by coyote » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:56 pm
Ethanol is 116RON (or higher, depending on which method of measurement is used), so the only reason E10 would have a rating of 94 is because it has been mixed with low octane shit quality dino fuel. The reason large oil companies do this is they are in the oil business, not the ethanol business. They only sell E10 because it is mandated by government and by blending ethanol with lowest quality dino fuel, they are (intentionally) creating the perception that E10 is low grade fuel.
Now, that is some of the large oil companies, but not all. Blending ethanol with good dino fuel gives you a higher octane fuel. For example, if you blended 10% ethanol into 95RON dino fuel, you'd probably finish up with 97 or 98 RON fuel. Shell put 5% ethanol in the shit they call V-Power and called it V-Power Racing (don't know what else they did with it though). I suspect they dropped it not because it was unpopular, but because they decided not to market a high quality ethanol blend.
The point? Look at the RON rating of the fuel you use. If it is 91RON or 94RON, it is not good enough to put in your Liberty regardless of whether it is 100% sludge dug from under an Arab's tent or not. If it says E10, know that it actually now has a higher RON value than when it was E0. If it says 100RON, it will likely enable you to make 15-20kw more at the wheels, regardless of whether it has ethanol in it or not. Actually, it is near on impossible to make unleaded pump fuel that is 100RON without using ethanol (or very nasty shit that you don't want to handle). BTW - you can drink ethanol.
Next year you will be able to buy E85 in Australia. Just watch, that's what all the big hp cars that run on pump fuel will be using.

** Team Tony **