Old Dude wrote:Interesting how manufacturers decide what is suitable fuel..........I have a 2008 X trail, that Nissan told me do not run it on E10, now you would think that such a relative new car it would be designed to run on E10
Cheers
Dale
Question for those in the know, is E10 a higher octane than 91? I was told it was because ethnol is higher octane. But I would really like to know for sure.
E10 is a slightly complicated thing here. And for the record I ran my car on E10 (tuned for it...by me) and now run E85 (Only oz mx5 i think, also tuned by me, going for 6 months strong now).
It cant be 'designed' to run on e10 and 'designed' to run on regular petrol also. (I know I know, flex fuel sensors... but thats getting too far into it for this question I think)
Ethanol has a different stoichiometric ratio than petrol, and Its knock resistance is much higher.
If the car is tuned for petrol then it will be both too lean to be optimised for E10 AND will be running too retarded.
Obviously E85 has so much ethanol your car simply wont run on it without a full retune where as e10 is close enough that it will run not perfect, but good enough most people wont notice.
theres nothing wrong with E10. It is USUALLY 95 octane (ethanol is 115 octane or close to it so adding it will increase octane) but many manufacturers ddont take 91 and add 10% ethanol improving the octane, instead take 87 and add the e10 to get it back to 91. United is all 95 Octane for the record.
E85 is 105-110 octane depending on the exact percentage of ethanol in use (eg united is 90% and winter blend of caltex like right now is just 70%, with it hitting 85% at caltex in summer).
I hope this answers your question.
Dann