Gas Prices hit $2/gallon!

[MiniSimp]

When I was single, it was no problem keeping the house at 60*.  I prefer putting on layers than turning up the heat.  Wood stove also helps! 
But now that I'm married and the mother in law lives with us, if it's below 80* they will pregnant dog!    I don't think there has been a day in the last 5 months that the wood stove hasn't been going 24 hours!  And if I have to clean out the chimney all they do is pregnant dog because it's 72* in here, and hurry up and clean it, because it's cold in here! 

I turned off my heater 2 weeks ago and the wife has yet to notice.

[unclejpl4x4]

i can't stand anything over 68.      72+ is way 2 high 

[Lady Di]

Little perspective for everyone:

http://www.nysun.com/editorials/congressional-spiral

Interesting CT!

When President Bush acceded in January 2001, we pointed out in an editorial in November, a barrel of oil was selling for 8.25 100th's of an ounce of gold. By November of 2007, it was selling for 8.32 100th's of an ounce of gold. Today, it's selling for about 8.9 100ths of an ounce of gold. In other words, the price of oil isn't spiraling upward. The value of the dollar is spiraling downward.

[BigMike]

COME AWN $5/GAL!!!!!!

TTT

[solar86yota]

Dang, BIGMIKE!!!! The cheapest over here is lie $3.00 a gallon!!!!

[MiniSimp]

[solar86yota]

I STHAT FOR REAL MINISIMP!!?!?!??!

[MiniSimp]

I STHAT FOR REAL MINISIMP!!?!?!??!

Yep, and beleive it or not, so is this (15 years ago)

[NT-OUTBACK]

I figure since it's not getting any better and I'm moving, its time to sell my truck. I see a nice Corolla in my future 

[BigMike]

Keep the truck. Drive it much less. Get an alternative daily driver vehicle.

What you need to do is figure out a budget and see if it can save you any money in the long run.

In order for this to work, you must purchase a car out-right. This will not be cost effective if you are making payments on the daily-driver car. Not only the payments, but the insurance will be much more expensive because you don't own the car.

For instance, put your truck on the cheapest insurance you can find, like only liability. Then get a cheap car for $500 or $1k that makes great gas mileage, like a 1984-87 1.3 liter 4cyl Honda CRX HF version that is factory rated at 52 MPG !!! My friend has one and he claims he has gotten more than 60 MPG. You have to afford to buy a car out-right like this or the whole idea is debunk.

Then get inexpensive insurance on that as well, maybe liability + some medical coverage.

Then figure out the following summation:
+ Cost of daily driving your truck currently per month. Make sure you consider wear and tear on your tires, brakes, suspension, Crawler, etc.
- Cost of the two combined insurance payments per month.
- Cost of the gasoline of this daily driver per month.

Sum those up.

If you get a positive number, then you are saving money and this daily driver car plus keep the Crawler truck. This is a great plan!

If you get a negative number, then you would be better off selling your truck and only owning one fuel efficient daily driver car. This is a sad plan

BigMike

[BigMike]

To give you an example, my Crawler truck gets parked and I hop on my $700 Suzuki GS500E motorcycle that gets 50+ MPG and costs under $200/year for insurance. Even if I drive my Rock Crawler for just 1 week, I can feel it in my wallet. My Motorcycle goes ~130 miles off 2.5 gallons, which means a full tank of gas that lasts me 1 week only costs me about $9.

$9/week is the cost of gasoline per week for me.
The only maintenance I've needed have been two new tires and a new chain & sprocket set.
I bet if I added everything related to the bike up, I must be averaging under $20/week including insurance, gasoline, and wear & tear 8) And that number will go down the longer I own and operate the bike

The cost of truck insurance is far greater than the motorcycle's combined monthly operating cost

[itsyodatime]

3.03 for cheap in wyo

[NT-OUTBACK]

Keep the truck. Drive it much less. Get an alternative daily driver vehicle.

BigMike

I would love to keep it, but I don't see my income improving anytime soon and having the time or the place to tinker with it. The cost of gasoline was only one of many factors in my decision to part with it. I need to finish school before I get back into any kind of automotive hobby. 

[DTB]

Keep the truck. Drive it much less. Get an alternative daily driver vehicle. Buy stock in an oil company.

FIXED hehe

[BigMike]

funnay

[unclejpl4x4]

i have a better Idea find a job or move down the street from work so u can walk/ ride a bike

[te51levin]

Uh...nope. <SNIP> The higher percentage of alcohol in E85, causes problems with fuel lines, gaskets, O2 sensors, etc. in vehicles NOT designed for it. I think vehicles designed for gasoline can run a gasoline/ethanol blend of up to 30% ethanol with out problems.

Uh...nope    Or at least not always.  I've been running E85 in my '85 MR2 since November with no fuel system issues.  The tank, pump, lines, and hoses are all stock.  I'm using larger injectors, but they're also stock Toyota parts.  So far I have absolutely no evidence of failure or corrosion.  Many others on e85forum are also reporting no problems with cars that are not approved for ethanol.  It's always smart to be cautious, but it looks like a lot of the ethanol problems people talk about are simply rumors that don't happen, or don't happen very often, in real life.  The sky isn't really falling.

One point for sure - the oxygen sensor doesn't care what fuel you run.  All it does is report a rich or lean value to the ECU.  It does not know the difference between gasoline at 14.7:1 and E85 at 9.7:1.  Both are stoichiometric (theoretically perfect) air/fuel mixtures and any o2 sensor will read them both the same, and will produce the same voltage.  Ethanol will not damage the o2 sensor...no worries.

Of course everyone likes to scream that with E85 you will lose fuel economy.  That is true, but with some important caveats.  For one, E85 has a pump octane rating of 103-105!  That means you can run absurdly high compression ratios (13:1+), or huge amounts of boost if you're running a turbo or supercharger.  High compression equals high combustion efficiency, which recovers a lot of fuel economy.  Another point is that ethanol has a wider flammability range than gasoline.  That means you can run it leaner (further from stoichiometric) than gasoline.  I have my engine running 1.25 Lambda at low load cruise.  If I was using gasoline, that would be leaner than 18:1 air/fuel ratio, and I would almost certainly have heavy bucking and surging.  On ethanol, it just plain runs.  So that's a little more economy recovered.

With the engine leaned out like this, I got 20mpg on my last tankful.  E85 is $2.85/gal.  That equals $0.1425/mile fuel costs.  On premium gasoline (my engine is 11.3:1 and needs at least premium gas), currently $3.58/gal, I got no better than 25mpg.  That equals $0.1432/mile.  It's almost dead even, and I get 105 octane to play with, fuel that comes from US farmers.  Plus there are still areas on the fuel table that I can lean out further.  I expect to get up to 21-22mpg without much effort.

Just like anything else.  Lots of people will say the sky is falling, but most of us will survive it, and some things once thought impossible will probably become the norm.

[abnormaltoy]

Uh...nope    Or at least not always.  I've been running E85 in my '85 MR2 since November with no fuel system issues.  The tank, pump, lines, and hoses are all stock.  I'm using larger injectors, but they're also stock Toyota parts.  So far I have absolutely no evidence of failure or corrosion.  Many others on e85forum are also reporting no problems with cars that are not approved for ethanol.  It's always smart to be cautious, but it looks like a lot of the ethanol problems people talk about are simply rumors that don't happen, or don't happen very often, in real life.  The sky isn't really falling.

One point for sure - the oxygen sensor doesn't care what fuel you run.  All it does is report a rich or lean value to the ECU.  It does not know the difference between gasoline at 14.7:1 and E85 at 9.7:1.  Both are stoichiometric (theoretically perfect) air/fuel mixtures and any o2 sensor will read them both the same, and will produce the same voltage.  Ethanol will not damage the o2 sensor...no worries.

Of course everyone likes to scream that with E85 you will lose fuel economy.  That is true, but with some important caveats.  For one, E85 has a pump octane rating of 103-105!  That means you can run absurdly high compression ratios (13:1+), or huge amounts of boost if you're running a turbo or supercharger.  High compression equals high combustion efficiency, which recovers a lot of fuel economy.  Another point is that ethanol has a wider flammability range than gasoline.  That means you can run it leaner (further from stoichiometric) than gasoline.  I have my engine running 1.25 Lambda at low load cruise.  If I was using gasoline, that would be leaner than 18:1 air/fuel ratio, and I would almost certainly have heavy bucking and surging.  On ethanol, it just plain runs.  So that's a little more economy recovered.

With the engine leaned out like this, I got 20mpg on my last tankful.  E85 is $2.85/gal.  That equals $0.1425/mile fuel costs.  On premium gasoline (my engine is 11.3:1 and needs at least premium gas), currently $3.58/gal, I got no better than 25mpg.  That equals $0.1432/mile.  It's almost dead even, and I get 105 octane to play with, fuel that comes from US farmers.  Plus there are still areas on the fuel table that I can lean out further.  I expect to get up to 21-22mpg without much effort.

Just like anything else.  Lots of people will say the sky is falling, but most of us will survive it, and some things once thought impossible will probably become the norm.

Uh...nope! 

The only problem I has was with my O2 sensor...too lean. Your car is under OBD I mine is under OBD II, that might be a difference.

Also, ethanol is corrosive to some o-rings and aluminum. Most, but not all, modern cars can run it...with computer changes.

Around here there's no price advantage to using E85, it costs the same or more that real gas. In the future all my vehicles will be diesel (except my Toy).

Chicken Little doesn't live anywhere near me. I get a kick out of the tizzy people work themselves into over little things.

[Goose]

interesting stuff on running e85 in an mr2...

Heres somthing i found funny.
This is a pic i took at the end of last summer down by Atascadaro, Ca when i was making a parts run.
I took it cause at the time gas was 3.25 or so in my town, and $4 a gallon was outrageous.
I didnt buy from that gas station, i cruised to santa cruz and got gas. But look at diesel.
$3 a gallon? and now its over $4.00   wtf man?

[te51levin]

Uh...nope! 

The only problem I has was with my O2 sensor...too lean. Your car is under OBD I mine is under OBD II, that might be a difference.

Well now, hold on a second.  That's not saying that your o2 sensor was incompatible.  Your o2 sensor was working correctly, reporting lean mixtures, because your ECU was trying to fuel the engine with what it thought the engine needed.  Your ECU is using gasoline fuel tables.  The difference is that more fuel is required per unit of air (or per horsepower, however you want to look at it) using ethanol than when you're burning gasoline.  Your ECU was incapable of adding enough fuel to correct the mixture without throwing a code.  This is normal behavior on most non-flex-fuel vehicles.  It doesn't mean the sensor is bad, or that ethanol damaged the sensor.  It just means that the ECU freaked out when it added all the fuel it was allowed to add and still could not get the o2 sensor to report the Lambda readings it expected to see.  More than likely, a larger set of injectors (say 20% larger) would give you sufficient cushion to run E85 without that CEL, and still run gasoline without running rich all the time.  The unknown is whether your ECU would be OK with trimming the fuel tables that much every time you changed fuel types.

There's no question that ethanol is theoretically more corrosive than gasoline to some common materials.  It just seems like in real life, many/most people using E85 do not experience the materials problems that the naysayers warn of.

I think in the future, ethanol production will be made more efficient via different crops (switchgrass, sugar cane, etc) and higher volumes, and then it may make more sense to more people in more areas as an economical alternative to gasoline.

My car is not under OBD anything.  It's an '85 - way before OBD-I - besides which, I'm using MegaSquirt, which is completely custom and not associated with OBD-anything!  I had to rewrite the fuel table to run well on E85.  It's all homemade, programmed at home on the laptop, so if anything doesn't work, it's my fault.  So far though, it all works very well.

[abnormaltoy]

Well now, hold on a second.  That's not saying that your o2 sensor was incompatible.  Your o2 sensor was working correctly, reporting lean mixtures, because your ECU was trying to fuel the engine with what it thought the engine needed.  Your ECU is using gasoline fuel tables.  The difference is that more fuel is required per unit of air (or per horsepower, however you want to look at it) using ethanol than when you're burning gasoline.  Your ECU was incapable of adding enough fuel to correct the mixture without throwing a code.  This is normal behavior on most non-flex-fuel vehicles.  It doesn't mean the sensor is bad, or that ethanol damaged the sensor.  It just means that the ECU freaked out when it added all the fuel it was allowed to add and still could not get the o2 sensor to report the Lambda readings it expected to see.  More than likely, a larger set of injectors (say 20% larger) would give you sufficient cushion to run E85 without that CEL, and still run gasoline without running rich all the time.  The unknown is whether your ECU would be OK with trimming the fuel tables that much every time you changed fuel types.

There's no question that ethanol is theoretically more corrosive than gasoline to some common materials.  It just seems like in real life, many/most people using E85 do not experience the materials problems that the naysayers warn of.

I think in the future, ethanol production will be made more efficient via different crops (switchgrass, sugar cane, etc) and higher volumes, and then it may make more sense to more people in more areas as an economical alternative to gasoline.

My car is not under OBD anything.  It's an '85 - way before OBD-I - besides which, I'm using MegaSquirt, which is completely custom and not associated with OBD-anything!  I had to rewrite the fuel table to run well on E85.  It's all homemade, programmed at home on the laptop, so if anything doesn't work, it's my fault.  So far though, it all works very well.

You can modify any engine to run on any fuel. The Cadillac diesels were originally gas.

I don't think we're on opposite sides...except, I don't think anything run by the Feds is ever going to be efficient, no matter what crops are used. All those alternatives were (and are still) available when the current legislation was passed. Although, I don't see a big future in this country for ethanol products, if that's what some decide to do...the crop chosen as the base for the procedure shouldn't also be the base of our food system or take a big percentage of current food crop land out of production. That's why I am becoming more and more interested in algae-diesel. Multiple crops per yer, instead of just one, and it can be "farmed" on land that is marginal...southern Az, SoCal, Nevada, etc., all would be perfect. Grow Algae here and it doesn't take prime Iowa land out of the food production cycle...making everything corn based more expensive.

[Huhwhye]

Well now, hold on a second.  That's not saying that your o2 sensor was incompatible.  Your o2 sensor was working correctly, reporting lean mixtures, because your ECU was trying to fuel the engine with what it thought the engine needed.  Your ECU is using gasoline fuel tables.  The difference is that more fuel is required per unit of air (or per horsepower, however you want to look at it) using ethanol than when you're burning gasoline.  Your ECU was incapable of adding enough fuel to correct the mixture without throwing a code.  This is normal behavior on most non-flex-fuel vehicles.  It doesn't mean the sensor is bad, or that ethanol damaged the sensor.  It just means that the ECU freaked out when it added all the fuel it was allowed to add and still could not get the o2 sensor to report the Lambda readings it expected to see.  More than likely, a larger set of injectors (say 20% larger) would give you sufficient cushion to run E85 without that CEL, and still run gasoline without running rich all the time.  The unknown is whether your ECU would be OK with trimming the fuel tables that much every time you changed fuel types.

There's no question that ethanol is theoretically more corrosive than gasoline to some common materials.  It just seems like in real life, many/most people using E85 do not experience the materials problems that the naysayers warn of.

I think in the future, ethanol production will be made more efficient via different crops (switchgrass, sugar cane, etc) and higher volumes, and then it may make more sense to more people in more areas as an economical alternative to gasoline.

My car is not under OBD anything.  It's an '85 - way before OBD-I - besides which, I'm using MegaSquirt, which is completely custom and not associated with OBD-anything!  I had to rewrite the fuel table to run well on E85.  It's all homemade, programmed at home on the laptop, so if anything doesn't work, it's my fault.  So far though, it all works very well.

What do you do when E85 is not available?

[unclejpl4x4]

OUT OF TODAYS PAPER


Big government, not Big Oil, is the big problem
Published: Friday, April 04, 2008

Every time you fill up your 16-gallon gasoline tank, records suggest that companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. profit about $1.44 from your purchase. However, at the same time, from that same fill-up, the federal government receives $2.94, and Trenton pockets $2.32. The government is taking more than three times as much as the oil companies, and there's movement to add even more.

Barack Obama and other leftists want your outrage to be directed at the oil companies for their profits, and he promises to penalize them for that. But where should your anger really be directed? Should it go toward a company that uses its profits to build more facilities and create the jobs that guarantee you can continue to fill your tank? Or should your anger be directed at governments that take a large chunk of your money and then almost criminally misuse it and leave us in great debt, with virtually no accountability? I think that is a no-brainer.

This "take from the rich and give to the poor" promise, which entices so many voters, is simply the tried-and-failed system of socialism. Any government that leans that way is aiming to control virtually every aspect of your life and make you so dependent on government that its existence is perpetuated.

Gasoline is just one example of how government is in your wallet every time money changes hands, and even when it doesn't. If you calculated how much additional tax you pay above and beyond income tax, you would be appalled. We are financial slaves to the government, and the Founding Fathers specifically feared any powerful and overburdening government.

Take time to read and learn for yourself and become a knowledgeable and informed voter. If you are not informed, you do not belong in the voting booth.

ROBERT McKENZIE

Vineland

[abnormaltoy]

What do you do when E85 is not available?

http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/index.html

I'm surprised Ron Popeil hasn't come out with something.

[Huhwhye]

what paper is that from?

[abnormaltoy]

OUT OF TODAYS PAPER


Big government, not Big Oil, is the big problem
Published: Friday, April 04, 2008

Every time you fill up your 16-gallon gasoline tank, records suggest that companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. profit about $1.44 from your purchase. However, at the same time, from that same fill-up, the federal government receives $2.94, and Trenton pockets $2.32. The government is taking more than three times as much as the oil companies, and there's movement to add even more.

Barack Obama and other leftists want your outrage to be directed at the oil companies for their profits, and he promises to penalize them for that. But where should your anger really be directed? Should it go toward a company that uses its profits to build more facilities and create the jobs that guarantee you can continue to fill your tank? Or should your anger be directed at governments that take a large chunk of your money and then almost criminally misuse it and leave us in great debt, with virtually no accountability? I think that is a no-brainer.

This "take from the rich and give to the poor" promise, which entices so many voters, is simply the tried-and-failed system of socialism. Any government that leans that way is aiming to control virtually every aspect of your life and make you so dependent on government that its existence is perpetuated.

Gasoline is just one example of how government is in your wallet every time money changes hands, and even when it doesn't. If you calculated how much additional tax you pay above and beyond income tax, you would be appalled. We are financial slaves to the government, and the Founding Fathers specifically feared any powerful and overburdening government.

Take time to read and learn for yourself and become a knowledgeable and informed voter. If you are not informed, you do not belong in the voting booth.

ROBERT McKENZIE

Vineland

Do you have link to this? Or at least what paper it came from? The author sounds remarkably level headed ('cause he agrees with me!).

[unclejpl4x4]

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/

[Huhwhye]

http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/index.html

I'm surprised Ron Popeil hasn't come out with something.

OK, well that is not really what I was asking so I will be more specific.

What do you do with your "tuned for E85 rig" when you take a road trip and there is no E85 available?

[Huhwhye]

I always knew taxes played a big part of the cost of gasoline.  I think it says so on the pumps around here.  Interesting that nobody in politics, either party, is talking about that.

What I find interesting about that article is it rightfully points out that democrats blame oil companies.  However, it neglects to mention, as I said above, that nobody from either party is talking about gas taxes.

[unclejpl4x4]

pee in the tank after eating a can of corn