I have been looking at gas prices and wondered how the E 85 would work with my car. We are using regular unleaded now but with out limited income, we were wondering how this change would affect our engine. Please respond via email.
Forget this idea of E85 . You will not save any money because you will get less miles per gallon and I don’t think your MDX is a Flex Fuel vehicle so you will damage the engine .
Also I don’t know who you are trying to contact but this is a Forum site at CarTalk so an email response might not happen.
Also the online specs for this MDX say Premium Fuel required but it probably had regular unleaded for the last 13 years so that may not matter.
Cars not labeled as Flex Fuel cannot use E85. That information would be inside your fuel filler door or inside your owners manual. Also in both of those locations are instructions that Premium fuel is required, not optional, as @VOLVO_V70 has found.
Forget E85, don’t use it, it will damage your engine.
From the owner’s manual:
Fuel Recommendation
Your vehicle is designed to operate on premium unleaded gasoline with a pump octane number of 91 or higher. Use of a lower octane gasoline can cause occasional metallic knocking noises in the engine and will result in decreased engine performance.
Use of a gasoline with a pump octane less than 87 can lead to engine damage.
It goes on to say:
Some gasoline today is blended with oxygenates such as ethanol or MTBE. Your vehicle is designed to operate on oxygenated gasoline containing up to 10 percent ethanol by volume and up to 15 percent MTBE by volume. Do not use gasoline containing methanol.
Clearly, you can’t use E85, and shouldn’t use anything over E15.
A co-worker started using E85 in their Ford Ranger that wasn’t a Flex-Fuel vehicle because it was cheaper.
I think it took six weeks before the engine had holes burned through the pistons.
Moron!
Tester
He probably needed to transition to E85 gradually: starting from E15, then going E20 and so on until getting to E85
Unprepared, his Ranger’s got an alcohol poisoning… poor thing…