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Anyone have any REAL WORLD experience with E85 conversion kits?

Do they work? Do they harm? Are the emmissions cleaner with these conversions kits?

I have 2nd-hand experience from 3 mechanic buddies of mine...all living in Northern WI (where E85 is $2.50-$2.80 or so)...

Case #1: 1993 Ford Escort wagon. No conversion equip, just pumping E85 into a stock, non-FFV vehicle. 15k miles over the last 2 years; no problems other than a (constant) check engine light.

Case #2: 1996 Toyota Corolla. Some Brazilian-made fuel injector controller box installed aftermarket (I can't remember the name of the company). Ran a 50/50% mix of E85 and E10 for about 3 years until the car's transmission failed @195k. This vehicle is currently moth-balled (for the last 2 years).

Case #3: 2003 Honda Civic EX. My buddy swapped his OEM fuel injectors with 4 that he grabbed off of a junkyard Honda Prelude. The new injectors were approx the same physical size as the Civic's, but they injected more fuel/pulse. No computer or chip mods. Fuel lines were replaced with stainless steel aftermarket, the gas tank was emptied/ cleaned out, and the fuel filter was changed shortly after 1000 miles after the Prelude injector installation (and running exclusively on E85). There was all sorts of solid particulate crap in the fuel filter. After about another 5k miles, we checked the fuel filter again, and it was about as clean of a fuel filter as one can see. He has 50,000 miles on it (so far) running exclusively on E85. This was a total pain in the arse (the fuel filter and gas tank are under the rear seat of the Civics), but it proved a concept...

The reason that I know the details of these situations is that I live in Milwaukee (WI), and thought for a long time that E85 would make it's way into the city at a bargain-basement price (there are commercial and farmer-owned blenders just a few dozen miles north of the city)...and I was considering converting my 2002 Civic to run primarily on E85. However, E85 is still not readily available outside of Northern WI to date (which is shear stupidity, in my opinion).

The first two of the above situations noticed about a 15% decline in MPG. However, E85 is close to $1 per gallon cheaper than E10 or regular gas...so it's still quite financially advantageous to run the high EtOH blend. The last (3rd) of the above owners has obviously more HP (at all RPM's, but particularly on the low end), compared to his stock setup, and fuel mileage is roughly similar to stock. He is not a hypermiler, however.

...just my thoughts; hope it helps someone out there...:flag:

PS: We'll probably do a full autopsy on the engine of the 2003 Civic if it dies, but from our preliminary work, it really looks like E85 may have cleaned out a lot of gunk from the engine, injectors and spark plugs during the initial 1000 mi trial run.

Also, I'm not rec'd anyone to do any of this, but I think that it isn't really that far off from being a feasible alternative to gasoline....

Cheers!