I currently run e85 or a blend of e85 and 93, and this is my experiance with it...
after countless lectures from my father ( an ASE Master tech, with Nissan masters and ford masters...) telling me the e85 is actually more in the end than the regular octane. he claimed the mpg is drastically reduced thus having to fill up more frequently subsequently costing more in mpg than reg octane. well, me being his ever so hard headed son, decided after owning my 'kon for 2 yrs and only realizing after a year i had the L59 flex fuel varieant after verifiying rpo codes on
www.compnine.com i built enough corage to try it out after hearing my buddy runs straight e85 on his 16 evo and the benifits of burning cooler and the hp gains he gets to which he has the dyno tickets to persuade me..... now i gotta see and decide myself about the e85 hype right?
so i went down to town having 1/4 tank of 93 (required from my bullydog gt gas tuner) and i filled the tank with e85..... and to my surprise i blew thrugh that tank faster than i ever imagined i could....
so i was over the whole e85 fad ... f that noise right it was unreal and uncanny thinking ppl run this my dad had been right damn.... or so i thought. lol so i was browsing looking and reading all types of mods one night and came across the debated e85 over octane issue again all while discussing a medication issue with my wife........... BAM i had a thought. this thought had brought me up pretty quickly scrambbling for my keys and shot out the door pretty quickly so much so i forgot i was in mid convo with wife. so i get to gas station and pulled up to that yellow handled pump... filled all 26 gallons up at 1.79 a gallon (this compparing to the 2.30 for 86 and neaarly 3.00 for 93) so pretty stoked i head home realizing i had nowhere to go lol.
long story short i had a duh moment realizing fuel trims right, so the flex sensor picks up the alchol content has changed thus commanding a diffrent table needs to be applied, and with that i had ran ethonol any time i had it but 1 time because i didnt even know any 2002 vehicles were flex. i had no badging reflecting so i can assume the previous owners had not either. so not only does the tables change i feel its learning it now too.
so naturally that ytank would deplete quickly cause it was implementing and learng a new table and trim. after the 2nd tank my milage leveled out and my mpg retained the 13 mpg as the 93 octane gave. this coming from the data the bully dog gave me and i even reset the fuel info on the tuner to verify results and they came out the same still. now on the e85 i noticed more pep in my 'kon a noticable differance also it seemed to run quieter than usual. i now run e85 and every 3 tanks ill blend either a 50/50 blend of 93 or 1/4 3/4 blend.
I will also say originally my first go with e85 was npot 85 ... after being told about checking content for accuracy of pump i learnd i put e15 in not knowing that the stores around me that carry ethonol have 2 blends.... so i personally love the benifits and i plan on modding my 09 cobalt with the flex sensor and bigger fueel inj. from the sister hhr.