metropower.info

As you may or may not know, in 2021 a higher blend of bio ethanol fuel enters our garage forecourts. The fuel currently available contains a maximum of 5% bio ethanol. The proposal is to raise this to 10%. This will enable government to meet some of its pollution targets.
The worry to drivers of older cars is the possible damage that can be caused to their engines by the higher percentage of bio ethanol. It is expected that these measures will effect around 700,000 cars. The types of damage suggested are gasket degradation, injectors, rubber pipes and the cleaning effect the ethanol has. The cars effected are nearl all pre 2000.
Government Consultation on this has now closed.
It is proposed that any point of sale, selling more than a million litres a year will continue to sell lower ethanol fuel for a period of 5 years, after which, the situation will be reviewed. This fuel will only be available in the higher octane grade. The cost of the higher octane fuel is around 10p a litre. So, if like me you do around 6000 miles a year and use 900 ltrs of fuel this equates to an increase to us of £90/year.
My questions are these,

Why has the government not suggested scrapping the round fund license for all cars built before 2000 ?

If the above is not possible why, why has the government not provided a subsidy for all cars built before 2000 to facilitate the purchase of fuel at the same cost as others ?

If neither of the above are not possible, why have they not offered a grant to modify our engines to use the higher ethanol fuel ?

Do any of you clever people out there now how modification to our engines is possible ?

Do any of our european friends have any experience of this situation, given the fuel is already available there ?

I understand how difficult it is to work out but as a rough, a new car uses more energy in it's design and manufacturing than it it uses in petrol in it's first 7 years. So even given the higher polluting nature of older cars, those of us that keep them going save the planet a vast amount of carbon and we should be recognised for the fact. Others buying a new car every couple of years have scant understanding of the issues.

hello.
yes the 10% ethanol is a bit of an annoyance, but a smaller problem that you are led to believe in my opinion.
I have been running a 998 metro as a daily for a long time. this car has been running on 5% ethanol for very long and has also been running some months on 10% with out problems.
the car is running a standard mechanical pump, hif carb, standerd plugs and lucas electronic dizzy and was set up on a rolling road.
the only problem was hoses splitting and crap from the tank clogging up the fuel filter I added right before the carb.

So that is hopefully good news for those running carbs. It still leaves the question as to contaminants in fuel injected models which a lot of the advice I've read refers to. Post 2005 injectors appear to be more tolerant for some reason.

yes the added ethanol content seems to bring out more crap in the fuel, didn't use to run a fuel filter right be fore the carb but now the gets totally brown with crap and needs to be changed once a year or more.

in my mind, if you solve the rubber related problems and that sort of stuff, I don't see any problems why you would not be able to run e10 or even e85 on an a-series with a carb and standard ignition if the carb and ignition is modified and adjusted to suit.

one problem I see with the older fuel injected cars is that they are not able to be adjusted, they left the factory adjusted to try and reach 14.7:1 air fuel ratio as that was the fuel in the 90'ies, but now with e10 you have a stoichiometric air fuel ratio of 14.1:1, so they will be running a bit too lean, which might cause problems.