i see this topic, is alot of talk about E10 ethonol, i used ethonol, in my EL Fairmont Ghia, it doesnt harm the harm the car, its just as harmful as standard ULP. and i usually get around 70 -90kms more than normal and premium unleaded.

E10 doesnt have enough ethonol in it to damage your fuel lines what so ever or anythign else, its harmful.

Conclusion: E10 is cheaper than unleaded and givves you more Km's than Premium 98' SO therefor i will buy E10.

cheers.

Ethanol has a stoichiometric AFR of 9.0:1. 9kg of air to 1kg of ethanol.
Petrol has a stoichiometric AFR of 14.7:1. 14.7kg air to 1kg fuel.

If you normalise these figures to petrol's figures, you find that for every 14.7kg air, you need 1.63kg ethanol to maintain stoichiometric.

So, since your narrowband oxy sensor can only target an AFR of 14.7:1 and the computer alters the amount of fuel injected to maintain this AFR, by adding ethanol to the mix, you are actually leaning the engine out.

You need 14.13kg ((14.7 * 0.9) + (9.0 * 0.1)) air for every 1kg of E10, but the engine's actually getting 14.7kg air for every 1kg E10. So it actually makes the engine run about 5% leaner than on petrol, hence why you get better economy.

The reason why there's so much hype about it not being good for your car is because a few years ago, some petrol stations were adding it to their fuel and all teh BMWs and Mercedes shat themselves when the ethanol hit the engine. I don't know the reason, but that's what gave ethanol a bad name. Shows like TT and ACA were the leaders in the smear campaign against ethanol, so it's typical of them now to do a backflip to get ratings. Damn I loathe those shows.

And I hope all the Ch7 journos and editors currently being charged go to jail for the full 10 years. Just my 2 cents.

Another thing.... the government is really setting it's goals high in regards to the Ethanol.

According to the shell website http://www.shell.com/home/Framework?siteId=au-en&FC2=/au-en/html/iwgen/shell_for_motorists/fuels/ethanol/zzz_lhn.html&FC3=/au-en/html/iwgen/shell_for_motorists/fuels/ethanol/position_ethanol_0511.html, the government wants 350 megalitres (that's 350,000,000 litres) of 'biofuel' used, Australia wide, each year by 2010.

Just to give you an idea, based on a 50 littre fuel tank, that's 7,000,000 tanks of bio fuel a year.

Melbourne alone could use that much biofuel each year if everyone used just 3 tanks a year! I hardly see this as a commitment to the environment. If you assume there are 10,000,000 cars in this country, the average fuel tank capacity is 50 litres, and the average car uses 1 tank per week, the government's talking about replacing about 1.35% of petrol with "biofuel", and it's going to take 5 years to achieve this?

Edit: Sorry. I forgot to account for the fact that if we're talking E10, then that 1.35% has to be multiplied by 10 to give 13.5%. That's an ok result.

As far as im concerned until i have to, i wont be putting ethonol into my car. I use Premium Unleaded as it is only 3 to 4 dollars more expensive over normal unleaded in a tank of petrol which is nothing.

I beleive that tests like the ones on today tonight prove nothing. They do tests all the time, do it tommorow and another petrol may last longer in the car.

Anyway thats my two cents worth

Brazil run an E85 mix. In fact, General Motors Holden export a commodore variant to run on it.

I assume the modifications required would be fuel lines/pump etc (ethanol at this concentration has detrimental effect on rubbers, plastics etc) and EFI mods to address unclewoja's post...

Only problem with Brazil's ethanol consumption is the fact that an area of rainforest the size of greece is destroyed every 12 months in the production of ethanol. You need a lot of biomass and a lot of fossil fuel energy to produce the stuff.

No conclusive evidence yet to say E5 or E10 is good or bad for cars. But plenty of people run it without drama... i guess long term is the issue.

Did i hear on the news that servos are no longer required to disclose the amount of ethanol in the fuel??

We're in the lucky situation here at the moment where sugar farmers are in hard times and sugar cane's a wonderful source of ethanol... and rum.

The onlt problem we have it finding the water to grow the sugar cane with. The east coast is almost empty unfortunately.

I got a load of fuel with ethanol in going to Qld towing a van in a VN commodore. Ran like s**t and could not keep the temperature down. Ditched the fuel and refueled all OK. Had no probs towing for 4 years before. (before the commodore jokes come out) The only thing is I dont know how much ethanol was in it.

I would like to see an overall result on TT of them running all the fuels in all the cars and see what the distance would be. Because some cars are tuned just right from the factory to give you good performance and economy. Maybe the control conditions were just a little out. Maybe one car, 5 fuels and stringent driving levels. Also some cars were going faster in the small bit of footage shown.

Just some things to be considered...

because they have set an acceptable limit on it?

i was talking to a tanker driver a few months back about the E10, n he was also saying "back in the day" they put ethanol in the tanks as comon practise...

Dif tanker driver was also telling me, that he reacons BP's grand plan is to have E10 Pulp and E10 ultimate - completly phase out non E fuels... but i dont see how that can do that, until it is guarenteed that there will be no side affects whatsoever to any and all the cars that run it
*gets off soap box*

the guy i used to work with at the BP here in town, was telling me a story about a new holden - yeah i know itsa holden but still. he was saying that the new model, the guy that owned it, ran it from day 1 on E10.. and in 3months, the engine chucked a huge sad at it.. and died basically... (im told holden replaced the engine for the guy - apparetnly)
just another take on the E10 story

(im not gunna be running my car on the stuff - thats for sure)

[quote] the guy i used to work with at the BP here in town, was telling me a story about a new holden - yeah i know itsa holden but still. he was saying that the new model, the guy that owned it, ran it from day 1 on E10.. and in 3months, the engine chucked a huge sad at it.. and died basically... (im told holden replaced the engine for the guy - apparetnly)
just another take on the E10 story [quote]

I'll think you'll find that its more a case of "just another holden story"
their gm engines aren't as good as there cracked up to be
I've got a couple of mates with LS2 engines in there HSV's and you reckon they'd be pretty good, well GMH belives that the litre of oil they use every week is "Normal" Yeah right....

G'day

With regards to the tuning theory. How bout tt do a dyno run and show the kw and the fuel burn of each car.
Most people seem to believe that the e10 is more economical. The reason for this is becasue the car runs lean. Make any car run lean and the economy will better.

I wont be running on e10 until megasquirt is in. If i put e10 in the carby the car wont run or if it does it will ping its brains out.

Cheers

In around 2001/2002, Ford in america released a Mustang that could run on straight petrol or E85. I'm sure there's plenty of info on the net about it and I might do a search later.

They proved with dyno results that the car put out more power with E85. This was of course running different fuel and spark maps to the straight petrol ones, but they were both in the ecu and it was just like running dual fuel petrol/lpg. Flick a switch to select the different maps when you filled up with E85.

Like I said in my post earlier, running an ethanol blens leans out the AFRs. A leaner ARF = higher combustion/cylinder head temps.

The more ethanol, the higher the temps if you don't re-tune the engine for the ethanol mix. Since you were towing and the cooling system was already put in a position to work closer to its limit to keep the car cool, the ethanol in the fuel was the straw that broke the camels back.

I'd be willing to bet that if you hadn't been towing anything, you wouldn't have noticed much difference.

is there any servo,s in south east melbourne selling these fuels yet

Better yet - have an organisation with credibility perform the testing. Some sort of motoring body, NRMA or who ever - someone who isnt out to gain ratings....