I would like to hear more about E85. my 2019 5.0 f150 is a flex fuel. I was surprised to see it has 12:1 compression.. there is a station 10 miles from me. just wanted to know of anyone's experiences with it. thanks

 

I only used it once when I had a Toyota Tundra. The gas mileage dropped considerably and offset the savings at the pump.

I am pretty sure your owner manual will tell you the same.

 

Figure about 20-30% less mpg. Not the best $ savings in comparison to pump 87.
It's nice for power though as it's a higher octane fuel.

 

thank you. the owner's manual is a joke. I'm thinking more of deposits on the intake valves. saw a you tube video where the guy said the cause was direct injection and that the port injection washed the deposits away??? I worked in ;the 80's and 90's in a mercedes dealer they all had multi port injection. never had a deposit problem..next to us were the BMW techs. the bmers also had multiport injection. they were always doing the walnut blasting. blows that theory. just felt that the ethanol might be cleaner on the intake valves. maybe...

 

The 18+ has port and direct injection so deposits shouldn't be a problem. As for E85 my truck LOVES it. Runs so much smoother and seems overall happier. The mpg is much less though. I still buy it when I can, my closest station is over 60 miles away so I generally run 93 premium instead.

 

One of these days i'm gonna try E85 in my 5.0.
Recently tried 93 octane coming from always 87octane, what a noticeable performance difference, can get tire squeaks in 2nd gear now.
93 octane from now on in my truck dam the price.

 

If your going to try E85, at least run 2 to 3 tanks of fuel before deciding if you like it.

 

Thank you members. I will try a few tanks. my point on the valve deposits was that MB does not have a problem but BMW does. same type of system but maybe better engineering? I think rather that cleaning the valves port injection makes the deposits from the gasoline (additives). BMW techs were always adding techron to the vehicles. MB never did. I know indy cars run ethanol and they run great.

 

I tried it with previous truck which had the 6.2, and I can honestly say, that I have never ever, seen my mpg drop that fast. I was a bit dismayed because I paid a whopping 15 cents less a gallon and I just knew it was going to make my unbelievably expensive gas burner more economical. I had the cruise set on 65 and mpg went from 16-17 down to 11-12. DTE dropped from 475 on my 29 gallon tank to 315. The 10 percent savings at the pump didn't offset the mileage tanking 25-30 percent by no means. I have the 5.0 now and I'll never try it again.

Besides, to take full advantage of the octane benefit, don't you have to tune it? If a tune could be done for a couple hundred or less, and give me another 15-20 HP, I might consider it.

If the state would make the taxes on a gallon of E85 the same as E15, I'd buy it.

 

Don't confuse multi-port injection from the 80-90's to today's injection systems. Those were both behind the valve.
Today's have a direct injection in the cylinder and a port injector behind the valves.