Bio ethanol and unleaded mix

kbox

kbox

Octane Boostaholics
Well Lads I decided to be a brave shobgite. I've put a mix of 70/30% mix of unleaded and E85 into my tank today. Just 20:6 litres. No problems yet. Acceleraton is down a very small bit on what it was beforehand but I didnt really floor it just in case. And that could be down to the warm day today?

Can anyone say for definite how much Lucas will rais the RON by? If I'm working this out correctly (6*104)+(20*95) divided by 26. Then the RON rating in my tank at present is 97RON without Octane Booster. Feel free to correct me because I'm not as well up on this as ye are.

I read somewhere that the impreza engine can take no more than a 30% mix of ethanol. If the engine starts to run poorly I'll fill it with unleaded anyway.

I'll keep ya'll updated on it anyway....
 
hi mate, do you have a knocklink fitted, if not i'd take it very easy untill i was more sure of this, especially if the accelaration was down , im not an expert but i'd say this has been researched somewhere already and if its the dogs bollox it probably would be making all the headlines in the modified car world :dunno:. just my 2 cents anyway. cheers :thumbsup:
 
No reason to make all headlines, since alcohol is used in cars for many years - methanol, ethanol.

The only problem was/is the cars - some/most of them need conversion (less or more work, not all of them need new fuel lines and fuel-pump, some need bigger injectors, some only remap to use E85).
However, lower percentage of ethanol may be used without conversion (in most cases up to 20-30%, even if only 10% is guaranteed by factory).
There's maybe one more problem for people who want to use ethanol/methanol - you have to buy it at some chemical stores. Just for few last months (let's say years) you can buy E85 on some (not so many) petrol stations.
(BTW afaik Shells Vpower 100RON is made with 10% of ethanol - and I guess that many people use that fuel -where available - don't even knowing that they use ethanol in their cars)

And for many ordinary users, for everyday driving their Micra or even let's say Vectra, Astra (whatever you want) 95RON is good enough as these are not sport-cars etc.
Anyway - yesterday I saw a man getting full tank of E85 in his converted Saab turbo.
Many people don't know they could use E85/ethanol in any way.

I think methanol is a bit more popular in power-cars. And that's not the strangest solution I saw in quest for high octane fuel.
I remember from quater-mile races in Poland a guy who was winning using LPG-converted turbo Honda Civic set up to use LPG's higher octane number (however, in Poland you can buy 98RON and on Shell's stations Vpower 100RON).

OK - I stop boring you with my poor English :) If you want to know something more, take a look at those links:

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=803341
http://eied.deh.gov.au/atmosphere/fuelquality/publications/review-vehicle-fleet/index.html (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating

Cheers
 
interesting read but my point was /is if his accelaration is slightly down on what it was beforehand , was his knocklink flashing any different, why not stick to the tried and tested lucas booster to put octane number up to 98 ron, lets face it its gonna take some miracle to ever get our cars running at 104 ron for which they were designed for.

;)cheers
 
Acceleration is spot on today lad. Its a bit more responsive and its running smoother as well
 
[quote author=jackswagon link=topic=2931.msg27996#msg27996 date=1184501289]
interesting read but my point was /is if his accelaration is slightly down on what it was beforehand , was his knocklink flashing any different, why not stick to the tried and tested lucas booster to put octane number up to 98 ron, lets face it its gonna take some miracle to ever get our cars running at 104 ron for which they were designed for.
[/quote]

I don't want to call it into question or something - I'm just asking, because I really don't know how far Lucas pull up the fuel with RON number: are you sure about that 98RON? Is it with one bottle per tank?
Any tests?
If Lucas gives really that 98RON it's also good news for me.

Cheers
 
jap cars are mapped to 101 octane fuel NOT 104fuel,if they were mapped for 104 and you used are crap 95 your car wouldnt run very well and would go bang very quick.as for the lucas,most lads use half a bottle to a full tank of petrol and it brings the ron rating up to about 97 and not much more
 
[quote author=kbox link=topic=2931.msg27871#msg27871 date=1184441416]
Can anyone say for definite how much Lucas will rais the RON by? If I'm working this out correctly (6*104)+(20*95) divided by 26. Then the RON rating in my tank at present is 97RON without Octane Booster. Feel free to correct me because I'm not as well up on this as ye are.
[/quote]

I used today tank full of mix: 1/3 ethanol and 2/3 petrol. This means max, what standard Impreza can "eat" talking about ethanol. Of course I recalculated the proper portion of E85, which contains, as you remember only 85% of ethanol .

OK, anyway - this means 20l of 108RON and 40l of 95RON (I assume that fuel on Maxol is good enough).
And using arithmetics as above we have (20*108+40*95)/60, which means 99.33RON.
If this way is wrong - let somebody correct me, please.
Looks a bit different from the tests from Australian webpage I sent you before - but still looks good to me.
Anyway that 1/3 is max, lets say we use only 1/4 of ethanol.
This should give us a little bit above 98RON, let's say 98 since we can not be absolutely sure about fuel quality.
And 1/5 gives us 97.6RON, or should do.

If it's still not enough maybe it's kind of idea to use E20-E25 with addition of Lucas. Not too expensive, but very promising.
It would be similar to use of Shell Vpower 100RON with Lucas :) -if anyone do something like this :)

Cheers
 
shell vpower is only 95 ron in ireland,its 98 in england and the lucas booster doesnt mix well with it,its like each one cancels each other out ,so waist of money
 
[quote author=johnny5 link=topic=2931.msg28076#msg28076 date=1184537004]
shell vpower is only 95 ron in ireland,its 98 in england and the lucas booster doesnt mix well with it,its like each one cancels each other out ,so waist of money
[/quote]
Yes, I know - I was talking about Shell Vpower 100RON, which is in sale in some countries.
Anyway that cancelletion is perhaps possible with that one as well.
But if you can drive on Vpower 100RON which contains ethanol - you can try also to add ethanol yourself.

And to make things clear - of course I do my test at my own responsibility and risk.
You can call me Kamikaze if you like :)
If anybody want to run on fuel with ethanol added - myself I see no problem with that if addition is not bigger than those 30%. But no pressure and the same story, his/her own risk.

In my opinion, finally it's still good to make remap for that fuel - but in this case, I believe, not only to make your engine safe, but also to take an advantage.

Anyway of course I'm still going to inform you about any of successes or failures

Cheers
 
Sorry, was wrong.
Shell Vpower racing is mixed with 5% of ethanol.
Anyway most of modern cars can take 10% and Impreza seems to work fine with 30% of ethanol added.
 
:ponder: :dunno: :ponder: :dunno: :ponder: :dunno: confused now can you not just use regular fuel and lucas like everyone else?? you could do some harm to your beloved scooby- fair play for trying but dont try and fix something thats not broken :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
 
[quote author=210bhp legacy link=topic=2931.msg28083#msg28083 date=1184539575]
:ponder: :dunno: :ponder: :dunno: :ponder: :dunno: confused now can you not just use regular fuel and lucas like everyone else?? you cpuld do some harm to your beloved scooby- fair play for trying but dont try and fix something thats not broken :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
[/quote]

The answer is pretty simple - curiosity and quest. The same things that always make people go forward :) (or not :))
 
[quote author=210bhp legacy link=topic=2931.msg28086#msg28086 date=1184539854]
curiosity= expensive rebuild :doh:
[/quote]

Don't think so, to be honest, in this case.
It's not my fantasy to put anything into tank to see what's going to happen - I'm not that stupid :)
I still can remember something from chemistry in school and, probably hard to believe for you now :), I'm trying to
be careful and sensible (reasonable?) with my experiments.
And don't think I am not a bit affraid of it... still...
But I make this after some investigation, on base of some knowledge and others experiences.

Anyway - in life there's always a risk.
 
Well said Rudeboy.

There is quite a bit of experimentation and research gone into this from other people. I tried out of curiosity knowing that I was putting my engine at risk. From my experience over the weekend it worked out ok. I caned the car on a few occassions and all ok.

As for using ethanol most fuels use it without any user being aware of it anyway. Engine components are made to withstand the use of ethanol to about 30%. Subaru can confirm that their engines are good for a 10% mix but say that anything up to 30% can be used before any corrosion starts. Methanol is the really corrosive additive which should be not really used above 5%.

What I am seeking to do is find the right balance using Lucas which will bring me to 102RON. If my engine goes bang then I' prepared for that to happen. It may seem flippant but its the only way to learn
 
[quote author=kbox link=topic=2931.msg28102#msg28102 date=1184568335]
What I am seeking to do is find the right balance using Lucas which will bring me to 102RON. If my engine goes bang then I' prepared for that to happen. It may seem flippant but its the only way to learn
[/quote]

I think it's enough to get a mix bringing us to 100RON.
Keeping in mind the problems with Lucas and SHell fuel, which is supposed to cancel Lucas activity - I would have only one question:
does anybody know what in Shell fuel could be responsible for that cancellation?
I'm not sure about Lucas contents - but would be very unhappy if it's ethanol that cancels Lucas work.

BTW - for people being affraid of alcohol in their tanks. I know that winters here in Ireland are not too strong :)
But in some countries, when you get bad quality fuel, with addition of water (you know, sh*t happens, especially in small, not networked stations) and there's lets say minus 20 degrees - you can really expect many problems. The solution is pretty simple and pretty popular - it's also good to add some alcohol or alcohol based additives. And believe me or not :) those cars are still in operation after that :)

But of course I can really understand people that are affraid of makeing those experiments on their car.
Because experiments _could_be_ expensive. But as I said before - in this case, using reasonable amounts of ethanol - I'm
not affraid of too many and ,first of all, too/any expensive problems.

Cheers

Cheers
 
I put some ethanol in my car on friday, 20L petrol, 4L ethanol. Seems to be running very nicley. Will see how it goes.
 
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