Another Minnesotan visitor...

Hello Corvette fanatics,
First, let me compliment you one your well designed website. I find it user friendly and interesting.
Next, I am related to one of your members, but will not let you know who it is. CLUE! This person drove my old Roadrunner in Minnesota recently. Although my car is quite worn, the driver was very good at shifting the cumbersome old muscle car. I'll let you find out who it is.
Last and most important.
I am inquiring about the gasoline (fuel) that you use to run in your vehicles. I am not a chemical engineer. However, we are now using alcohol in all our gasoline in Minnesota. I am a student at the University of Minnesota, and am looking at the driveability issues that occur when our vehicles use blended gasoline/alcohol (ethanol).

What I would like to know are things like:
How does Finland determine Octane ratings.
Do you have different grades of gasoline available for your daily driver cars?
Do your Corvettes use racing fuels available only at race tracks, and if so, who is the supplier of these fuels and what type of fuel are they?
Where does most of the gasoline you use in your regular street driven cars come from? The north sea? The moon? Saudi Arabia?
Is your fuel mixed with alcohol, and has it made any differences in the way your vehicles run?

Please take a moment to think about the gasoline you have used in the past and any engine performance changes you may have experienced over time.

This is not an formal analysis of Finnish gasoline. I am using this information to gather information about the direction that global automotive fuel usage is heading. For example, our Minnesota state government is going to try and increase the amount of alcohol put into gasoline in the near future. This may lead to automotive driveability issues. I would like to find the best induction and engine combinations to burn this type of fuel, but will not waste my time if fuel is going to remain the same, especially globally, for the next couple years.

I do not speak Finn, which is a shame, isn't it. Such a wonderful language that all should speak. Ok...I am joking.

Sincerely,
Paul Futcher
Woodbury, Minnesota
PaulF383@comcast.net

[Finnshark]

Hello Paul!

I have to say that give more clues about the guy who drove your Roadrunner, I'm not sure who he is...

You got me interested about this fuel thing. I think we have only one distiller in Finland. (http://www.neste.fi) But we do buy gasoline also from Russia at least. I have no idea where the oil itself is coming from though. I suppose that some of it is coming from the coast of Norway. Some might come from Arabic countries...

Our octane rating is shown with RON numbers, we have RON 95 and RON 98 octane gasolines in here. MON numbers are 85 and 87. I suppose they are pretty close to what you have in USA? I think you are using MON numbers? We do have also race gas, but that's so expensive that it's not really worthwile to use that in normal cars. It's octane numbers are RON100 / MON90.

As far as I understood there is no alcohol in our gasoline. They are using small amounts ethanol to acchieve that higher octane number (RON9 fuel, but the alcohol content is only about 0,2Vol%.

Nowadays we don't have anymore any lead in our gasolines. Lead is replaced with other stuff. There is a special additive to angines that reguires lead. Infact that additive doesn't have any lead in it, but it does have some other stuff to make the fuel act like it has lead.

I haven't notice any difference in performance since we used the old lead gasoline if compared to our current gasolines. I did had a car that needed that additive stuff at the moment they stopped selling that lead gasoline. That happened about 5 years ago if I'm correct. The unleaded fuel came on market about 15 years ago though. Still much later than what happened in USA...

Some people say that they have noticable increase in performance when using 98 gasoline instead of 95, but I haven't notice anything. I have used both 95 and 98 in our daily driver. In Corvette on the other hand I use only 98oct gas.

Here you can find some more info about our gasolines:
normal RON95: http://www.fortumyritysnetti.fortum..../130177_fi.pdf

normal RON98: http://www.fortumyritysnetti.fortum..../130178_fi.pdf

These two has also english texts!

This last one has only finnish text in it, but you can find translations from the previous sheets...

Racing RON100 gas: http://www.fortumyritysnetti.fortum..../130296_fi.pdf

You are correct, it's a shame that you don't speak finnish... I think that everybody in the world should speak finnish... Just kidding... :google: