One of the gas stations where I live recently added e15 and e30 gasoline to their pumps. I drive a 2005 Dodge Neon SXT and was wondering if either one would be ok to put in this car. I regularly put in the e10 gas and have done so for all of my vehicles since I have been driving. I read that e15 should be fine but was wondering about the e30 gas. Any suggestions or links would be wonderful. Thanks for your time!
DO NOT use E30 unless you are eager to pay for some expensive repairs to the fuel system on that car! Additionally, you can expect really poor gas mileage before the damaged fuel system becomes evident.
Is the E15 ok to use in a non-Flex-Fuel vehicle like this one. I had read that there is a boost in performance around 25 percent mixture…is it hard to upgrade to flex fuel hardware or is the cost prohibitive? Any links or advice would be appreciated.
There’s no boost in performance if your car’s ECU isn’t tuned for higher octane, assuming the E30 has a higher octane rating than the 87 octane your car is tuned for from the factory, it would just be like putting premium fuel in a car that only requires and recommends 87 octane; there would be no benefit at all. However using the E30 will likely result in reduced fuel economy since the ethanol in it has less energy per gallon than straight gas or E10/E15.
This is the Catch-22 with ethanol. To get the full benefit of ethanol, you need an engine designed to burn E-100 and have a compression ratio of 14 to 1 like an Indy car to take FULL advantage of the very high octane pure ethanol delivers. “Flex-Fuel” vehicles can burn ethanol but they can’t do it very efficiently because of their low compression ratios…