Real Gasoline in Austin

Slotgoop hit the nail on the head! When I was in college in 1993 I had a 1989 Dodge diesel that got 26 mpg. Now in 2010 diesels are getting 14-15 if you're lucky. As far as real gas in Austin, please let me know if you find any. Ethanol is extremely rough on outboards and I'd love to find real gas for my boat!

I called a couple of gas stations back in March when I bought a performance car to ask about the same thing. I was informed by mulitple people and then reconfirmed by new article that I read online - a texas law passed in Dec 2009 - banning all gas stations from providing anything without Ethanol except Diesel..... yeah go figure!

Here's a 2008 article on Ford's Europe only 65 MPG diesel Escort, and opinions on why it won't be coming to the US.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...9060491065.htm

Thanks for the info on why we're all being driven into piece-of-crap hybreds and can't get a descent diesel powered vehicle. Cummins must be smarting from this situation, and they're an awesome company that deserves better. I guess they might overcome this if they spent as much on lobbying as the A-holes who brought us this desasterous legislation for our benefit. It looks like just another case of our benevolant government masters looking out for us. Thank God they're here to save us from ourselves.

Check out the diesel Volkswagens. I've heard good things about them, but haven't looked at them in detail.

Thanks for the info on why we're all being driven into piece-of-crap hybreds and can't get a descent diesel powered vehicle. Cummins must be smarting from this situation, and they're an awesome company that deserves better. I guess they might overcome this if they spent as much on lobbying as the A-holes who brought us this desasterous legislation for our benefit. It looks like just another case of our benevolant government masters looking out for us. Thank God they're here to save us from ourselves. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

I doubt Cummins is hurting too much. Their contract with RAM is a pretty small part of their overall global sales. They're way bigger in marine, industrial, off highway, and big rig applications than they ever were in PickUps. If the US would standardize their diesel emissions spec with that of the EU, we'd have a bunch of cheap high mileage engines available with little to no development costs since they're already sold in Europe. The energy saved and emissions avoided in bypassing the extra refining needed to get from diesel to gas would probably outweigh the incremental emissions the motors themselves would put out. Bot nooooo, as goes Californis, so goes the EPA.

Just curious, where is this info about ethanol being bad on engines? I haven't heard anything about that before.

Too much ethanol dissolves a number of rubber and/or plastic parts in the fuel system. This is one of the biggest reasons why a flexfuel vehicle is different from a normal gasoline vehicle. It will particularly tend to eat fuel pumps, which can be pretty expensive, since you usually have to remove the gas tank to replace it. Various other parts can be damaged. There can also be corrosion problems due to the propensity for ethanol to absorb water.

Ethanol proponents will tell you that 10% ethanol is safe, but when pressed, will admit that it's not safe for older cars. Opponents claim that 10% still does do some damage and increase failure rates of fuel pumps and other fuel system parts.

There's currently a push to increase the requirement to 15% despite the problems with 10% ethanol.

You also get lower gas mileage from ethanol than from pure gasoline.

When you first switch from gasoline to gasohol or increase the level of ethanol, it will dissolve the deposits and crap in your gas tank and fuel lines, etc. While this may sound good, it dumps the sludge and crap into your fuel filter, injectors, carburetor, and engine. Once you've switched for a while, it's not really a problem, but the first tank may cause problems.

Just curious, where is this info about ethanol being bad on engines? I haven't heard anything about that before. Originally Posted by Qwaurk

Ethanol is not bad for an engine designed for it. Where problems arise is with older engines where the fuel systems rubber components can be softened and will start leaking from ethanol. The biggest problems though come in a marine environment where usage is low, and humiditiy is high, allowing condensation to mix water into the fuel where the ethanol makes it very difficult to separate and filter it from the fuel. This then corrodes injectors and carb parts. On a car where you're going through a tank a fuel a week, this is not a problem as the vehicle does not sit long enough to accumulate condensate in the fuel tank. IMHO Ethanol is political subsidy to buy votes and mask the real problems. When made from corn, it takes more energy to make it that what you gain. Corn is a crop that requires a large amount of diesel fuel to plant, maintain, grow, and harvest, let alone transport. When you take into account the fertilizer it uses is also petrol based, it's a net loss proposition. I think the solution for biomass fuels lies with things like genetically modified Algaes, or things like switchgrass fermentation.

BTW, I don't necessarily think ethanol is that terrible, just that there are some drawbacks that it's politically incorrect to mention. I don't like our gasoline being used to justify a political subsidy to corn farmers, either.

Aircraft is another area where ethanol is a real problem. Besides the previously mentioned fuel system dissolving and water absorption issues, ethanol can cause vapor lock problems. Admittedly vapor lock can be minimized with fuel systems designed for ethanol usage (push fuel pumps located in tanks vs pull fuel pumps located at the engine, routing fuel lines to avoid hot areas, etc), but retrofitting is cost prohibitive mainly due to cost of regulatory compliance (have to prove that each installation design is safe) and liability (being sued for every crash regardless of cause).

Ethanol is not bad for an engine designed for it. Where problems arise is with older engines where the fuel systems rubber components can be softened and will start leaking from ethanol. The biggest problems though come in a marine environment where usage is low, and humiditiy is high, allowing condensation to mix water into the fuel where the ethanol makes it very difficult to separate and filter it from the fuel. This then corrodes injectors and carb parts. On a car where you're going through a tank a fuel a week, this is not a problem as the vehicle does not sit long enough to accumulate condensate in the fuel tank. IMHO Ethanol is political subsidy to buy votes and mask the real problems. When made from corn, it takes more energy to make it that what you gain. Corn is a crop that requires a large amount of diesel fuel to plant, maintain, grow, and harvest, let alone transport. When you take into account the fertilizer it uses is also petrol based, it's a net loss proposition. I think the solution for biomass fuels lies with things like genetically modified Algaes, or things like switchgrass fermentation. Originally Posted by Slotgoop

I watched a show that said corn as biofuel didn't have a great rate of return. However, switchgrass was said to be great source for biofuel in terms on rate of return, easier to grow, etc. All you hear about, though, is corn.

That's because it's easier to get ethanol from corn through fermentation of its sugars and starches, especially because of the technology and infrastructure (thanks to mankind's historic eons-long love affair with liquor). The generation of ethanol from swithchgrass or any other plant material requires different chemical processes since the ethanol is made from cellulose which has a significantly different chemical structure. But if a determined commercial effort were made to develop the infrastructure to collect, process, store and distribute the cellulosic ethanol, it could easily replace corn-derived ethanol. It would actually be very preferable to replace corn-based ethanol because cellulosic ethanol can be generated from waste paper, lawn clippings, landscaping refuse, crop waste, basically any plant material. It would save a lot of money now spent on solid waste transport and disposal

Turning cellulose into sugars is also a very simple and well known process ........ cows and horses have been doing it for years ......... a simple grinding and then placed in a tank filled with ruminant bacteria is all it would take for the first step ....... then a second step of fermentation and a third of distillation ........ it's the extra step that will make it slightly more expensive

Well, the bacteria in their gastrointestinal lumen do it. Industrially, it can be done a few ways. One is with an acid-based degradation first that is then broken down by yeast fermentation. You can also use a straight bacterial-based enzymatic process such as occurs in the gut of obligate herbivore. Then there's basically burning the material and then using the oxidation byproducts as feedstock for either bacterial fermentation or an inorganic catalytic reactor to generate the ethanol.