E85 in Flex 5.7s, Is it actually that bad?

Been reading about it and most of it seems to be concerns over getting water accumulating in the E85 fuel and/or the switching back and forth of E85 to regular 87 pump gas here in California.

I recently began pondering E85 since I passed a station selling it for $2.19 vs the cheapest ARCO gas near me is over $5.29. I've heard I'll drop a couple MPG on E85, but that's still a huge cost saving considering a daily drive about 50miles so I'm filling up a little over once a week.

Any studies done on this? And for anyone who has used it, would you do it again if it was saving you over 50% on fuel?

 

Any fuel containing ethanol is lousy. If you've ever even varnished up the carburetor on your lawnmower/boat/snow blower etc, then you know the aggravation ethanol can cause. On top of this, E85 will give you terrible fuel mileage. I'd avoid it personally.

 

E85 doesn't pencil out when I ran it in my truck. Got single digit fuel mileage and less power to boot. Plus you have to change your oil twice as much.

 

I did it a few years back in my 2015. I went from 13-14mpg to about 10. At the time I was saving about $0.70 per gallon and the money just didn't work out.

My biggest problem was when I went back. There is a problem with the ECM that does not correct itself well. It is the system that Toyota uses to detect the amount of ethanol in the system. I think that if you switch and stay you are OK but it you want to go back you will need to have the dealer reset your Ethanol Density Fuel Trim. Mine was stuck at 67% and my truck would not start well at all. Rumor has it that there is a procedure that I did not follow that would have prevented this problem????

Given the shortcomings of the fuel management system, I would not do it again. I also do not believe that E85 is a good or a "green" solution to gasoline.

All of that aside. If you would like to do it, I don't believe that you will do any damage to the engine. The engine and fuel system was designed with the rigors of ethanol in mind. Yes, it is harder on the oil and you will need to change it more frequently.

 

Since there's chatter about E85 here; does anyone have any experience with running tuners built for the E85 on the standard 5.7? I wanted to purchase one but all that I that I have seen say that they're for E85 models with no other specification. Any thoughts?

 

I liked to run E85 on the last 2 fill ups before the standard oil change. I always felt it helped clean the fuel injection system, but that's just a hunch. I definitely felt more power on E85 and I'm not sure why others feel they lost some.
Also, running E85 cleans the black soot from your tail pipe.

 

It's worth a tank to see for yourself, the truck is made for it if you have the flex fuel system. I never have had an issue. I also don't run it often as E85 doesn't save you anything when you take the hit on MPG into consideration. The few times I ran it it ended up costing more per mile than the normal 85 octane we get here in CO.