Fuel And You

[Damo_R34]

Well its been ages since i actually contributed some useful shite around here, and lately i have been amateurishly testing the various fuels currently available to the common joe with an import.

I have been using (and car tuned on) BP Ultimate 98 octane fuel, which is widely renown as a reliable fuel, hence is popularity.

Tried Caltex's new 98 octane a couple weeks ago, no complaints, didnt see any knock over 20 and didnt experience any difference in driveability.

Same goes with United 100 octane, chucked it in an empty tank tonight and didnt see any knock over 20, granted i did only drive around 10k's on it.

I dont give a fat rats what studies show, this thread is for those people who have tested a certain fuel in their car and are happy with it (their own physical experience with it), or are unhappy with a certain fuel (bearing some consistency in mind, dont whinge if you've had one bad tank in 3 years from the one servo). One day we may have enough competition between the various 98+ octane fuels to see some price competition, which will only benefit us!

This can also include those using ethanol based fuels, maybe you have been experiencing a different result with different suppliers, etc. or first hand opinions of power vs cost vs economy..

Commence.

[Madaz]

i used Shell VPower with no hicupps

i used the premium 98 @ the united on grange rd towards hindmarsh end and pinged hard straight away but i reckon from that site there 98 isnt a high seller so was probably old fuel or had high concentrate of water in it

[rad100]

i used united, shell, bp and they all seem the same..

im about to try united E85, but have been told to go to scotchers?

reasons y and is it worth the .70c?

[Dohmar]

I use the BP 98, the Mobil 98 and the Caltex 98. Have used vpower before, no complaints. I've ran the mobil 98 for the longest amount of time, however since caltex took mobil over, theyve been offering the same fuel, so I go to either now. Never had issues with fuel on my tune.

-D

i used united, shell, bp and they all seem the same..

im about to try united E85, but have been told to go to scotchers?

reasons y and is it worth the .70c?

[Weezy]

You will need a 'tune' for the e85. As its not as dense and 98 octane and is ethanol based.

[rad100]

i know i will need a tune, but is the scotchers worth the extra 70c?

[Weezy]

I dont personally know, but studies have showed the fuel is the same, but don't hold me to this.

I say get the scotchers one, and then a tank of the United e85 and get back to us

[skwiz]

I use 95 Caltex, and 95 BP.

I would like to use Shell V Power at some stage, but I prefer the BP.

United 95, i did notice slightly less fuel economy also, within 50kms of BP 95.

[JETURBO]

iam a big fan of e85 united is fine and never had any probs with it lots of blokes use it round adelaide and it has seemed to be a safe place to get it from mind u its only a new thing at the united on tapps hill rd.

at 99cp/ltr the added horsepower is unbelieveable even on mix or straight fill but this fuel will only have the benifits reaped once tuned and will consume it 30%faster but not all bad with an extra 7 degrees of timing and self oxygernising(spelling sorry) the boost can be stuffed in hard and fast.and just quietly the smell of e85 in the morning is just horn hahahaha.

love it or hate it i reckn its the ducks guts and so far proven to me to be one bloody great way of extracting power N/A, charged or blown and for any of u blokes worried about pinging fill up with 98 and chuck 3-5 ltrs in a full tank to keep the octaine rating up (un-tuned)

now scotchers is only more expensive due to buyer power thats it the united gets a fair regular test from a particular tuner down south so if its good enough for him iam keithy by it! go get some boys oh and a new tune hahahhaaha

[D_Stirls]

The cars that are designed to run on E85 are Multi fuel vehicles. They have a sensor in the tank and can run everything from E0 to E100?. They do this by having flexible maps that adjust to the fuel that is in the tank. we don't have flexible maps; we have a fixed tune that creates problems if the properties of the fuel change from what we had in the tank when we got it tuned.

The service stations don't guarantee the ethanol content and they definitely don't guarantee the octane rating (not that the fuel is rated by octane rating), Jeff mentioned that from what he has seen with the E85 tunes there is a definitely a consistency problem in that if a car returns to the dyno he has to change the tunes because the fuel properties have changed from tank to tank.

The scotchers E85 though is guaranteed to be the same every tank, after all it's what the V8 touring cars are running and they need consistency.

It's up to you what you run, at the end of the day it's your engine; but fuel isn't the thing to cheap out on.

[JETURBO]

thats a fair call i didnt realise this about ur cars. do u blokes have the option or ability to have designated tunes for these types of fuels?

so would this mean p100 would mess with ur tune as it is now?

are all skylines set to one specific fuel grade? as u mentioned what grade is this?

i was under a general assumption that the ability of ur comp systems would still be able to vary knock,temp,octaine to a degree of some sort even if its a little, due to typical variances on an everyday scale?

i know e85 is a big f*kker to the fuel system ie old rubber hoses an such it just corrodes them apart but the newer style rubber joiners and hoses are fine with this type of fuel

please dont think iam being a jack ass just intrested to learn

[D_Stirls]

The skylines have knockmaps but they are more for saving the engine so they generally are very rich and retarded (i.e. gutless). If your running Power FC you don't have any knock control, you just get a flashing light on the dash if you get a knock event. you do get a knock value on you hand controller as well.

From what i understand about the flash tunes your tunes are specific to a certain fuel. You do have knock maps but they aren't the same as what the multifuel vehicles run; They run an infinite amount of maps for every fuel grade.

EDIT!!

Have a read of this, it's for an aftermarket gauge to let you know your ethanol content but it gives some background into multifuel vehicles.

http://www.zeitronix.com/Products/ECA/ECA.htm

Edited February 1, 2010 by D_Stirls

[JETURBO]

yes this is true each tune the flasher can hold 4 at any one time is specific to each octain/tune type so in my flasher i have the ability to have my e85 tune then a 98 then a 95 and even a custom tune to not go over 3000rpm if i want the tuning capiabilities of the flasher are very good, so i take it the power fc can only hold 1 custom tune at any one time?

so yes this would make running e85 a bitch due to avaliability

any aftermarket ecu that can have more than one tune switchable in it for u blokes?

[D_Stirls]

Just have your laptop handy and you can have 100's of tunes. With Power-FC you will need FC-Logit which will cost you around another $450 but once you have that you can do anything.

I run this; Which allow the same switching of maps and you retain the factory ECU so you retain the knock control that you lose with P-FC. The only thing that it doesn't have compared to P-FC is 20x20 map resolution, it retains the factory 16x16 resolution.

http://www.nistune.com

It's only $440 including the chipset and the tuning software.

You'd still have a problem if you get a sub grade batch of E85 wouldn't you as you physically have to switch the tunes don;t you it's not automatic.

Edited February 1, 2010 by D_Stirls

[Madaz]

yes this is true each tune the flasher can hold 4 at any one time is specific to each octain/tune type so in my flasher i have the ability to have my e85 tune then a 98 then a 95 and even a custom tune to not go over 3000rpm if i want the tuning capiabilities of the flasher are very good, so i take it the power fc can only hold 1 custom tune at any one time?

so yes this would make running e85 a bitch due to avaliability

any aftermarket ecu that can have more than one tune switchable in it for u blokes?

whilst the PFC is rigid in its maps we can buy external software to save extra maps and load on with a laptop 1 aforementioned programs is datalogit

http://www.fc-datalogit.co.nz/

there are also jap variants of the same

[Dohmar]

Or you can get nisstune for $200 and the daughterboard for the $250 mark. Real time tuning, regency friendly.

-D

whilst the PFC is rigid in its maps we can buy external software to save extra maps and load on with a laptop 1 aforementioned programs is datalogit

http://www.fc-datalogit.co.nz/

there are also jap variants of the same

[D_Stirls]

Or you can get nisstune for $200 and the daughterboard for the $250 mark. Real time tuning, regency friendly.

-D

If they don't know about it.

[Inline 6]

a good friend of mine used to organise all the trucks to do the fuel deliveries to a few different companys petrol stations. apparently mobil import the fuel and then on sell to bp and shell. this is ready to go fuel ill also mention, so presumably there is no different between 98 octane bp shell or mobil.

[180or200]

I've tuned most 98's to the det threshold, Ultimate and Mobil 8000 were the only ones I trusted!

I dont think scotchers is sourcing his E85 from the same place as the V8's, they have an exclusive contract with CSR, at a guess he would be buying it from the same wholesale market that united get it!

the only difference is he orders it in a "98" blend, which IMO makes bugger all difference, I've tuned and used united E85 for months now and find it comes up just as good as the "98" blends I was buying from racefuels in victoria.

[D_Stirls]

i thought they were selling the CSR E85, the drum i have seen were red and had CRS sticker on the side.