Quote Originally Posted by Kaiser
Ethanol burns fast. Burning fast has nothing to do with AKI (Anti Knock Indexing). Octane Rating is an AKI. Ethanol is incredibly knock-resistant for such a fast-burning fuel.

Koenigsegg made a version of their CCX with an E85 engine that gained almost 100 horses over the identical gas engine. Ethanol is not to be feared, Ethanol is racegas of the future.

I wouldn't call it that. While yes it does have some nice knock resistant properties, it does burn quite a bit leaner. In other words, you have to be mapped for it to take advantage of it. My car tends to knock *more* with ethanol, but only due to the extra lean mixture that it causes. If you look at the article with the koenigsegg closely, you'll also note that in order to generate the extra HP, they gave it hardened pistons, increased supercharge boost pressure, changed the ECU programming for a richer mixture and gave it larger injectors. No huge changes, but ethanol isn't perfect. I hate that stuff. Makes me break spark plugs.

Also, my car is not stock. I'm running megasquirt-n-spark with coil packs, LC1 wideband tied in to run closed loop, 9.8:1 compression and around 20lbs turbo boost. So a lean mixture breaks things. I don't like going through plugs twice a month because "they" keep playing with the type of fuel coming out of the pumps.