flexible fuel?

So was I. Looks to have happened at 12:57 PM

 

OP never said it's mid-90s Chrysler FFV

No it isn't. Where in the original post you see any references to mid-90s
model?

Original post below:
---------------


Hi...

Reading Chilton, which makes reference to "flexible" fuel, and
suggest different oils to use if burning it.

Never heard of flexible fuel... maybe just a different expression
usa<>canada? Possible they're referring to what we might
call gasohol? (which I do use)

Thanks, and take care.

Ken

 

Alright, well, you stand up and be proud. Me, I regret that you have a
reading disability.

Well, in the "Newsgroups:" header line, and in the poster's previous posts
asking for help with his 1994 Chrysler, amongst other places.

 

Stick to your 2 areas of expertise, Dan: lighting and berating folks. You are
over your head right now in terms of "judging" anyone's reading ability. -
including your own.

Physician heal thyself. Plonk me all you want, but others read, and read
better than you I might add. Then of course, the other readers are polite.
Period!

 

OP never said it's mid-90s Chrysler FFV

There is no mention of 1994 Chrysler anywhere in the original message or
it's headers, so there's nothing wrong with my reading abilities. Due to
nature of Usenet it's highly unreliable to assume that posts with the same
'From:' header actually are posted by the same person - only careful
comparison of all headers can give you some assurance that it's actually the
same poster. In fact _all_ headers can be forged, so only RSA signature
would be a reliable identification method. This is why I usually don't look
at posts in other threads by the same 'From:' poster - way too unreliable.
If you do, I certainly hope you know how to examine all headers, understand
what they mean and verify them against other posts.

I certainly regret your lack of politeness. A simple sentence in your post
'since your Chrysler is 1994 as evidenced by your other posts' would have
helped other people to understand what you're talking about.

Peter

 

Actually Peter Mr. Sterns obstinance aside, your articles are right on the
money. FFV vehicles are NOT made to run on methanol. The whole point they
were developed was to use renewable energy resources and that is not
methanol. Methanol is made from petro feed stocks and ethanol from bio mass.
Ethanol is the safer of the 2 fuels also from a corrosion standpoint. It's
why ethanol plants are springing up all over the midwest (such as Lena IL).
So if Mr. Stern would like to run methanol I wish him all the best (if he
can find it), but ethanol is where it's at.
Larry

 

Are you sure you looked as carefully as you could? Because I'm looking at
the original post, and there's something in the headers that gives a
really good clue as to what book the OP was reading. I know it's a good
clue, just as I know the context of the OP's other posts was a good clue,
because -- guess what? -- the OP confirmed the other day that his is in
fact a '94 Chrysler.

You seem to manage to sound-out the words OK; it's their parsing and
interpretation that seems to cause you difficulty.

That's your problem.

 

Chrysler, who built lots of FFVs specifically to run on Methanol,
disagrees with you. I'm inclined to believe them, especially since I have
a great deal of the service literature for these vehicles, have seen them
with my very eyes, and have worked on them with my very hands.

But you just go right on thinking your guesses and opinions trump actual,
real fact. It makes no nevermind to anyone.

 

http://www.energy.ca.gov/reports/9712TTSR.PDF

Page 14.

 

Dan, PLEASE stick to your two areas of expertise: lighting and berating
other contributors to this group.

PLEASE, PLEASE elaborate of your expertise (personal and not
cut-and-paste expertise), and practical experience in the area the OP is
concerned about.

PLEASE, PLEASE!!

That said, I REALLY believe you have incredible expertise in automotive
lighting systems - that is why I have told folks to contact you.

However, as far as flexible fuels are concerned, you don't have much
expertise - so move on to another thread, Dan.. Give us all a break and
move off your berating concerned contributors..........

Ken
Winnipeg

 

Where in the original post you see any references to mid-90s model?

OK, I give up. This thread has been plonked.

 

Ken,
In case you haven't noticed there are 2 Daniel Sterns posting here.
Larry

 

Did you grab the PDF and start reading on p14? If not, go do it or shut
up. If so, get some help with your reading.

I'm fairly confident I have at least as much as you do, and probably more.

And on this particular question (were the mid-'90s Chrysler FFVs mentioned
in the OP's service manual made for methanol or ethanol?), my answer
(methanol) is correct, and jdoe's (ethanol) is not.

And it's really just that simple. Sorry you can't cope.

DS

 

Nope, just one: Me.

There is a "Dan JS" who posts on this group occasionally, but:

1) He's not me, and
2) He hasn't posted anything in this thread.

DS

 

WELL!! All these years, I've been brought up to believe that 'FFV'
meant "Famous Families of Virginia"! Here a Lee, there a Lee,
everywhere a Lee Lee...

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

gee soory dude for the fast fat fingers
the fact we taxpayers pay for the roads is true

 

Chrysler may make only Methanol FFV's, but others make both Methanol
and Ethanol FFV's. And it is in point of fact possible to modify a
vehicle into a FFV, or into a straight M85 or E85 burning vehicle. I
have operated a 1974 Toyota on straight ethanol, a 50/50 mix of ethanol
and gasoline, and a specially reproduced batch of the W196 German
racing fuel which consisted of benzole, methanol, aviation gas, and
nitrobenzene. (I did add a little outboard oil.) I installed a
specially modified Rochester two barrel carb and modified intake
manifold, and replumbed the fuel lines with hard brass and AN fittings
and braided flex.

All modern automotive fuel systems should be ethanol compatible.
Methanol is a different story.

Anyway, and to get to the oil point, if you never run your FFV on
methanol, you can ignore any FFV-related oil concerns.

 

True. Actually, Chrysler *has* built a few Ethanol FFVs (in the late '90s)
but most Mopar FFVs have been Methanol.

Possible? Yes. Costly? Very. Cost-effective? No.

Modern automotive fuel systems are compatible with ethanol *to certain
concentrations*. Go beyond that and you're on your own.

Not necessarily the case.

Read Carl Payne's experiences with an FFV '94 Spirit; he mentions the oil
issue specifically- http://www.thedodgegarage.com/amusing_stories.html

 

I didn't see the original post on this, so pardon the untimeliness of the post, but I wanted to share just a little insight about the FFV Spirit previously mentioned by...sorry, I don't recall who posted it, David pointed it out to me. The original post said something about seeing an auctioned car drive by with FFV stickers on the fenders, and the poster wondered what it was. Well, I own one, and I'd love to tell you all about it. First of all, this car is a rocketship. It flat-out out-accellerates *ANY* production car on this or any planet. It out-corners a Porsche, out-runs Lamborghinis, makes your GLHS's look like book ends and, generally speaking, is the single most underappreciated automobile the world has ever known... ...this, if you use the "everything I say taken to its absolute opposite" scale. This means: This car is a bomb, and a dud at that. There isn't a car in the world that would lose a race to it, even if you were to transport them to the moon, where gravity might be in the Spirit's favor. It couldn't out-corner a Volkswagon, couldn't catch up to an Alfa Romeo, proves that the GLHS wrote the book on performance 4-doors and, quite specifically, is about as valuable as a bucket full of elbows that you're paid ten dollars to carry fifty feet. My car is a '94. I understand they're still making SOME FFV Chryslers, specifically minivans. I have no idea why. The concept behind the FFV is simple: use cleaner fuel, save the environment, yahda yahda yahda, blah blah blah. Well, let's discuss this fuel. You have your choice of standard unleaded gasoline (the decomposed brains of dinosaurs, deep-fried into their own brand of molasses and squeezed until the plasma drips an awful amber color into your gas tank), or M85 Methanol (Clearasil zit cream). Sound yummy? Check this: M85 is readily available in Southern California. In fact, the closest gas station to my house has it. How convenient. In fact, M85 is a whopping $0.92 a gallon, last I checked, versus $1.17 for Dinobrain brand car food. The problem is, it takes TWICE AS MUCH to go as far as the Jurassic Mazola. Nice. Oh, but it doesn't stop there. See, Methanol will wash your motor oil right off your cylinder walls, so you can't use any old oil. Kick Dino out of there, and switch up to...betcha thought I was gonna say synthetic, dincha? *NOT!* Chrysler specifically wants exactly specifically one type of oil, and you can fetch this travesty of automotive glucose from your Chrysler dealer...at over $6 a quart!!! Oh, and did I mention the FILTER IS DIFFERENT?!?!? OK, so I had enough of this straight away. I figured, I'm just not going to run M85. That way, I can use the regular oil, regular filter, etc etc. *WRONG!* The clearances are such that if you use regular oil, you will go through, oh, I figured out it's about 1 quart every 250 miles. You'll get sick of that little oil can light coming on real quick, and considering you don't see any smoke, it's more than frustrating to try and diagnose where the "leak" is coming from. OK, I needed to find an alternate to the dealer's oil. Check the bottle, get the SAE rating, call every single oil company's consumer line, and NONE of them can help me. So, I start hitting parts stores, checking all the major brands I've used in the past (key point). I look at all the synths, I check every bottle. In the end, I finally found an oil with the SG rating that was on my dealer's bottle: PLAIN OLD PENZOIL WITH Z7 POLYCRAYON ADDITIVE which, in case you're shopping, works out the front door of Schlep Boys at $0.98 a quart. Jeez. OK, so you think that's the worst of it, huh? Not on your life, bubba. I bought the car for $1800 (hundred) with 56K (note two digits) on the clock. It had been MILDLY wrecked in the front, just enough to crease the hood, fender, and ruin the grille, lights, radiator and condensor. OK, no prob. I go to the yard, score a radiator out of a '92 Spirit 2.5 with air. Uh...no workie. Not even close. Doggonnit, hafta wait for a '94. I waited for almost a year, got a radiator from a '94 2.5 with air, and while it was different from the first radiator, it STILL wasn't right. Go to the parts desk and hear, "That's not a flex-fuel, is it?" <slapforeheadnoise> OK, fine, I'll just have to WIRE TIE MICKEY MOUSE the thing in there and use the upper radiator hose from a DAKOTA TRUCK with a foot chopped off, so the thing sorta wraps around Kentucky before making a graceful sweep near the air conditioning condensor on its way to the left front of the car before coming back to the inlet. Lower hose? Don't get me started. '85 Daytona, chopped in the middle with a piece of my kid's swing set leg spliced in the middle with two gigundo hose clamps holding the thing together like some kind of bad dream starring Elizabeth Taylor and that horsehead from The Godfather. Oh, did I mention it leaks? Calm, Carl, find your happy place. You can improve your cooling capability by actually installing an OVERFLOW TANK instead of that 3-liter bottle of Shasta Mountain Cherry Berry Extravaganza-slash-Jell-o Base flavored rudimentary substitute nutrition example of the beginnings of a root canal, which, by the way, is ALSO wire tied in. OK, this time I'm going to the dealer. While I'm there, I'm getting a speed sensor and a fuel filter to finish the "routine" maintenance and take care of a little problem with the car refusing to go faster than 65 (oh, did I forget to mention that? CLOCKWORK, it is. The car WOULD NOT go faster than 65, even downhill!!). OK, look at PAIS. Yep, one coolant bottle for the AA body in '94, no chance to screw that up. Yep, only one speed sensor too, and only one fuel filter. HEY, I shoulda come here first! AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!!! *WRONG!* The coolant tank is different! Why the @#$%^&*! would the coolant tank have to be different?! It's different from the 2 examples I got from the junkyards, it's different from the fractured remains of the original bottle. Why is it different?!?! Well, at least I can get the other things done. AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!!! The fuel filter is different!!! GAWD, it's got some kind of gnarly built-in stainless steel braided lines growing out of it...with QUICK CONNECTORS on it. NOW what am I going to do? Well, at least I can try out the speed sensor... AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!!! The speed sensor is different too?!?!!? AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!!! Look at me: I'm Charlie Freakin' Brown, and that concubinous bint Lucy has just yanked the football right out from under my mechanical sensibilities!!! AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH!!!!! Calm...breathe...calm... We had to go to Utah. Don't ask, we just did. Doing a whopping 65MPH, we drove 715 miles to a place where cold is defined by how long it takes to bite through a Chicklet while God is trying to invent the reverse-microwave all over your face, ears and neck. We stayed overnight... ...and the car refused to start. Dempsey helps me tow the pig to his work, where some of the craftiest techs I've ever paid have discovered something. Seems the FFV sensor is bad. Seems it's on Super-Secret-Double-Intergalactic-Backorder. I later deduce the thing must have liquid inside, either mercury or maybe a little Clearasil itself, I dunno. What I DO know is that once that sensor warms up, the car will start. What the techs do is trick the car's computer by splicing in a 9v battery, force-feeding the computer 1.5v, equating roughly 9% Methanol content. For the first time in months, we go faster than 65... ...*IF** I can remember to put the faceplate on my radio before starting the car. You see...well, don't see, because *I* don't see how what order the starting of the car and replacement of the radio faceplate has on anything, but it does! And, if I put the faceplate on first, the car now goes faster than 65. If I forget, the check engine light stays on, and exactly precisely at 65, the car starts bucking back and forth like I'm the unlucky kid at the birthday party who got that ONE go-kart that's the slowest of the field, and all the 5th-graders are slamming into my butt, chugga chugga chugga... OK, after a ton of false starts and 3 extra days in Donny and Marie Land (home of the Denny's but not quite a Dennys because you have to ASK for coffee and associated cups, because there's no such thing as a Postum cup or they'd leave one, upside down at every place setting, just like they do coffee cups at every other freakin' Denny's the world over, not like you'd WANT a hot beverage when your car is broken down and you have to walk 3 miles for breakfast and the weather is somewhere between the temperature of a wicca mammary and that ideallic-but-ever-mocked impossible climate- control setting of the fifth level of hell, but it would be nice to have that OPTION), we finally get to leave. Now, one thing I learned while I was waiting for my car is that there is a part number for a fuel filter with stainless quick-connect lines...but it's not for flex fuel. That's different still. How'd you like to pay $54 for a fuel filter? And, that speed sensor is the right one, you just have to wire in the retrofit pigtail they give you so you can use the same one every other car uses. The air filter? Dunno. The coolant tank? Dunno. What I *DO* know is that I have absolutely no interest in tracking down all the right parts for this car--I've spent too much on the wrong ones already!! Anyway, we did 24MPG on the way up to Utah at 65MPH, but we did 17MPG on the way back at 80MPH. Notice anything wrong with these numbers? Yeah. Let's do a test by unfaceplateizing the car between fillups. 24@ 65, 17@ 80. Nice. So, here's the short version of the FFV story, in case you made it this far: *ALL* of the parts, including the air in the tires, near as I can tell, is unique to the FFV. Any Led Zeppelin heard through the speakers will sound blatantly distorted so as to reveal Paul Schaeffer singing "Sweet Home Alabama" in the shower, because the nature of FFV vehicles is such that you simply cannot assign practical physics values to any of its componentry. Light bends around the car, making it invisible to parts books and all Dodge technicians who have not spent at least eighteen hours rebuilding the transmission of a New Holland tractor in eight inches of snow, and the computer was built by Steve Wozniak as a means to get back at Steve Jobs, but it ended up in this pig by accident and refuses to start unless the weather is somewhere between 62.3 and 62.5 degrees exactly, and the winds are out of the southwest between 8.3 and 8.4 MPH, and Venus is in retrograde and Plutarch is read by exactly 31 people at the same time, all pausing on the word "substantial," in existential contemplation... ...THEN it runs like a normal car. *ALL* of the consumables, especially the methanol-like-gasoline-flavored- substitute-but-not-the-way-we-think-of-saccharin-substitute fuel, require a HazMat rating of 5 or greater and gloves thicker than a tunafish sandwich to handle. While Penzoil isn't quite this nasty compared to a styrofoam cup of gasoline and Tide detergent, it is the single worst motor oil in human existence--case in point: the enormous clearances in the FFV engine magically filled up when using the stuff. I'm fairly sure Chrysler intended them to be a disposable car. I'm serious! There wasn't even a provision for a spare tire apart from the well in the trunk, which magically smelled like New Car Fume', and was filled with 34 2-liter containers of Mr. Pibb and a 3-ring binder outlining the safety procedures surrounding the apparently rare and unforseen circumstance that you might actually have to put FUEL in your GAS TANK, and, this being an FFV, you might want to try M85 Methanol, but be careful because looking at the shadow of the vapor escaping into the wind will cause your mirrors to turn to stone, your eyes turn into marbles, your wife turn into Rodney Dangerfield, and your hands turn into golf clubs. I'm guessing one of the pages in that binder has instructions on laying out stones in the middle of the desert that spell "SEND A GRAND CHEROKEE--I'VE GOTTEN A FLAT TIRE!!" so that if you actually do bust rubber, you at least will make it home before the NBA strike is settled. Don't worry, I hear they've released some more California Condors into the wild. Your FFV will magically disappear, courtesy of the Fowl Feeder Vehicle program spawned in Ann Arbor over a drunken tale of how the AMC Marlin came to be. At least, that's my perspective. I hate the damn thing, and I couldn't un-reccommend a vehicle more than ANYTHING with FFV in the name...anywhere. At least the stereo is nice.<<

This is obviously not serious commentary, along with the other
articles on that page.

I have had some experiences with Ford FFVs and those, at least, were
wholly satisfactory.

As far as the economics of "alternate fuels", they're more expensive,
which is why they're the alternate. But "user satisfaction" has to come
in somewhere, as does, for modifiers and hot rodders, the satisfaction
of going faster. M85 will make 12:1 compression street engines entirely
possible, if that's not a motivator you are no hot rodder.

 

Oh, believe me, the guy was being completely serious. He had every one of
those experiences with that FFV Spirit. He does tend to let his keyboard
run away with him, I'll give you that, but I know him personally, and that
was his experience. That doesn't mean *everyone* (or even *anyone else*)
had those same experiences.

I'm not sure what you find "not serious" about the rest of the information
at http://www.thedodgegarage.com/na_efi_ffv.html . It's all accurate.