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That's the problem. For some one who has zero interest in economics "your" statement that your uncle is the most respected economist in the world is a bridge too far.
What happened to gasoline in the mid 1970s?
- Thread starter Norbert Schmidt
- Start date
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That's the problem. For some one who has zero interest in economics "your" statement that your uncle is the most respected economist in the world is a bridge too far.
IF you say so. I said I had less than zero interest, not that I didn't know anything about it. You sure seem obsessed with this.
Sorry but BS.
Your interpretation of 'nothing to do with politics" is incorrect. The fact is that you know this because in your second sentence you write "failed policies". The fact that you have then assumed what someone else thinks, and their approach to governments role, and divided the world into parties is exactly why there is a "no politics" policy.
Its not what you are or what you call yourself, or your beliefs or lack of them. Its how you are engaging in the topic.
definitions.
Political. 1. of belonging to the body of the state or body of citizens, its government and policy.
3. Belonging to or taking a side in politics or in connexion with the party system of government; in a bad sense partisan, factions.
from the Oxford English Dictionanary
Because gasoline changes have been related to government policy my point was that we all have been trying to keep this discussion from devolving from definition one, neccessary for this discussion, into definition 3.
The fact that you only recognize "two sides" neither of which you associate with in no way changes the nature of what you wrote. It is by very definition political.
An anarchist is still engaged in politics.
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IT was a good thread while it lasted. Once it goes into the N&P forum, I'm done. I'm not rejoining there. Yall have a good time. lol
So this is all about the difference between "well respected" vs. "probably one of the most well respected" ?
Does it make a difference to the history of how gasoline changed?
Not one bit.
Does it make a difference to the history of how gasoline changed?
Not one bit.
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Crapped if I know. All I do know is, he asked who my Uncle is. I showed him. He started runnin him down. If that's why he asked, that makes him a big asshole, IMO. I just wanted to get that in before this gets flushed to N&P.
You did the best you could. I get it when some guy on a car forum posts his uncle is a world wide known economist someone is going to doubt it. But after you posted the links and showed he wasn't some guy selling Cheerios as donut seeds, that should have been the end of it.
And yes if the mods flush this over to the N&P I will be pissed.
Well, in my 35 years of experience I did not use BTU as a value for energy since the long accepted scale is called Joules (J). But just to give you an idea of the relative energy content between methanol, ethanol, and gasoline: (MJ=Mega Joules)
One liter of ethanol contains 21.1 MJ, a liter of methanol 15.8 MJ and a liter of gasoline approximately 32.6 MJ. In other words, for the same energy content as one liter or one gallon of gasoline, one needs 1.6 liters or gallons of ethanol and 2.1 liters or gallons of methanol.
So using methanol instead of ethanol may seem to be more inexpensive but you would actually spend more money on the methanol blended gas to cover the same distance as done with the ethanol blended gas.
Switching to methanol would require larger gas tanks or more frequent stops at the gas station due to the decreased engine performance when using ethanol.
yellow rose
Overnight Sensation
I get it. In that case, I’m all for NO ALCOHOL in the gas and letting the refineries blend what the OE’s want to get the compression ratios up to a more efficient level.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that back in 1990ish I was working with a guy who put everything in calories. I could never follow his math so I switched to a guy that used GPM so I could convert it to PPH and do the math. Math ain’t my strong point.
Yeah let gas be GAS again, instead of tryin to be "stylish".
sccachallenger
Well-Known Member
What I remember, around the middle of 1985 the amount of lead in regular gas was reduced. My 440 that I'd built to run on Shell regular suddenly started pinging. At the time, many were mixing unleaded premium with leaded regular. The resulting octane was higher than the unmixed premium. The experts at the time claimed because the regular had so much extra lead in it, that boosted the octane of the premium. Now after the lead was reduced, this trick didn't work any longer. Now this was in Louisiana, have no idea what was going on elsewhere.
The lead in gas was in the form of tetraethyl lead (as Mattax previously noted). This compound consisted of four (tetra=four) separate ethyl groups attached to a single lead atom. The lead was present to help the non-hardened valve seats in use at the time. The four ethyl groups contributed to the octane rating (anti knock benefit). Ethanol was used as a replacement for tetraethyl lead in an effort to replace the lost octane benefit as well as to provide more oxygen for the combustion process.
According to Chevron's pdf book, while ethanol may be used to boost octane, that was not the initial purpose of its introduction.
As of 2009
The Super Premium my family generally used was American.
American (owned by Standard Oil of Indiana) never used lead in their highest octane motor gasoline.
"While most oil companies were switching to leaded gasolines en masse during the mid-to-late 1920s, American Oil chose to continue marketing its premium-grade "Amoco-Gas" (later Amoco Super-Premium) as a lead-free gasoline by using aromatics rather than tetraethyl lead to increase octane levels - decades before the environmental movement of the early 1970s led to more stringent auto emission controls which ultimately mandated the universal phase out of leaded gasoline. The "Amoco" lead-free gasoline was sold at American's stations in the eastern and southern U.S. alongside American Regular gasoline, which was a leaded fuel."
from AMOCO | Petroleum Equipment Institute
saved from https://www.historicvehicle.org/vanishing-americana-roadside-business-edition/
Why methanol is not used is touched on in this sidebar on page 55 of the Chevron book
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In 1992 my mother in law bought a new Chevy lumina, it was a leftover from a fleet of test vehicles.
It was refered to as a "variable fuel vehicle". It was designed to run on 100% gasoline or 100% methanol (NOT ethanol) or any combination in-between.
It had special parts to run methanol, injectors were bigger, special electronics etc.
I drove that car on gas 100 miles a day for 7 years, I had to fill up every 4 to 5 days. At one point I decided to try E85. I ran the tank down to almost no gas, put in a few gallonsof E85 figuring I could dolute the E85 if it ran bad.
It ran fine! So I tried a full tank of E85, no problems. At one point the price of E85 was much cheaper than gas so I started using E85 exclusively. The most notable thing was I had to fill up every 3 to 4 days. (Was not cheaper in the long run)
From my research, methanol is poisonous to humans with skin contact and much more corosion to metals and some plastics than ethanol or gas. And at the end of the fuel study methanol was ruled out as a commerical fuel.
Chevy supliment FSM, Amazon says "Flex" fuel but the cars was a "Variable" fuel said so right under the trunk lid
Some light reading on methanol as a fuel.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjADegQIEBAC&usg=AOvVaw0gmONMqA15jS4GYOwCzkX9
It was refered to as a "variable fuel vehicle". It was designed to run on 100% gasoline or 100% methanol (NOT ethanol) or any combination in-between.
It had special parts to run methanol, injectors were bigger, special electronics etc.
I drove that car on gas 100 miles a day for 7 years, I had to fill up every 4 to 5 days. At one point I decided to try E85. I ran the tank down to almost no gas, put in a few gallonsof E85 figuring I could dolute the E85 if it ran bad.
It ran fine! So I tried a full tank of E85, no problems. At one point the price of E85 was much cheaper than gas so I started using E85 exclusively. The most notable thing was I had to fill up every 3 to 4 days. (Was not cheaper in the long run)
From my research, methanol is poisonous to humans with skin contact and much more corosion to metals and some plastics than ethanol or gas. And at the end of the fuel study methanol was ruled out as a commerical fuel.
Chevy supliment FSM, Amazon says "Flex" fuel but the cars was a "Variable" fuel said so right under the trunk lid
Some light reading on methanol as a fuel.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjADegQIEBAC&usg=AOvVaw0gmONMqA15jS4GYOwCzkX9
This may be a bit off topic, but when I watch videos on Nicks Garage in Canada, he talks about how they have 94 octane ethanol free fuel they run their engines on. Do you have any idea why there is not an offering like this in the US? I would love to run 94, as we can only get 91 non-alcohol on occasion down here in South Texas.
I've seen the same thing in NY state.
Have an idea but I can't be guarentee its the full story.
The ethanol is almost always blended in at the distribution location. In other words at the last leg of the fuel's journey when its going into the trucks taking it to the retail stores.
My guess is that most of the non-eth fuel sold at stations is simply the stuff that was intended for getting mixed with ethanol.
So this stuff has a AKI of 89, or at best 91, because when the 8% ethanol is mixed in, the AKI would increase to 92 or 93.
So yes it has no ethanol, but its not that same as what we were buying back in 1970 or even 1990.
It used to be that there were stations that carried a 94 AKI fuel. Some Sunoco and I don't recall who else. Very much a regional thing. Might have had to do with having enough volume of sales to make it worth it. I've driven through parts of the country, typically rural areas where 91 or 92 was the highest octane at most stations. Demand ? Elevation and climate?
Canada. My recollection from when I was searching the internet for info on gasoline was that the formulations there are different. Also the octane listed at the pump may not be required to be the AKI, it may be Research Octane. Pretty sure in europe that is the case.
Even in the continental US, there are many different blends.
This map was published by Exxon showing some of the regional differences.
Thanks for the info!
On the subject of alcohol free gasoline...
I have been trying alcohol free gas to combat vapor lock.
Does higher octane gas vaporize at a higher temp than lower octane.
I had the option to get 87 or 91 ( car does not ping on lowest octane 84 iirc)
I have been trying alcohol free gas to combat vapor lock.
Does higher octane gas vaporize at a higher temp than lower octane.
I had the option to get 87 or 91 ( car does not ping on lowest octane 84 iirc)
Octane rating is not directly related to the vaporization characteristics. For that look at the Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) and the distillation curve.
The distillation curves below provide the general relationship of how much a fuel will evaporate at a given temperature.
In the graph I plotted a non-reformulated gasoline from 2007, and one from that time with 8% ethanol.
Read the graph like this:
Find a temperature on the left. Take 150* F. Follow the line across to the Chevron Premium, and then go straight down to the bottom axis. For 150*F, we see about 7% of this fuel evaporated. Now take the same 150* F and follow it to the E8 fuel. Looking down it shows 30% of the fuel has evaporated. Big Difference!
Also notice the shape of the E8. The light portion vaporizes easily, but then there is a jump to the mid range and completion. This can disrupt the flame front in a relative cold cylinder. Think of it like building a fire with lots of tinder and then skipping the small kindling.
Some other fuels plotted on the second graph in this post: Video of boiling point of fuel
As noted there, it seems that higher RVP correlateds with fuels that evaporate more volume at low termperatures.
The Feds allow higher 1. psi higher rvp with alcohol blends, but some states don't.
All retailers should now be selling summer fuel. Date of switch to summer-grade gasoline approaches - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
The distillation curves below provide the general relationship of how much a fuel will evaporate at a given temperature.
In the graph I plotted a non-reformulated gasoline from 2007, and one from that time with 8% ethanol.
Read the graph like this:
Find a temperature on the left. Take 150* F. Follow the line across to the Chevron Premium, and then go straight down to the bottom axis. For 150*F, we see about 7% of this fuel evaporated. Now take the same 150* F and follow it to the E8 fuel. Looking down it shows 30% of the fuel has evaporated. Big Difference!
Also notice the shape of the E8. The light portion vaporizes easily, but then there is a jump to the mid range and completion. This can disrupt the flame front in a relative cold cylinder. Think of it like building a fire with lots of tinder and then skipping the small kindling.
Some other fuels plotted on the second graph in this post: Video of boiling point of fuel
As noted there, it seems that higher RVP correlateds with fuels that evaporate more volume at low termperatures.
The Feds allow higher 1. psi higher rvp with alcohol blends, but some states don't.
All retailers should now be selling summer fuel. Date of switch to summer-grade gasoline approaches - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
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