E30 Fuel?
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2012 E550 Cabriolet 2011 VW Eos 1985 Pininfarina Spider
E30 Fuel?
Anyone use E30 in the E550? I have station near me that is now selling E30 about $1 less than premium. It is listed as 94 octane.
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E550 Coupe 2wd (2016)
Why yes I do. Or I have, because I now use ~E50. A buck less is pretty good imo. Where I live they price it so your miles per dollar are about the same. The only real bennie is the extra power, and if yours responds like mine did, you will feel it. But I can only get E85 so I had to mix that with 91 to get E30. Your E30 is likely 87 octane as a base, which I seriously doubt will allow full power. If it were me I'd try it and see what happens, then try the E85/91 mix.
A negative side effect can be a fuel trim fault. E30 is right about the point where I was seeing an occasional fault here and there. The more Eth I added, the easier it would fault out. It made me nervous because when it faults the STFT goes to 0. No big deal putting around, and you won't even notice, but I was afraid that if I floored it may be lean. How/why I think that is a bit much to get into now, but I wasn't interesting is testing it. Restarting the eng resets the fault, btw. You can do this on the fly if you have key, but with the keyless go dealie you have to come to a complete stop >: |
To see your fuel trims you need a tool of some sort. If you don't have one I think you get setup for ~$15. Let me know if you want to do that, or have any questions and I can give you more details on any of this
Also, I have an Excel sheet to calc out mixing E85 with gas. Things like how much you need to add, what E# you ended up with in the tank, your actual mpg (not the BS dash reading) etc. Yours if you want it.
A negative side effect can be a fuel trim fault. E30 is right about the point where I was seeing an occasional fault here and there. The more Eth I added, the easier it would fault out. It made me nervous because when it faults the STFT goes to 0. No big deal putting around, and you won't even notice, but I was afraid that if I floored it may be lean. How/why I think that is a bit much to get into now, but I wasn't interesting is testing it. Restarting the eng resets the fault, btw. You can do this on the fly if you have key, but with the keyless go dealie you have to come to a complete stop >: |
To see your fuel trims you need a tool of some sort. If you don't have one I think you get setup for ~$15. Let me know if you want to do that, or have any questions and I can give you more details on any of this
Also, I have an Excel sheet to calc out mixing E85 with gas. Things like how much you need to add, what E# you ended up with in the tank, your actual mpg (not the BS dash reading) etc. Yours if you want it.
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10-second E550
I agree with Chevota that if you want to experiment with E30, mix actual E85 with the highest octane pump gas. You'd also want to get an ethanol test bottle (~$10) and check the actual percentage of E85 so that your blend is accurate. There are numerous phone apps for calculating blends.
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Joined: Jul 2017
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2012 E550 Cabriolet 2011 VW Eos 1985 Pininfarina Spider
I agree with Chevota that if you want to experiment with E30, mix actual E85 with the highest octane pump gas. You'd also want to get an ethanol test bottle (~$10) and check the actual percentage of E85 so that your blend is accurate. There are numerous phone apps for calculating blends.
Thread Starter
Super Member
Joined: Jul 2017
Posts: 517
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2012 E550 Cabriolet 2011 VW Eos 1985 Pininfarina Spider
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 954
Likes: 245
E550 Coupe 2wd (2016)
I had to laugh. You mentioned that several times. I think we're on different wavelengths?
I'm saying it would be higher octane if you mixed E85 with 91 to net E30 of your own making. Because why would they use 30% eth and 70% premium gas when they can use 30% eth and 70% 84 oct gas? (I just googled it and found they apparently use 84 oct), If the pump E30 works, then great, but if you still ping then try mixing
Or maybe you don't care about ping, or power, but cost? If so, an E550 seems like an odd choice. If saving $ is the goal, just remember you have to compare actual mpg when comparing the two. I believe the dash mpg reading won't work with an Eth mix. It certainly doesn't on mine, which reads exactly the same on gas vs 50% eth, so I have do mpg manually.
I'm saying it would be higher octane if you mixed E85 with 91 to net E30 of your own making. Because why would they use 30% eth and 70% premium gas when they can use 30% eth and 70% 84 oct gas? (I just googled it and found they apparently use 84 oct), If the pump E30 works, then great, but if you still ping then try mixing
Or maybe you don't care about ping, or power, but cost? If so, an E550 seems like an odd choice. If saving $ is the goal, just remember you have to compare actual mpg when comparing the two. I believe the dash mpg reading won't work with an Eth mix. It certainly doesn't on mine, which reads exactly the same on gas vs 50% eth, so I have do mpg manually.
