You love him really…
[quote=JDS]How many people have gone off to google toluene!! 
I thought it was the stuff they put in Red Bull
[/quote]
caught, although a little disappointed at what i found out:
"Toluene can be used as an octane booster in gasoline fuels used in internal combustion engines.
Toluene at 86% by volume fueled all the turbo Formula 1 teams in the 1980s, first pioneered by the Honda team. The remaining 14% was a “filler” of n-heptane, to reduce the octane to meet Formula 1 fuel restrictions. Toluene at 100% can be used as a fuel for both two-stroke and four-stroke engines; however, due to the density of the fuel and other factors, the fuel does not vaporize easily unless preheated to 70 degrees Celsius (Honda accomplished this in their Formula 1 cars by routing the fuel lines through the muffler system to heat the fuel).
Toluene also poses similar problems as alcohol fuels, as it eats through standard rubber fuel lines and has no lubricating properties, as standard gasoline does,[citation needed] which can break down fuel pumps and cause upper cylinder bore wear.
In Australia, toluene has been found to have been illegally combined with petrol in fuel outlets for sale as standard vehicular fuel. Toluene attracts no fuel excise, while other fuels are taxed at over 40%, so fuel suppliers are able to profit from substituting the cheaper toluene for petrol. This substitution is likely to affect engine performance and result in additional wear and tear. The extent of toluene substitution has not been determined.[10][11]".
Toulene - thought she was a redneck living in one of Frank’s canyons.
Does anyone know if Shell V Power has any ethanol content? I’ve been unable to find the answer/
Yes it does, or might do depending on which deopt it was blended at. As a rule, the best chance of finding ethanol free fuel in UK is to go high octane, such as V Power, but most UK pumps now deliver E5, i.e. fuels containing 5% ethanol. The ethanol is added last minute as the tanker is filled to leave the depot.
in Germany, V-Power 100 doesn’t have any Ethanol blended in. The same as in ARAL Ultimate 102.
Tesco quotes a maximum of 5% ethanol for Momentum 99, see link below:
Spec for Shell V-Power is similar:
It looks like the regulations covering fuel specification (EN228) are being revised - or have been - as they originally allowed only a maximum of 5% ethanol. The revision will allow up to 10%. There has been some reference to a ‘protectionist’ fuel of under 5% for vehicles that can’t use the higher content, but presumably if that actually happens it will be rare and costly!
I can remember putting Octane booster in the black car when it had the VHPD … and spilling it down the bodywork … not a good idea as Toluene is a really good paint stripper …
Ran the black SC Honda car over here on E85 and got 20% more HP … also used 20% more fuel and is impossible to find outside of the city so gave that up quite fast … it did smell sweet though !
This is one of the unmentioned anomalies with ethanol…
Ethanol has an energy content of around 30MJ/kg
Petrol has an energy content of around 42MJ/kg
So to achieve the same power output from fuel containing ethanol it is necessary to burn more than a non-ethanol fuel. A fuel like E10 would need 104% of the equivalent weight of petrol, ie. fuel consumption goes up by 4%.
Now, although the CO2 emission from ethanol is lower than petrol (around 1500 g/l compared to 2300 g/l) when you’re burning more of it (as above) the CO2 emission is actually damn-near identical!
So based on that - real science - can someone please tell me why ethanol-based fuel is…ahem…“a good thing”?
Presumably because Ethanol is produced from a substainable source (corn etc), rather than the future “limited availability” of fossil based fuel?
this ^^^
And did I mention in smells sweet ?
dude, sweet!
Sustainable? Not really…
…1 hectare of cereal crop (wheat, corn etc.) provides around 14000 miles-worth of ethanol, using land that would otherwise be used for food production. Thus we continue to import more and more food, emitting increasing amounts of the gases we’re supposed to be reducing.
[quote=“tlracer”]Sustainable? Not really…
…1 hectare of cereal crop (wheat, corn etc.) provides around 14000 miles-worth of ethanol, using land that would otherwise be used for food production. Thus we continue to import more and more food, emitting increasing amounts of the gases we’re supposed to be reducing.[/quot
Agreed, but it’s “a least of two evils” policy I guess.
We’re all doomed!!! 
Problem is that, unlike biodiesel, bioethanol needs a feedstock that is a primary crop (ie. grown for the purpose).
Biodiesel or syndiesel is not only cleaner than a lot of cracked diesel but can be produced from waste biomass, so avoiding the need to use up agricultural land.
But back to the subject, essentially all the ‘greenhouse gases’ arguments for ethanol are, frankly, nonsense.
I shall now vacate the soapbox!
The real reason is EU emission targets If it wasn’t for the existence of these targets then ethanol would not be finding its way into our petrol. Simple.
It depends whether you subscribe to the whole global warming thing or not. If you do, then you’ll think it’s OK, if you don’t then it’s all a load of b**locks.
The most important thing is that, within the bondaries of the legislation, we can all continue to have fun with our sports car, whether old or new.
Not sure how it can relate to emissions as ethanol produces just as much CO2 per MJ as petrol.
If you don’t like ethanol/bio/etc, whatever you do, don’t look into the total carbon footprint of LiIon/LiPo batteries or wind mills then!!
I did read the recent report about windfarms…but at least the taxpayers bung (sorry, subsidy) for them is on the way out at last.
Nah, they just gave the money to some shaddy tidal power generation system 