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Hello everyone.

I run a 1991 Ford Escort Wagon that has been converted to run on Ethanol as well as Gasoline, or any ratio of both. I did the conversion myself and it cost less then $100. I am located in Florence, SC. I believe Ethanol is the ICE fuel of the future because it is produced entirely on the USA from crops grown here in the USA. It burns clean, and is 100% renewable.

E85 is available from two Shell stations here in Florence SC, and is consistently priced 40 to 50 cents cheeper than 87 octane Gasoline. (BTW, E85 is over 100 octane!) Todays (Oct 9th 2007) E85 price is $2.19 a gallon.

Here's a pic of my corn burnin' E-Wagon. :-)

Peace!
Dave

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/2/Ethridge_s_E85_91_Escort_wagon.jpg

While I don't agree with your idea's of ethanol becoming the next fuel I think its pretty cool you did the modifications yourself for less than $100.

Also, sure the price of ethanol is less than gasoline, but the resultant fuel milage is also lower. Normalizing the price based on milage I think you'd find that gas and ethanol are pretty close to each other in terms of price and gas doesn't take away from our food supply.

Reguardless I think the future is in electric power...

Cheers! and nice ride

Nice clean car for a 91

Hey you swapped a grill from a GT didn't you??

I actually like the later Escort wagons. They had decent reliability, were nice looking, and are cheap to buy today. At the time, they were probably the only subcompact wagon you could still buy. I'm a wagon fan, so kudos to them for keeping the light burning.

Also, those cars had a healthy dose of Mazda DNA if I recall, so that couldn't have hurt :-)

Caryfd227,
I like the idea of electric power, and actually considered converting the Escort over to Electric power, but couldn't justify the conversion cost. I think you are right, the future of transportation is probably electric. But, while the internal combustion engine is still around, we have to consider alternative fuels to run them because gasoline will go away very quickly, and this is one of the reasons I chose Ethanol. I feel that developing new ways/technologies to power cars with gasoline is a waste because it is such a limited resource, where as Ethanol can be grown, and the more Ethanol we use, the more plants will be grown... Supply and demand you know.

Bucko,
Thanks, it is a '91 with a weird and wonderful history... :-)

Aka2983,
Love the wagons too.... You're right, the '91 through '96 Escorts are based on the Mazda 323 platform, which is a good thing. They are indeed cheep to buy today.. Dirt cheep. I bought mine from a older gent that moved to the USA from Mexico, and he brought the Escort with him. It had super low mileage. It has some very interesting features on it. All the brakes, and suspension are Escort GT items.. It's a funky little wagon.

Take care..
Dave

I just noticed on your list of cars you have an '06 STi. Before I bought my insight I had an '05 STi that has a moderate amount of work done to it. Boy I loved that car... in fact I still miss it to this day. At least I still get to play around with subies because a good friend of mine is heavily involved with rally and runs an open class STi (it's an '05 with '06 front and rear ends with a japanese spec 2.0L STi engine)

IMO theres not many cars on the road that sound better than a boxer engine with un-equal length headers and full open exhaust.... ahhh the sweet smell of race gas on a cold rainy morning at a rally event. (yes yes I know its not environmentally friendly but, everyone has their vices and mines racing ;) )

Post some pics up of the subaru!

EDIT: not to hijack your thread but heres a picture of my old STi :)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v717/jamieboyd/Mycar1.jpg

Hey caryfd227,

I'm always struggling between being environmentally careful and filling the STI's tank with 110 octane race gas, twisting up the boost and letting her rip. Which is yet another reason why I am a fan of ethanol, because I'm hanging onto the hope of being able to keep my filthy internal combustion engines forever... :D I know deap down though that on day they will become extinct.

I have some pics of all my cars on this website:
www.euroford.co.uk

I traded in an '05 WRX for the '06 STI. I'm glad I did, because the new ('08) Impreza's are hideously ugly. I actually feel guilty though for driving anything other than my Escort these days, so the other cars are pretty much furiture now. Very sad :(

How long have you been running the insight? My Wife and I looked at Hybrid Civics, and loved them, but we couldn't justify spending the extra $$$ so we got her a regular ('06) Civic instead.

Dave

Oh wow look at that lotus. Its beautiful!

I bought my first subaru back in '02 when the WRX first came to the states. I loved that car but it didn't have enough guts for the track for me. After modding it extensively (and going through 3 transmissions and 2 motors) I decided that was time to step up to something a bit more beefy. So I put down a deposit on an '04 STi....

Well the dealership kept giving me the run around and I ended up not getting an '04 but I got the first '05 they had on the lot (which was a good thing for me since they did numerous changes for the '05 year: The new interior, wider rims, larger hubs, addition of a yaw sensor in the center diff, lots of suspension changes...)

I drove it very seldom because:
A: it got horrible fuel milage since I modded it so much (was pretty much a track car)
B: I only live 3 miles from work

I ended up selling it back in febuary of this year. After a bit over 2 years of ownership I only had 15k on the odometer so I got a decent amount for it.

I then started driving the first car I purchased myself from "long" ago (back in '96) which was an '88 pontiac fiero GT with T-Tops. Pretty rare car in its own right (~1,500 GT T-Tops ever made)

The engine blew several years ago and I ended up putting a cadallac V-8 in the back of it. While it was no where near as fast as the WRX or STi, it still was a lot of fun to drive.

After driving performance cars all my life I've been used to being able to press the go pedal and flying down the road. I had a change of heart a couple months ago and decided to full implement eco living into all parts of my life. (my car was the last stronghold ;)

I got the insight back in july on sheer luck. I always wanted one but they stopped making them in '06. I never saw many around where I live and I was actually on the way to the toyota dealership to get a prius when I decided to see if the honda dealership had any used insights.

Thats when I found "my" car. The car was actually traded in that very morning on a VW and had only been on the lot for 2 hours. I felt that was sign and bought it on the spot :)


BTW, your right about the new '08 wrx's... the are hideous and the STi's don't look much better! which is sad :(

Heya ethride, what parts of the fuel system did you have to
change to make sure the ethanol wouldn't attack them? How
about ECM changes, fuel composition sensors, and the like?
.
_H*

Hobbit,

The fuel system on this car is already designed to handle E10, so I did not replace any fuel lines. All I had to do was supply approx. 30% more fuel and the engine doesn't know the difference. It has no "fuel composition sensors" or anything like that. The only stumbling block with this car was overcoming the "lean burn mode" which occurs after 55mph in top gear. That required some careful fuel pressure adjustments.

Dave