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I filled up with E95 fuel the other day cos it was about 5c cheaper per ltr. I thought "meh, ethanol cant be that bad"
We (Girlfriend & I) drove to Dorigo and then to Ebor (which is about half way between Armidale and the coast. 1580m altitude)

Anyway,.. everytime i stopped the car, i would have trouble starting it. As in it would crank for nearly 10 seconds before it would fire, and when it did fire, it would only just idle, like less than 500rpm, i had to keep my foot on the accelerator to keep it running till i got moving.

At first i thought it mighta been the altitude, but everytime it wouldnt start, all i could smell was metho. Mighta been evaporating in the carby.

I put another half a tank of normal fuel and the problem has gone.


I will put pics of the mountains in the pics/vids section

Sorry for the longwinded post

Same problem happened to me when I was young and owned a sigma. sigma was in perfect nick and as soon as I filled up on that junk it ran like every other sigma.

Maybe you need to re-tune the carb and/or timing to get it to run at optimum performance?

I've never known anything to change fuels and run 100% without some tuning for the new fuel...

Just a thought

Would efi make it run better? I quite often use E95 in my Ej20t and it never seems to mind. Highest altitude I've ran it at was 1300m at 25deg.

Running ethenol in a fuel injected car is OK, as the computer will adjust for it. In a carby car set for petrol, the ethenol will make it run lean and hot.

- Is it Carb or MPFI?

- What’s “normal” fuel for you?

- Look at you tune? What is it set for?

- Did you know the fuel supplier? Possible ‘bad’ batch of fuel (a few of WA boyz avoid particular servo’s for this reason).

- Possible blockage coincidence?

Might be worth testing again… chuck in a small amount of 95% fuel from another servo when you tank gets low and see what happens.

She has a Carby
That is the second time that i have got e95 fuel from that supplier, the first time i thought that the car seemed a little sluggish
I normally get just normal unleaded. Its a shell servo.