1.87 for Fuel (Post #493) 5/4/2014

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Rewards cards are just that a reward. Used my gas savings card after a large grocery shop and got 28$(US) off a tank of fuel. I like that very much. Almost half price.

Summer is here its 95 F. Should be like that all week. Maybe its time to get the A/C recharged.

Thank for reading and Happy Filing Up Rovering.

Ethanol Woes (Post #356) 6/20/2013

I was visiting the RangeRovers.net forums and a discussion about Miles Per Gallon came up.
http://www.rangerovers.net/forum/8-range-rover-classic/48362-mpg-huge-drop-down.html

If you follow my Twitter account you’ve seen me rail against ethanol. My main gripe is not alcohol damaging my engine. It is using food for fuel. The cost of food in America is going up. I believe some of that is due to the ethanol mandate. There are starving people in China India Africa America. (did your mom say that to you too?)

Beef prices are up, the price of corn used in cattle feed is to blame. Here in the Great State of Oklahoma we are told “switchgrass” is a good source of ethanol. Lots of research is going into that. I propose this, if switchgrass is a viable alternative would farmers plant that instead of food crops? Wouldn’t that raise the price of food too? I’ve never heard an argument for “alternative fuels” made from FOOD that makes any sense when you consider the costs of food too.

Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does
This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies.

In short…for one gallon of fuel we get 1.25 gallons of corn ethanol or for one gallon of fuel we get 5.40 gallons of switchgrass ethanol. Does anyone else see a problem here?

We don’t eat any food that is made from OIL or NATURAL GAS. I say just keep making gas out of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. If the government MUST mandate something make it tax subsidized LPG conversions and diesel conversions and call it good.

I don’t use ethanol any longer. In my tests the added cost of petrol is off-set by the added fuel mileage.
I wrote a spreadsheet that did my calculations.

https://www.okierover.com/other/fuelcostcalculator.xls

I ran several tanks of petrol and ethanol. I took the values and compared them. The savings maybe small in some cases, but at least I’m not burning fuel that should have been food or whiskey.

Looking at the problems you will have with ethanol you may want to consider dropping it. I get frequent Code 43 and 44’s when running ethanol. When I switch back to petrol the codes cease. I’m not sure what else ethanol does to our motors. I’ve heard horror stories from my Jaguar friends and other ethanol haters. We may be damaging our engines, then again, maybe we aren’t, I don’t have any hard evidence.

I’ll get off my soapbox now. I encourage you to test a few tanks too. See if my hypothesis holds up.

Thanks for reading, Happy Rovering.

Just Say No To Ethanol, Again (Post #312) 1/12/2013

Like the sign says, don’t pay too much. Apparently this 7-Eleven believes its a huge conspiracy to charge more for gasoline than for ethanol. I couldn’t agree more.

On principle I have a problem with turning anything we can eat into fuel. Especially if it takes more fuel than it nets to get the product. It seems counter productive. I’m also against farm subsidies for giant corporate farms, like the ones that sell their corn to refineries to make ethanol.

I know that might be counter intuitive and all living in a farm state like Oklahoma. But I think more than a hand out our farmers wish they had a level play field and less government control. We’ll see I guess.

The price for straight petrol was just one cent more than the ethanol. And if we review the reduced gas mileage of ethanol and the possible fuel system and engine problems that’s a bargain. I’ve swore off of all ethanol and if more people would, the ethanol production would stop because it wouldn’t be profitable to make it any longer.

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Well, that’s my thoughts on the matter anyway.

I told you so… (Post #256) 4/8/2011

Some time ago I wrote a blog post about octane and the myth about fuel economy. I wrote a spreadsheet calculator, included a link to it and everything. I wish I could find it for you. You’ll have to settle for this link to an old post which includes another site about Fuel Myths. Very good stuff.

In short any mileage saved by buying higher octane fuel is off set by the additional cost of the fuel. It turns out, at least according to this article, the outlandish claims of the fuel producers are to say the least, EXAGGERATED (dramatic reverb).

In other news… Sofia Vergara drives a Range Rover.

Read on and enjoy.

HARD-PRESSED motorists being lured into buying expensive ‘premium’ fuel are wasting their money, new research shows.

Oil firms are shelling out millions advertising pricey super fuels, promising drivers up to 25 PER CENT extra mileage from a tank.

But an extensive study found premium fuels costing an average of five per cent more than standard fuel delivered just ONE per cent extra performance.

In tests by motoring mag What Car? high-octane premium fuels — including BP Ultimate, Esso Supreme, Tesco Momentum and Total Excellium — performed little or no better than their cheaper equivalents.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

June 26th, 2007 (Post #76)

June 26th, 2007


Not much going on
I haven’t been on to post in a few months. Mostly because, there hasn’t been anything going on. The price of fuel is outrageous. RovErica is driving the Range Rover now. She is quickly learning that like a Sherman Tank, it’s not far to empty in a Range Rover. The sunroof is no longer going back. You can still vent it. But it is jams on when you try to retract it. I’ll have to take it our of the truck I fear to diagnose the problem.

She also reported a screeching sound. But cannot reproduce it. I think it’s brakes but she says it
is not. We also heard a strangle thumping sound under her when we were driving around 50mph on Sunday. Sounded like a tire with a bubble on it. But the tires are still perfect.

The Disco is still going strong.
I think I’m getting a little bit better gas mileage of late. I’m
not sure what to attribute it to though. Could the summer formula of gas make any difference?

I’m still looking for a trailer.
I’ve run into some interesting possibilities. I know where two M116A2 and one M105 trailers are for sale in OKC. The owner wants 450$ each and 650$ if I want the tarps. The M116A2’s formerly had 10kW generators on them. I have looked through the government surplus site at Government Liquidation and see them for sale there but usually with a generator on them. Now I’d love to have a generator on my property. Especially one I could run the whole house on. But I don’t have the money for that type of project.

The M105 trailers are plentiful right now. They have sides and a tailgate. They are also very high up. I’m not sure lowering them is possible. These things are really big too. I used to pull them behind my M554 Kaiser when I was in the Marine Corps. We put the powder for the artillery rounds in them.

The Tool Trailers will probably escape my purchase this time as I don’t have the money right now to do this project. But for an almost ready to go storage trailer/camp kitchen I don’t think you can get any closer than these Pioneer Tool Outfit trailers. They are selling right now for under 400$ on the auction. I’m not sure how high these would go.

Of course the perfect trailers are these Ammunition Trailers. I would like one of these for the pure utility of them. For the most part the adventure of camping is just getting your stuff to the site. And they don’t make trailers this tough.

These sell for around 300$. I know they are available at Surplus stores in North Carolina for this advertised price. Some people put frames on trailers like this and mount their roof top tents on them.

The possibility of getting an M116A2 is still in the works. A fellow here in OKC has them as I mentioned before. M116A2. These trailers have definate potential. The bows are
steel and would support nicely a tent for the tent over style of expedition trailer. Boxes for the kitchen and storage of other stuff would need to be bought or made. This and fact that the two I see will need a few hundred dollars of paint stripping and painting make them the more expensive of the possibilities. You can see they sit pretty high too. That picture is of a lifted Toyota pulling it. The front stone shield would have to be fabricated. But it could be built to hold the spare and the fuel cans and the jacks and the Hi-Lift jack.

Tents are easy to come by. There are several out there. Most of them start around 1500 and go up. I recently found an outfit on eBay that was selling a rooftop for under 800$. I will probably get one if I go that route. I still haven’t ruled out getting a pop-up camper. But the same deal applies there. How cheap can I get one and how much will it take to get it in shape and fixed up to use? Something tells me I should probably get a pop-up if I want the wife to go along with me on these trips. But who knows, we haven’t even been out yet.

You can see the possibilities are nearly endless. With a budget of around 2000$ you could make a pretty nice outfit. But, sadly, I don’t have 2000 dollars right now.

Blogging
As this is a “blog” by definition. The possibility of moving this to the Blogger website has come up. I currently blog on Devil Dog’s Daily News. It would be much easier for me to post things up if I used this format. And easier for you to look up items and subjects.
So look for that soon.