Well I have been forced into running E10 in my 1997 Camaro Z28 and my gas millage is gone to crap.
Florida is converting all the gas stations to sell E10 only.
I use to get 18 MPG now with the E10 I'm getting 13MPG.
That's killing me.
Does any body have a tune for the E10?
I'm in west Palm Beach Florida.
I hope some body has a tune to help out a little because this is unbearable.
I can't have a car that gets 13MPG.
What can I do?
Thanks,

 

Keep your foot out of it and get a handle on your imagination. No way going to e10 hurt your mileage like that. Hell before it was e10 it just had mtbe in it to do the same job. Not really much change in energy in the gas per unit volume.

You need to probably think about doing a tuneup and putting some new o2's and plugs in and cleaning your maf if your mileage is that horrible, or sticking a woob block under the gas pedal.

 

Well I was easy on the car when I did the MPG.
I just replaced the spark plugs.
I have not replace the O2's or cleaned the MAF.
I can see cleaning the MAF but if I'm not getting any codes why replace the
o2's?
I filled up the tank thats 15 gallons and got 50 miles to a 1/4 tank.
So 50*4=200 200/15=13.3
Is my math wrong?
BTW my dads 1989 cadillac Eldorado is getting crappy millage too and thats got a brand new engine in it.
Thanks,

 

If you really want me to break down the math for you on the energy content of gas with e10, and e85 or methanol i can do that. It is safe to say the ethanol content is not your issue.

The way you figure mileage is to top off the tank not just first time the pump shuts off either. Then drive it and run the trip meter, then top off again when you need gas. You cant just say oh i burned quarter of a tank that must be x gallons. The gas gauge on camaros and t/a's you can trust about as far as you can throw it. I can get 200miles out of the first quarter of a tank, and i can get 70 out of the last 3/4. I ran e10 before I went e85 in my heads/cam high compression 3000rpm stalled car with 3.90 gears and got 22mpg with half city half highway driving, and i have gotten 28mpg if all highway with the cruise on.

Something else is wrong with your car unless the station just has ****ty gas or your method of figuring mileage is just plain wrong if you're really driving it that easy.

 

Agreed. There is no way you are experiencing a 35%-50% drop in fuel mileage from E10. You might experience a 25-%35% drop with E85, but no way E10. I drive over 4K miles a month for work, and I usually see about a 5%-10% drop in mileage if I use E10 vs straight gas. That's it. Either your calculations are wrong or you are getting some very bad gas or something is very wrong with your car.

 

Well my neighbor told me to run some Lucas gas treatment in it and it should be fine.
He was having a problem with gas millage on his jeep grand cherokee.
He said he used some Lucas gas treatment and his MPG went back to normal.
And we both get gas at the same place Cosco.
So I will try that before I start to throw parts at my car.

 

No codes for the O2 sensors doesn't mean they don't need replaced.

I had tuned my PCM to accommodate my dirty O2 sensors. Changed them for new ones and BLMs at idle went from 128 (I had modded MAF tables to get them there) to the mid 140s. I had no codes, but I knew it had been running rich in the past so I changed them.

 

The math is correct, though the method may be horribly inaccurate. HOw did you measure that "1/4 tank" of gas usage?

 

By the gauge
I guess I can go to the place where I get my gas and verify that I am five gallons down.
Believe it or not my gas gauge seams to read right.
But just like all Camaros due to the shape of the tank it drops down fast from a full tank.

 

I would go by what the pump gives you - the gauge is not very accurate

 

Yes, you MUST do as WS6T3RROR stated to calculate a reasonably accurate MPG figure. Fill up your tank as far as you can. Reset your tripometer. Drive it a couple hundred miles (if your range is that good). Return to gas station. Fill up as far as you can again. Record the quantity of gallons used from the gas pump. Divide that number into your tripometer reading. Reset tripometer and do it again next time. I personally would use gas from the bigger companies like Mobile, Shell, BP, ect and stay away from Cosco. Also, if you are not using the Premium fuel, your mileage will suffer probably by 2-3mpg (per my own observations).

 

Minnesota is all at least e10 and in a few years will be required to be e20 at the least. the fuel mileage chanced pretty much 0 between the e10 gas and the e0 gas. something else is up. how many times have you run your test? once? twice? more?. have you tried different stations? Reason I say is maybe you got some crap gas. Maybe extra water in it. But the 10% ethanol will not effect your mileage like that.

 

Your gas mileage will go down with the E10 but your method of getting to your MPGs is flawed. Do as they have subscribed. Fill up and calc the trip miles from that fill up. Also to do a better test, use the same station and same pump, and just fill it up to where it 'pops' or cuts off, that way if you use the same pump for these tests it should hopefully have the same pressure and cut off at the same spot each fill up.

This will take a little while of course and to tune for the different mixture of fuel is tougher with the LT1s but if you got the tools to do so, it can be done, but it will take ALOT of tuning and alot of fuel to get it optimized.

 

I'm not jumping your case or anything but this is a bit of misinformation. Before gas was 10% ethanol it had mtbe to do the same job, before that it had lead in it. Gasoline you buy at the pump has not been just "straight gasoline" for at least 60 years. Theres really not going to be a whole lot of difference from when we used mtbe or lead to now using ethanol. Also depending on whos gas you're buying you are going to get different properties because of the additives in the fuel. Its going to have a different boiling point and flash point even energy content based on whats in it besides gasoline. Shell has thier own formula, amaco has thier own formula and on and on. Then, they do this really cool thing and vary the blends based on testing on each batch of gas they buy you'll probably never get the same kind of pump gas twice unless its in a 55 gal. drum in your garage.

I also take issue with the idea that it takes alot of tuning and patience to optimize for a change as small as adding 10% ethanol. If we're talking wide open throttle... eh not really anymore than anything else still just looking for max power. The o2 sensors and the fuel trims will really take care of the rest though because the thing is hell bent on running at stoich and will do its best to get there with any fuel.

The big big downside to ethanol is this, it will naturally wick water out of the air. This is both good and bad, its bad because we really dont want water in our gasoline, its good because if we have a little excess water in our gas tank over time the ethanol will carry it out homogenized with the fuel being burned rather than just feeding the engine a nice fat slug of solid water.

 

Either way, I check my MPGs in my DD (99 Buick LeSabre, ie it has NO MODS and you drive it the same everyday, no need to put the foot down b/c its useless) and when the E10 started showing up around here I saw my MPGs go down. There used to be an Exxon and some other places that did not have E10 and MPGs would go up, i have since went back to that same Exxon and it now states E10 and MPGs fall. Seems like E10 has something to do with it, and it's not a 100 mile trip I calculate, this is 300-400 miles and EVERY TANK I do the calculation.
I have since started messing with the tune on the bu-ak and have picked up about 2MPGs so far, still got alot of tuning to do but since E10 is everywhere now I am working with that....