On 3/9/2021 at 7:06 PM, Bobr said:

E10 is cleared for use in all petrol driven Ford models sold in Europe since 1992 excluding:

• Ford Mondeo 1.8 SCI from 2003 to 2007.

Personal imports not approved by Ford of Europe are not included in the above statement.

https://www.gov.uk/check-vehicle-e10-petrol when I select Ford vehicle.

If they were really worried about the environment they'd remove catalytic convertors.

All they do is convert the gasses that are measured by the pollution monitoring stations into other harmful gasses that aren't monitored, thereby making it look like they actually do something useful.

Factor in the massive destruction caused by mining for the precious metals required, the use of slave labour to aqquire those materials and the fact that you burn over 10% more fossil fuel with a Cat fitted make them one of the biggest environmental problems with modern cars.

 

 

1 hour ago, Blatto said:

If they were really worried about the environment they'd remove catalytic convertors.

I recall back in the 80's Rover put a vast amount of research time (and money) into ultra-lean burn technology to control emissions without the use of catalytic convertors, and the K-series engine was originally designed with a view to running on unusually lean mixtures (20:1).

However, the EC (as it then was) decided in its great wisdom, egged on by the environmental lobby and (according to my fleet contact in Rover) the German manufacturers, to go for catalytic converters. This of course meant engines had to run stoichiometric (14.5:1) mixtures, thus burning more fuel, producing more CO2, etc and meant a lot of Rovers investment in research was effectively wasted.

Some say this marked the beginning of the end for Rover.........

I'll just stick to 98 RON in my ST-L 140. 

1 hour ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

I recall back in the 80's Rover put a vast amount of research time (and money) into ultra-lean burn technology to control emissions without the use of catalytic convertors, and the K-series engine was originally designed with a view to running on unusually lean mixtures (20:1).

However, the EC (as it then was) decided in its great wisdom, egged on by the environmental lobby and (according to my fleet contact in Rover) the German manufacturers, to go for catalytic converters. This of course meant engines had to run stoichiometric (14.5:1) mixtures, thus burning more fuel, producing more CO2, etc and meant a lot of Rovers investment in research was effectively wasted.

Some say this marked the beginning of the end for Rover.........

Mazda have made lean burn work with a Cat.

11 minutes ago, alexp999 said:

Mazda have made lean burn work with a Cat.

The skyactiv? Indeed they have, but a lot of the clever stuff in that simply wasn't around 40 years ago.

 

2 hours ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

However, the EC (as it then was) decided in its great wisdom, egged on by the environmental lobby and (according to my fleet contact in Rover) the German manufacturers, to go for catalytic converters. 

Although my Rover contact would say that, as older members may remember, German cars were going about at the time sporting stickers like the one in this link, and the likes of VW were rather more in favour with the EC than they appear to be now.

https://www.huoqinl.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=583957

9 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Although my Rover contact would say that

I remember the same thing at the time and it was from another source so I don't doubt it.  

Mine a 2007 so glad I can use E10 if there is any left in the pumps in the morning 🙂

On 7/13/2021 at 5:59 PM, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Although my Rover contact would say that, as older members may remember, German cars were going about at the time sporting stickers like the one in this link, and the likes of VW were rather more in favour with the EC than they appear to be now.

https://www.huoqinl.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=583957

Link isn't working Roger.

7 hours ago, Bobr said:

Link isn't working Roger.

Not surprised after 2 months, Bob. Similar ad here:

https://www.yshamashan.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=583957

 

1 hour ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Not surprised after 2 months, Bob. Similar ad here:

https://www.yshamashan.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=583957

 

Working now mate but it's all in foreign.😄

Does this E10 effect the cat like burn it out faster or do any damage to it.

You should probably give cats milk, rather than petrol.  

7 hours ago, jace1969 said:

Does this E10 effect the cat 

Not seen anything specific about E10 but I seem to recall reports from the US a few years ago relating to the higher blends of ethanol they have there (E15 and E85). I think though, that these related to using E15 or E85 in vehicles that were not approved for it, inadequate information for drivers, poor labelling at the pumps etc.

 

 

9 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

You should probably give cats milk, rather than petrol.

I'm more in favour of Petrol, might stop the damn things from Cra*!*ng all over my garden.

 

Gives a new meaning to putting the cat out, I suppose...

Eric it wasn't the EC that killed Rover. It was a moribund company that couldn't add up, didn't develop new models in time and those that it did leaked, broke and fell apart. One good product (The supercharged Ford engined 75,) would have saved it but the Metro was rubbish against the Fiesta, the 600 was rubbish against the Cavalier and the 800 was rubbish against a bin liner full of household waste.  The punters weren't stupid and once nationalism and tribal loyalties wore out their welcome, they bought cars that worked and could out accelerate their own depreciation curves.

Just filled up with premium E5 as I couldn't get anything else.   Be interesting to see how the car react to it.

19 hours ago, anon said:

Eric it wasn't the EC that killed Rover. 

Lol, I have several books on the causes of the demise of the British motorcycle industry, no doubt you could write many similar (if someone hasn't already) books about Rover!

I don't think I actually said the EC killed Rover in my original post (which was peripheral to the topic of this thread). What I did suggest (as was mentioned to me by my Rover fleet contacts at the time) was that Rover were wrong footed by the decision to go all out for catalytic converters and a lot of investment was wasted. Some commentators have however indeed suggested that this marked the beginning of the final end for Rover, as I mentioned.

With regard to the various models, I would fully agree that too many were left to "soldier on" rather than being updated. I did however do a lot of miles in a Fiesta and Metro in the early 80's and felt that the latter was quite competitive at the time. In the 90's I had both a Cavalier and Rover 600 as company cars and was quite satisfied with both, except in one respect.

Rover had decided to price the 600 against the likes of the contemporary BMW 3 Series and Audi A4, which did not go down at all well with company car users who were paying BMW/Audi levels of BIK (based on the inflated list price) without getting one! Similarly, they priced the 400 (later 45) against the Mondeo and the 200 (later 25) against the Escort, which certainly put a lot of people off.

Again, the 800 was pretty competitive when it first appeared, but lingered on far too long. I recall being "black flagged" at a fleet event at Silverstone in the 80's for going too fast in a Honda engined 827 Vitesse which was quite a nice car at the time.

The 75 does still seem to be held in quite high regard, particularly the (BMW engined) diesel version. The only Ford engined version of the 75 I know of was the n/a 4.6 V8 in the Rover 75 V8 and related MG ZT 260. I can't see a supercharged version of such a limited appeal car would have helped things much, tbh.

It's all a long time ago now, but personally I always felt the tie up with Honda was a better "fit". However, iirc, Honda didn't want to expand their stake further than just below 50%, whereas BMW came in and offered to buy the majority stake from BAe.

The Supercharged v8 Ford prototype was good for an honest 200 MPH and CHEAP. It could have rusted like an Alfasud or only been available in mud brown but the company car park cachet of a 200 MPH car would have done for Rover what Garrett did for SAAB.. I never drove the 827 but the 820 was horrible. The company provided me with an 820 SLi fully funded. I paid my own bills and drove my 900 Turbo  instead.

7 minutes ago, anon said:

The Supercharged v8 Ford prototype was good for an honest 200 MPH and CHEAP. It could have rusted like an Alfasud or only been available in mud brown but the company car park cachet of a 200 MPH car would have done for Rover what Garrett did for SAAB..

Ah, you mean this beast presumably:

https://www.pistonheads.com/news/ph-britishcars/mg-zt-t-v8-catch-it-while-you-can/2952

 

 

There was a saloon built, good for 200 according to the press at the time. That would have sold like chips on a Friday night. I drove a prototype KV 6 one night and liked it but they weren't reliable.

Back on topic, 65 mpg on E10 from my Ecoboost over 210 miles this morning. Very happy with that 

54 minutes ago, anon said:

There was a saloon built, good for 200 according to the press at the time.

The coupe concept (not necessarily a blower V8) was also a good looking thing imo. (In a nod to keeping on topic, wonder if it would have run on E10?😃)

 

https://www.aronline.co.uk/concepts-and-prototypes/concepts-rover-75-coupe/