A Blog About Land Rovers and Living in Oklahoma
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.
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.
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.
Well, that’s my thoughts on the matter anyway.
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.
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
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.
