E10 in VE R8

[255-LS1]

Gday all, a mate and I where filling his VE R8 up last night with BP ultimate and i noticed on the fuel door that it had "preimum unleaded recommended" but also had another sticker say something along the lines of E10 suitable. I was under the impression that E10 was 92ish RON, where is min premium fuel is 95 RON, whats the go?? In any case he'll run prob Ultimate all the time but just curious to see what everyones view is on running it on E10, he hasn't run any fuel but Ultimate since new.

Cheers

[CSP]

Ethanol? :rofl:

People actually put that in their fuel?

:rofl:

Always makes me laugh!

[The-V8-Power]

From my understanding most Ethanol fuels actually have a higher RON Rating then the equivalant 100% petrol.

Some say E10 is better as it is cheaper but more of it is used compared to the equivalant petrol.

I may be wrong :)

[HSVDKB]

I would'nt do it but the VE R8 will run on 91 octane

[Rub]

I was talking to a mate, whose best mate is an engineer for Holden, and he has said that they have done a few studies with a stock internal LS1 there is no benefit in running 98 octane over 95 octane....

[sixlta]

i have been running E10 in the ute since fuel prices went nuts, Had the tune tweaked to suit and have not noticed any more or less in usage or power, But for the price all is good,

[planetdavo]

I would'nt do it but the VE R8 will run on 91 octane
The reason people make the gains they do with custom high octane tunes is because the factory tunes are mild enough to safely accept 91 octane without any risk of harm.
Many people, with their endless pursuit of bragging rights, get their custom tunes screwed right up so close to the 98 octane limit, they can barely deal with even 95!

[pah]

Hi guys,

Yep - E10 is around 94-95 RON.

The down-side of E10 is that it causes a loss of fuel economy. You lose around 2L / 100 km economy using E10.

For modern Commodores, GMH OK's ethanol use in up to E10 but nothing stronger. E85 is out. Ethanol is corrosive. The fuel systems cope with 10% ethanol. 85% ethanol is likely to crrode fuel system components. E10 is supposed to be a very good fuel system cleaner. Why? Maybe because it's a little bit corrosive?

How come a high output VE SS can run on 95 RON E10 or 91 RON ULP? There are TWO spark tables in the PCM. When the knock sensors detect pinging (91 RON fuel will cause this), the PCM swaps back to the 91 RON spark advance table. If you write the high performance 98 RON spark map into BOTH spark tables, there's nothing your PCM can do to protect your engine if you get a dodgy tank of fuel. Or if you're forced to buy low RON fuel out in the sticks. Optimising the high output spark table may be OK. DON'T remove the table rquired for 91 RON fuel. You might need it one day.




PAH

[SS Enforcer]

I was talking to a mate, whose best mate is an engineer for Holden, and he has said that they have done a few studies with a stock internal LS1 there is no benefit in running 98 octane over 95 octane....

Sorry mate but thats not true I have logged mine with 95 in it and it pinged an pulled timing but with the same timing table in it it didn't rattle with 98. You can run more timing with 98 so your mate heard wrong or was misled.

All the tuners on here will tell you the same thing.

cheers

[duke5700]

Hi guys,

Yep - E10 is around 94-95 RON.

The down-side of E10 is that it causes a loss of fuel economy. You lose around 2L / 100 km economy using E10.

For modern Commodores, GMH OK's ethanol use in up to E10 but nothing stronger. E85 is out. Ethanol is corrosive. The fuel systems cope with 10% ethanol. 85% ethanol is likely to crrode fuel system components. E10 is supposed to be a very good fuel system cleaner. Why? Maybe because it's a little bit corrosive?

How come a high output VE SS can run on 95 RON E10 or 91 RON ULP? There are TWO spark tables in the PCM. When the knock sensors detect pinging (91 RON fuel will cause this), the PCM swaps back to the 91 RON spark advance table. If you write the high performance 98 RON spark map into BOTH spark tables, there's nothing your PCM can do to protect your engine if you get a dodgy tank of fuel. Or if you're forced to buy low RON fuel out in the sticks. Optimising the high output spark table may be OK. DON'T remove the table rquired for 91 RON fuel. You might need it one day.




PAH


Isn't a basic rule of thumb tune the High octane to suit whatever fuel you normally use and then take 30% away from this for your low octane spark tables? The factory tables are pretty girl as they have to be to meet emissions and drive train warranty etc.

[255-LS1]

Thanks for the replies. So what is his best option, the car is completly stock (2270 km on the clock so far). He is not planning to mod it as yet wants to pay the unit off first, is it worth him paying the extra for Ultimate or can he run something cheaper, its his baby so he'll probably still run ultimate but would be good to know anyhow

[Rub]

I believe this is to be on an LS1 with a stock tune, I appear to have left that out in my post.

Apologies.

[duke5700]

95 Octane is the go. though he can use E10 but he will possibly lose a little performance and fuel economy. 91 will run fair to ok but he will lose performance.

[255-LS1]

cheers Duke, who makes the best 95 RON or they all the same (i.e just your run of the mill "premium unleaded"). Who stocks E10 these days we might run some through it to see how it performs

[LSX-438]

Sorry mate but thats not true I have logged mine with 95 in it and it pinged an pulled timing but with the same timing table in it it didn't rattle with 98. You can run more timing with 98 so your mate heard wrong or was misled.

All the tuners on here will tell you the same thing.

cheers

I think maybe what they are saying is, using a stock timing map there is little benefit with 98 over 95. Could be right, given lower timing. An aftermarket tuned car is a different story of course.

[macca_779]

Ethanol? :rofl:

People actually put that in their fuel?

:rofl:

Always makes me laugh!

Ahh the ignorance.
Nothing wrong with ethanol as long as the Petroleum its mixed with is good to begin with. Hell I'd run on E85 Ethanol if I could get it, and it was cheap.

[swingtan]

i have been running E10 in the ute since fuel prices went nuts, Had the tune tweaked to suit and have not noticed any more or less in usage or power, But for the price all is good,

Correct, so many people forget about this. To get the "most" out of E10 you need to tune for it. Actually, to get the most out of any fuel you need to tune for it but more so with a "flex-fuel" like E10. Last year when Shell dumped V-Power Racing, I tried a few tanks of E10 to see what it was like. After fixing the AFR's ( which went way off compared to PULP or ULP ) I found that E10 would almost hold the same spark timing as 98RON. Usage was not appreciably more than PULP and power was very close. The big winner was that E10 was 20c to 30c per litter less than PULP.

So after the tuning costs, E10 has an excellent "bang for your buck".



For modern Commodores, GMH OK's ethanol use in up to E10 but nothing stronger. E85 is out. Ethanol is corrosive. The fuel systems cope with 10% ethanol. 85% ethanol is likely to crrode fuel system components. E10 is supposed to be a very good fuel system cleaner. Why? Maybe because it's a little bit corrosive?


Alcohol fuels are not corrosive. A corrosive substance has a high or low PH and Ethanol ( as well as Methanol ) are PH neutral. Alcohol is a "solvent" though and will soften or dissolve some substances ( some rubbers and some plastics are an example ). Alcohol is also "electrically conductive" and will possibly cause "electrolysis" of metal parts. The final results of these properties are much like corrosion though.

Simon.

[duke5700]

cheers Duke, who makes the best 95 RON or they all the same (i.e just your run of the mill "premium unleaded"). Who stocks E10 these days we might run some through it to see how it performs

Oh well I use Caltex as thats what my car is tuned on. As far as who has the best I read a report on Octane Values and Caltex was numero uno so I used it. I don't know any different. They are probably all pretty OK, my only rule of thumb is use new servos with a high turnover so the fuel is the freshest. Just for arguments sake I have run a few different brands and none have really performed better or worse and I have never logged more or less knock retard that I can't rule out as being just a bad batch. I think it mainly comes down to the quality of the fuel at delivery time, as in they all vary from time to time.

[255-LS1]

Thanks duke ill tell him to sus out vortex 95 for a comparision

Cheers

[MJR-57T]

Sorry mate but thats not true I have logged mine with 95 in it and it pinged an pulled timing but with the same timing table in it it didn't rattle with 98. You can run more timing with 98 so your mate heard wrong or was misled.

All the tuners on here will tell you the same thing.

cheers
Ill second that.
Dont know if many of you know Ourimbah hill on the F3 heading southbound.
Anyways i travel that quite often (5-6 times a week) to see my girlfriend.
If i've been running 91 i will creep up the hill in 6th gear at 105-107 WOT.
If ive been running 98 for a day or two ill cruise up in 6th gear at 110 keep it constant or accelerate slightly if i need to.
You can do all the tests you want on a computer but there's no more hard proof than doing that almost every day.

[KCB50L]

Sorry mate but thats not true I have logged mine with 95 in it and it pinged an pulled timing but with the same timing table in it it didn't rattle with 98. You can run more timing with 98 so your mate heard wrong or was misled.

All the tuners on here will tell you the same thing.

cheers

This is true, I have logged the ute with all current fuels available with the exception of E85 and without a doubt 91 octane is out altogether, 95 standard premium has detonation present but not as bad as 91, E10 is actually fairly good, it's 94 but no detonation, 98 premium of course is good, no detonation and the new 100 with E10 is better than 98, I could add a fair bit of timing with the 100 in it without detonation. There were fair gains between the E10 standard and 98, but surprisingly the same gains again between the 98 and the united petroleum's 100 with E10, witch leads me to think that fuel might be closer to 102 octane.

[SS Enforcer]

cheers Duke, who makes the best 95 RON or they all the same (i.e just your run of the mill "premium unleaded"). Who stocks E10 these days we might run some through it to see how it performs

If you like bright colours use Shell or BP or if you arn't colour sensitive try Caltex or Mobil as the only difference between them is any additive that is added at the point of loading.

The E10 is also just standard ulp blended with 10% ethanol again it's exactly the same wherever you get it from.

UNLESS the E10 is only E5 or less ..... there is currently a shortage of ethanol in the country and some E10 is just regular 91 unblended fuel that has no ethanol content at all in it. I would run my car on it if I could be sure of the Ethanol content and tune it too suit.

cheers


I think maybe what they are saying is, using a stock timing map there is little benefit with 98 over 95. Could be right, given lower timing. An aftermarket tuned car is a different story of course.

I understand what your saying there Duncan but my VE rattled lightly sometimes when it was stock and untuned. Oztrack logged it and it was pulling small amounts of timing even on 98 fuel.

The Ve's run a more agressive spark map than the earlier models which is why they don't produce a big jump in power tune only like the early ls1's that only ran 9* timing max stock.

cheers

[steve_t]

Pure ethanol has an octane rating of about 129. Adding 10% ethanol raises the petrols RON by 2-3 points, so 91+E10 should be about 94-95.
E10 here in the upper north island of NZ is 98 :smilesandbanana: They mix 95 with ethanol. Ethanol is great from an emissions standpoint with far less carbon emissions, but it is lower in energy density than petrol. This means that a tank of E10 will take you slightly less km than the same amount of 100% petrol. I'd be surprised if the newer fuel lines of the VE corroded with E85. I think it's just the older japanese cars that used hoses that perished running E thru them
E85 should be awesome from a timing advance standpoint and I think Tuna has been working on tuning for this. Tuna.....

[aaron__aus]

Yeah, I wanted to see what the E10 ran like so the last 3 fills have been E10, just to test. Haven't noticed any real performance difference at all.

[sixlta]

Sorry mate but thats not true I have logged mine with 95 in it and it pinged an pulled timing but with the same timing table in it it didn't rattle with 98. You can run more timing with 98 so your mate heard wrong or was misled.

All the tuners on here will tell you the same thing.

cheers


I agree, i don't tune anything but my Ute ran like shit when i was forced to fill with 95, Knocked flat-out and lost heaps of go!

[macca_779]

Actually all the GOOD tuners will tell you that if you experience shit loads of KR on 95RON, then you most likely have to much timing for a 98RON tune to begin with.. That people is the difference between timing @ MBT and screwing in as much timing as possible right before it knocks (uneducated tuners do this).. Hell I can throw 30deg in mine at WOT 6500rpm and not have it pinging.. Make alot more power with 26 though. So from that the experience with my car shows that it will only ever register any KR at the highest cylinder pressure (about 4k) when run on 95RON without touching the tune. Even then its only 1.3deg.. Everywhere else in the RPM/LOAD Map, it doesn't make a peep.. But the power is down and less timing would net more power.

[Simmo77]

I'm lost here. Sorry guys.

So is E10 ok?

[vessloveit]

I have been using United E10 (95ron) for a few weeks now have not noticed any loss of performance uses about 1litre/100km more now. But at about 20c/litre cheaper I have been happy with it. When I have time will have the tune touched up to suit the E10 it was tunes on BP Ultimate.

On a side note I spent sometime in Brazil in 2005 one guy was telling me he had three Chev Luminas rebadged commodores and never had any troube using the local fuel which is a minimum 25% ethanol.

[Oztrack Tuning]

Factory E38 map has too much timing for even 98 below 2000rpm in a few places. 95 will certainly send it even further down toward bottom table and lose pulling performance and economy because of this.

I rate E10 better than 95 premium.

If someone owns a Gen III or Gen IV and they tow at all. Try to use 98 its far better behaved below 2000rpm which is where you will spend most of your time.

[COSMOS]

Factory E38 map has too much timing for even 98 below 2000rpm in a few places. 95 will certainly send it even further down toward bottom table and lose pulling performance and economy because of this.

I rate E10 better than 95 premium.


Steve

are you saying you would recommend tuning a GevIV for E10 moreso that for 95? But that 98 is the best option in any case?

If I were to get mine tuned for E10 would I be looking at better fuel economy, increased power, niether or both?