Commuting revisited- 2011

[Pilot]

Premium won't give better mileage than regular unless you have an engine designed for premium. Engines designed for premium have higher compression which leads to engine knocking on regular gas. The difference between regular and premium is that premium has octane boosters and the only function of octane boosters is to prevent engine knocking which could damage the engine.

Premium has the same power or BTU's per gallon as regular.

If your engine is designed for premium and you run regular, that's another story. The engine will have a knock detector that will sense when knocking is starting and will instantly ****** the timing to prevent knocking and damage. Retarding the timing will reduce your gas mileage.

Only run premium if your engine is designed for premium. In general, only high performance cars and upscale European cars are designed for premium. A Honda or Toyota is likely designed for regular and running premium is a waste of money.

There are always folks who claim premium improves their mileage, but 10% of the people still believe Elvis is alive.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

There are always folks who claim premium improves their mileage, but 10% of the people still believe Elvis is alive.

Oh so true, remember the crazy coach of the Houston Oilers???:confused2:

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Alan, that Accord is barely broken in. Keep it at least another 8 years. 156K in 5 years=31.2K mi/year Get your money out of it.:thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

Premium has the same power or BTU's per gallon as regular.

.

The way I understood it, premium has less power (BTU) than regular. It has higher octane, which makes it more stable, burns cooler and doesn't ignite as fast as lower octane fuel. That is why it is required in higher compression engines. Lower octane fuels would ignite too soon, causing engine knock.

 

[EE_Bota]

The way I understood it, premium has less power (BTU) than regular. It has higher octane, which makes it more stable, burns cooler and doesn't ignite as fast as lower octane fuel. That is why it is required in higher compression engines. Lower octane fuels would ignite too soon, causing engine knock.

Premium is often required for engines like mine, which has a lower compression ratio, but varies widely due to the amount of turbo boost. My engine is turbocharged and intercooled. Apparently the tubo pressure results in an apparent compression which is much higher than theoretical compression ratio.

Theoretical efficiency increases with compression ratio typically.

 

[EE_Bota]

I've thought about the Fred Flinstone method but I'm not in good enough shape.

I know (or think I know) you are joking a bit. I was also joking a bit about burning the cow chips. I was quite serious about making the ethanol, but feeding the brewers grains to cattle, then eating the beef. Brewers grains are a wonderful feed.

A really good energy solution would likely involve shifts across multiple industries, and feeding brewers grains instead of the actual corn is not a bad shift to make in my opinion.

As for burning the cow chips, our fore fathers did that all the time...they burned buffalo chips as they made their way across the country in wagon trains. A modern feed lot could likely have reasonably good recycling for the wastes, which could liberate nitrogen for the corn crop, while using the methane and the solids in a cogeneration facility may also be quite feasible.

Lots of folks in this country do not know that their food comes in many ways from oil. Without that oil and gas supply, other means will need to be found to generate the nitrogen for the fertilizers. Animal wastes have lots of nitrogen typically.

Edit: a google search of "brewers grains analysis" should yield many impressive results. However, not all the grains involved are corn. One of the best rations I ever fed was corn silage, brewers grains, whole unpressed cotton seed hulls, and peanut hulls. The fur on the cotton seed hulls have energy, and the cotton seed oil within is high in energy, but has low "digestive heat" and can really help a dairy cow during the hot part of the year, since they tend to eat a bit less, and digestive heat should be avoided. The peanut hulls have to be rechewed, therefore more saliva is produced, which buffers rumen acidity, leading to an improvement in milk fat content.