Thursday, July 31, 2008

E85 prices coming down with gasoline

Meijer has E85 at $3.22 as of yesterday afternoon.

I've seen a number of no-name gas stations in Hammond, Indiana with gas at $3.65.

So it appears that the huge drop in crude oil prices in the last couple of weeks is translating into cuts in gasoline AND E85 prices.

My spreadsheet says that E85 should cost $2.68 a gallon.

9 comments:

daltonsbriefs said...

I think we'll see $3.25 gas on Labor Day and $2.75 E85.

Oil has reached a trading range, and all the talk of drilling has calmed the "china" speculators. I think oil drilling also forced itself to center stage for the election, which isn't good if you're a Democrat.

zenbeer said...

Hey, are you using any sort of special spark plugs? Some folks on the ethanol boards are saying to use PULSE PLUGS. Any thoughts?

-zen

Anonymous said...

e85 in Chelsea, MA 2.85/gallon last week. Upstate NY price was $3.19/gallon.

Buzzcut said...

Saabs have a special ignition system that use the spark plugs to sense what is going on in the cylinder. They can sense conditions that lead to pre-ignition, for example.

Because of this sophisticated system, knowledgable people that you talk to on Saab message boards don't recommend using anything other than the OEM sparkplugs.

You know that one trick hypermilers do is index the sparkplugs so that the electrodes are all facing the same way, towards the optimum side of the cylinder (whichever direction that might be!).

Buzzcut said...

Dude, you're increasing the ethanol content too fast. You're not giving the ECU time to get used to the increased ethanol content.

If you increased the E85 at a set rate, say a gallon per fillup, you might be able to slowly move up to a full tank of E85.

Even so, getting up to half a tank of E85 ain't bad!

Buzzcut said...

I'd kill to get e85 at $2.85 a gallon.

My spreadsheet is still saying that it should be $2.63 in Indiana.

zenbeer said...

I shitcanned this current tank of E32. Allow me to explain why.

I drove 130 miles 3 days back with my motorcycle trailer attached to help someone move locally and it skewed my mileage on my E32 tank.

I did average 18.4 mpg with a fully loaded trailer (furniture and boxes) with a mix of highway and local driving, but felt this would skew my final results too much to be of any use.

I decided to top my tank off before I take a round-trip highway-only drive to Springfield, Mo tomorrow for a job, which is 360 miles total. All my ethanol tanks have been a mix of local and highway miles, so it'll be interesting to see how my car likes the blend on this trip.

Topped tank off with 3.5 gallons of E85 and 5.0 gallons of regular unleaded. New formula makes this 36.6% ethanol or E36. The car seems to REALLY like this higher blend. Just coming back from the station I averaged 25mpg which is awesome for local driving.

More to come.

-zen

zenbeer said...

Hey Buzz, I like the idea of indexing the plugs. I'm going to ask at saabcentral(com) what they think of that idea.

Did you mean that I was increasing the ethanol too quickly? Or were you addressing a different poster?

-zen

Buzzcut said...

No, the comment was for you, Z. You increased the ethanol content too fast.

I did the same thing once, went from 30% to 40% on one tank. Got a CEL. Backed it off, reset the CEL, and SLOOOWLY increased the ethanol content (not increasing the E85 by more than half a gallon per tank).

I eventually got it back to 40% without a CEL.