My plan is to increase my E85 by half a gallon per tank. Seeing as I average about one tank every two weeks or so, I wanted to see how long it might be before I max out the ethanol content.
It's going to take awhile!
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The last e85 blended tank in the VW 2.0T yielded a little over 26 miles per gallon. Then, I could only fill up with e10. That partial tank yielded an unprecedented 33.58 MPG as calculated this morning when I topped off the tank with 6.212 gallons of e85. The price at the Mobil station was $3.099/gallon.
No check engine lights to date.
The car does seem to like the stuff. I'm obviously not keeping records as detailed as yours, but do you think that alternating tanks with e85 blends could be improving my mileage overall?
Also, you might be interested in this article about how stations in Minnesota are installing blender pumps that allow motorists to select their own custom blends of ethanol and gasoline:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gsMl9I9xTqtTdZvYwuM2C6fKc_zwD91HB4MO0
That would be seriously cool to have around here since many of the stations require you to pay for e85 in advance. This is true even if the pump has a credit card reader installed. One time I had to pay $30.00 on my credit card before they'd turn on the pump. The "change" was refunded back to the card. I find this to be a real pain, to say the least. I assume that it's to keep people from inadvertently putting e85 in a non-flex vehicle but It would bother me if I had to do it every week.
I noticed another person with a flex fuel Chevy Malibu filling up this morning but I didn't have time to chat him up.
You may have found a sweet spot in terms of ethanol %. You had too much ethanol on your e85 fillup, you diluted with your E10 fillup, and that lower ethanol % (but still more than E10) gave better mileage, probably because it was at a sweet spot in terms of octane and energy content (more octane, but not too much less energy)
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