I have been using E10 for quite some time, formerly in my TS, which had the knock sensor etc. When I changed to the TL, I kept on using it.

Anyway, I noticed at woolies petrol the other day that it said E10 91RON, and this got me a bit concerned; I'm sure the E10 I used to run was a RON of 94?? That was part of the reasoning behind going to E10, was that the slightly higher RON offset any efficiency loses, at least with the 2nd gens?

I never really looked at compatibility with the 3rd gens, but I seem to recall that there isn't much gain from running higher RON on them due to the lack of knock sensor?
So the question is, if the E10 has degraded, will my economy be better with stock standard ULP 91? I meticulously observed my 2nd gen's fuel economy, and the "old" E10 worked well for it, better than ULP 91, but I haven't done comparisons in the 3rd gen, and now feel I'm getting cheated if the RON has dropped.

I tried a tank of E10 91 in the KL, never again. Seemed slower and more hesitant to accelerate. Higher L/100kms too.

I tried e10 once out of a private servo,didnt seem to be as good as regular unleaded

However,i have been forced lately to put E10 from coles by the parents.it ran the same but when i put regular unleaded back in however, i noticed it chewed that tiny bit more

After what I have experienced with fuels in the last few days, I will ONLY ever run BP ultimate

I got a bad batch of the ethanol 94 from a servo here; destroyed my filter, and the car wouldn't run.

71L down the drain! Had to pump the tank out and flush the system out. Ended up needing a new fuel pump as well.

Complained to the service station and got no where with them - currently awaiting response from head office.

Slightly off topic, but nonetheless relevant.

If anyone is interested , I can upload a picture if you'd like of the brown crap that came out the tank .

I tried a tank of E10 91 in the KL, never again. Seemed slower and more hesitant to accelerate. Higher L/100kms too.

I had been using E10 for around 2 years in our 1.6 Litre EFI Multi-valve Pulsar, assuming that it was a better choice with the alcohol boosting the Octane rating - and hey all up with other discounts you'd get about 8c per Litre off. Then I read an article talking about how the alcohol does not burn as well, so in effect it hinders the burning of the ULP too.

So I found a good website with a Java input where you could monitor your fuel consumption - and to my suprise at least on the one-off run that I then did on E10 I was about 16.68% worse off in economy. Even adjusted for the extra 4c discount I was 14.7% worse off on E10!

Now I have had wide variances from week to week since then in that vehicle, and I doubt that you'd always get those sort of figures, obviously it will have a lot to do with weather, air temp, driving style etc - but that was enough to put me back to ULP exclusively!

Cheers

Steve

ive been using 100octane from united for the extra ping resistance in my legnum, but chews through the fuel im goin back to 98, i never have liked ethanol blends... my old TR hated it, only ever used 1 tank. u wil get the extra mileage from 98 aswell...makes roughly the same mile for mile costs, not to mention less in repair bills.

Hmm, maybe we should try this again.

You CANNOT tell how a fuel goes from one single tank test. Ethanol especially will take at least one tank's worth to clear up any shit or water in your tank, which will of course go through your filter/engine. To say it ran badly on one tank... well, duh!

I'm running a TL, not a Legnum.

I ran my TS on E10 for 5+ years, calculating economy, including monetary costs, almost every fill. I also ran multiple successive tanks of ULP for comparison data. E10 won out in the case of the TS.

I haven't had any problems at all running E10 on the TL, was trying to get empirical data on 3rd gen usage. Guess I should have known better, judging from people's posts in the "economy" thread, that the vast majority have no clue as to how to arrive at a scientifically researched conclusion.

i ran 5 tanks of 100 in the leggy and it was the same.... so im now back to 98....

ive pulled the heads off a car that runs e10 and they were gummed up so its like burning sugar in the combustion chamber... ^ some people just see cheaper at the bowser and think they are getting a good deal. im now working in a mechanic shop and they wont touch the crap.... its 10% cheaper but u use 20% more, you work out the savings... u can have ur e10 and leave the good stuff for me!!

Yes the fuel usage would probably get slightly better with continued use of E10, but I think the extra few cents per ltr is worth the extra performance and potential for economy

from the customers that i have come into work (i work at a BP that doesn't stock ethanol fuel), i've heard many a shocker about E10-91 and E10-95 blends causing some issues with engines that aren't designed with the ethanol in mind. that's the biggest issue that people tend to have with it and don't realise that not all engines can and will handle ethanol blends. it might look cheap, but it's not worth the 2 cents in the long term. you'd be better off saving your pennies for the LPG conversion if you really wanted to spend less on fuel.

I haven't had any problems at all running E10 on the TL, was trying to get empirical data on 3rd gen usage. Guess I should have known better, judging from people's posts in the "economy" thread, that the vast majority have no clue as to how to arrive at a scientifically researched conclusion.

And I wasn't saying I'd had problems on the Pulsar either; though quite obviously it's not a Mitsy. What I was saying, was that I read up on the decreased flammability of ULP with Ethanol and the losses that could be expected.

My very first monitoring test (I had been using it for 2 years prior) supported that mileage loss, so I chose to switch back to ULP.

And thanks for your opinions Rogue - personally I've found some really skilled (and patient) people here.

Steve

Most cars can run 10 percent ethanol blend fuel. The issue with those that can't is due to rubber components and seals in the fuel line etc not liking it. In terms of 91 octane E10 fuel, that is something I would absolutely definitely avoid! Ethanol raises the octane of the fuel by around 2-3 point. This means 94 octane uses a 91 octane base fuel. If it is E10 91 octane, the base fuel must be 88 octane - something that isn't good for most Australian cars. The Magna's actually require a fuel of 91 octane minimum. Using the 91 E10 fuel you might get pinging (especially under load on hot days) which doesn't do the engine any good.

Ethanol is also less energy dense than normal fuel, by about 30 percent in fact! This means with a 10 percent blend your car needs to use at least 3 percent more fuel for the same power. This is why the fuel economy is worse off using E10 fuel. In all cases your economy should be less with E10 fuel, if it appears to be better it is probably due to different driving conditions between the refills. Remember you can't refill your tank with 50 litres of fuel then do a re-comparison, since you will still have a lot of the old fuel in the tank. If you still think E10 fuel uses less, then I would suggest running something like Nulon Total Fuel System Cleaner through it. It may also mean that your oxygen sensor is cactus if you use less fuel on E10...

The other issue with ethanol is that it mixes extremely well with water, which is great for beer and other drinks, but really bad for fuel! If there is any water contamination in the petrol stations tanks this will blend with the fuel, whereas normally the fuel would sit on top of water.

A much better biofuel to use is butanol, which can be produced the same way at ethanol (there are yeasts that can do that). Butanol is as energy dense as petrol, meaning you don't use any more fuel, still raises the octane (by about 2 points), and you can use more of it, up to around 30 percent in petrol engines. It can also be used at certain percentages in diesel engines where it can be used with biofuel or petroleum based distillate. In fact, butanol may actually increase the burning efficiency of the diesel engine, much like the LPG gas injection or Petrol injection systems you can add to diesel engines (yes, you can in Australia legally buy an engine addon that will actually inject petrol in the air intake to improve efficiency!). Of course, LPG/petrol injection is only safe in small/moderate amounts, butanol is safer than that.

In any case, I would avoid E10 fuels because it is an over-hyped, it would be much better to wait for better alternatives like the butanol blends. On a separate note, did people see in the news about the shale oil find in South Australia? where the retrievable amount of oil could be just shy of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves? ($20 trillion worth at todays oil prices, but worst case they reckon only $1 trillion). Who wants to bet that it will be mined by majority foreign owned companies?!

On a separate note, did people see in the news about the shale oil find in South Australia? where the retrievable amount of oil could be just shy of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves? ($20 trillion worth at todays oil prices, but worst case they reckon only $1 trillion). Who wants to bet that it will be mined by majority foreign owned companies?!

Yeah - saw that; will be great for Australia if the reserves are as big as they're saying - it may mean that we no longer have to import fuel.

Steve

If the oil find is as big as they are saying it is, it could stabilise fuel prices dramatically. Huge oil reserve in a stable western country is a big deal. America would kill for a find like that in their own backyard

...

If anyone is interested , I can upload a picture if you'd like of the brown crap that came out the tank .

Picture please

Picture please

^this.

Picture please

Here you go.

Im also no expert on fuel, but i thought it should be a cleary/purpleish colour

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x118/rushy_m/20130123_081518.jpg

Also, forgot to mention in my post, my fuel wasnt from a woolworths outlet. Was purchased from a Liberty

Thank you burfadel, this is exactly the type of answer I was after. In my tests with the TS, I had found that the E10 94 gave very slightly worse economy, but this was outweighed by the price difference at the time. At that time I was driving a near-identical 500-odd kilometers every week, a combo of highway, city, and mountain, so had a good consistent test base.

That's why when I noticed that the woolies E10 said it was only 91 RON I thought something's not right; the added octane of E10 94, at least in the 2nd gens with knock sensors, offset the lower density enough that in combination with lower cost, you ended up paying less for the distance traveled. I'd vaguely recalled reading that the 3rd gens, without the knock sensor, didn't really gain anything from the increased RON, so ended up using a bit more. But if woolies is pulling a fast one and using a lower class ULP as the base, then it's well and truly one to avoid.

Wonder if the independents are still using E10 94, or whether that's dropped too?