountain.
You have to look at the energy balance, what you get for what you put into it. You get 1.3 units of energy for 1 unit expended with corn, you get 9.3 units of energy for 1 unit expended with sugar cane.

jkbrushaber · 09-10-2009, 10:53 PM

thanks for your clarification

rusty41251 · 11-01-2009, 09:47 PM

Tried E85 just for fun. Car ran fine. Got a light but I've lost my checker so I don't know the code. It has since gone out with the return to normal gas. Milage went from 70s and 80s to low 50s. Smells funny sorta like a bar. In Minden, NV Bently sells E85 for 2.49 vs 2.70 for E10 at Arco.