Some people claim that ethanol is aggressive to some material, such as fuel tanks, feed pipes, hoses, valve seats, aluminium, etc. The car industry has stressed this rather intensively. Their ambition is to mainly sell new flexifuel cars where they claim to have replaced delicate material with more durable material.
Ford maintained when introducing their Ford Focus Flexifuel that this was not due to damages, but just “to be on the safe side”.

Unfortunately the risks with ethanol are often mistaken for methanol, which is aggressive to some kinds of rubber. Most materials in modern engines that can stand petrol can also stand ethanol (i.e. alcohol).

BSR has performed about 20 ethanol projects since 1997, where some project vehicles have run up to 250 000 km on E85. We have stripped down several engines and checked the parts, hoses, cables etc. and compared them to corresponding petrol vehicles. We have not seen any tendencies to damages, increased wear and tear or leakages.
For the racing cars we have noted even less damages and wear and tear compared to petrol cars.

Naturally this requires correct conversion and calibration of the engines. If performed inaccurately damages may occur regardless of fuel type.

Ethanol can attract water and this can affect material prone to corrosion. Modern cars often have plastic tanks and other metals are mainly composition metals that will withstand water.

More information under Warranty and Insurance under Conversion http://sv.bsr.se/e85/warranty/



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