Originally Posted by M119
Thanks for the input, Since ethanol is pretty new in France, there's so much discussion about it in the car world. Some people say you absolutely need reinforced valves, valve seats, pistons, catalytic converters etc. Is it true that ethanol will wear those parts quicker on engine not designed to be flexfuel ? I really want to hear about it from people in brazil since i dont speak enough portugese to do researches.
Ethanol in fact don't have the same lubricant capability of gas so to speak. Ethanol is in fact more dry if that does make sense. It's very common here to convert gas engines to E100 specially to turbocharge this engines, since E100 makes much more power with same boost than gas. But, I don't think ethanol will cause any harm to valves, valve seats, maybe they can last a little bit less but that number would be marginal. I've never saw a converted engine have those problemas on the short or medium run. Speak of pistons, there is no problem at all, and using ethanol you will not have those carbon deposits so common when running gas. But it isn't all about good things. With ethanol you have to carefully and more often check fuel filters, all, inside and outside tank, fuel injectors and spark plugs. Fuel filters tend to saturate more rapidly, and fuel injectors too. The water content on ethanol tend to corrode the spark plugs on the medium run.