[Healeys] Gas mileage to conclave

[Alan Seigrist]

Marty -

I doubt Ethanol Mix would reduce your mileage that much unless you were
using E85, which you can't use unless you have a flex fuel vehicle.  If you
were using E10 (quite possible) it should only reduce mileage about ~3%.

With respect to corn ethanol - I think pretty much everyone agrees this is a
boondoggle (except corn farmers of course), but then again getting a process
started with corn is easy and fast and now I think the country is looking to
switch to sugar cane and sweet sourghum in the near future, and eventually
switchgrass.  For diesel the bio fuel source most commonly used is rapeseed.

Ethanol is NOT good for Healeys because it is a very good solvent and thus
tends to deteriorate natural rubber and cork gaskets - which means it will
degrade pretty much any SU carburetor out there except possibly the HS4 and
HS6 (used only on MkIIs).  This is moot because the standard fuel flex line
used in Healeys is rubber, and the standard SU fuel pump uses a rubber
diaphram.  For more info have a look here:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3251/is_5_235/ai_n25474139

Until the US is willing to make the effort like Brazil to create a true flex
fuel standard platform in their vehicles, ethanol is more or less a bit
wasteful.

Avoid at all costs!

Best,

Alan

'52 A90
'53 BN1
'64 BJ8

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Martin Jansen <jule_enterprisesah at yahoo.com>
wrote:

>  First let me say I did not drive my Healey to California but trailed it
> there. I made a similar trip last August also trailering a car of similar
> weight to the  Healey using the same truck.
>  I have realized upon my return and doing my calculations that I used 22%
> more
> fuel on this recent trip compared to last trip. I am not referring to cost
> but
> to consumption of fuel. The cost was also increased but my concern was the
> consumption of gas.
> I am concerned about the oil companies adding ethonal to fuel. I believe
> this
> process reduces the energy density of the gas causing more fuel to be used
> to
> achieve the same energy density as plain gas with no ethanol.
> My understanding is that harvesting the corn for ethanol is a very
> expensive
> process and great deal of fuel is used to harvest it. Is this the way we
> should be going?
> Why would you reduce energy density in fuel which would result in higher
> consumption of this mixed fuel? resulting in higher consumption of oil
> reserves.
> Are the costs of harvesting for ethanol being retrived though higher volume
> sales in fuel?
> Are oil companies like cigarette companies adding something  to their
> product
> for higher consumption?
> And what effect does this fuel have on austin Healeys?
> Do you readers have any thoughts on this?
> Happy Healeying,
>  Marty
> www.jule-enterprises.com