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What can happen if you run your Zed on 95 Ron.....


glrnet

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Guys Kingers and I are in Ireland. We only have 95 unleaded here. Its not trying to save pennies, we literally can not buy super unleaded. We have a guy in the Irish 350Z club that has ran his car on Irish fuel for 12 years....

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Are the Irish zeds the exact same spec as their mainland counterparts? Or have they adjusted the timing to account for the lower Ron rating? I'm sure many countries may not have the equivalent of 98Ron unleaded petrol. Maybe that's why the Irish cars have been okay and also the reason his fuel cap says 95Ron.

 

My brother had a golf r32 mkiv. In its manual it said run on 98 Ron and you've got 240Bhs. Run on 95Ron and you've got 20 less. Dunno if that car could adjust automatically for the lack Ron.

 

Just a thought :shrug:

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I think its actually a fair comment from the Irish contingent, he has a sticker saying 95 RON on his car, they do not sell 98+ in Ireland but there is not as far as he knows a graveyard of 350z with detonated engines, I wonder if there is something different about the ECU in Irish origin cars? Otherwise basically any performance car sold in Ireland should be lying dead on the side of the road?

 

I get that in the UK it says use 98+ RON, and that using 95 is not a good idea, but what is going on in Ireland!?

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Are the Irish zeds the exact same spec as their mainland counterparts? Or have they adjusted the timing to account for the lower Ron rating? I'm sure many countries may not have the equivalent of 98Ron unleaded petrol. Maybe that's why the Irish cars have been okay and also the reason his fuel cap says 95Ron.

 

Apart from the speedo and mileage readings in km's I believe they are the same spec, I doubt that they're going to alter the timing just for a couple of hundred cars. As far as 98 RON availability, there are a few countries in Europe where they don't have it. Places like Iceland, Albania, Hungary and Malta, pretty out of the way places really. Ireland would easily have the largest Zed population out of that lot.

 

I do find it rather strange that you can get 98 RON in the Channel Islands, with their very low speed limits and The Isle of Man but not in Ireland a country of 4.5 million people.

 

Pete

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If the Irish Z is different in any way, it would have to be the ECU mapping, however there is no evidence of this,unless an Irish tuner can comment?

The only other option to use lower octane fuel is to lower compression ratio, and I cant see this.

 

And I really cant see them using a different octane scaling , so you have to either draw the conclusion that there is no difference in ECUs and the Z will happily run on 91 and 95 octane

, or they just don't drive fast in Ireland :p

 

As we know from tuners like Mark at Abbey the std ECUs runs no knock control after 5K rpm, so that being the case you would expect to see far more engine failures from detonation damage.

Edited by Tricky-Ricky
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Are the Irish zeds the exact same spec as their mainland counterparts? Or have they adjusted the timing to account for the lower Ron rating? I'm sure many countries may not have the equivalent of 98Ron unleaded petrol. Maybe that's why the Irish cars have been okay and also the reason his fuel cap says 95Ron.

 

Apart from the speedo and mileage readings in km's I believe they are the same spec, I doubt that they're going to alter the timing just for a couple of hundred cars. As far as 98 RON availability, there are a few countries in Europe where they don't have it. Places like Iceland, Albania, Hungary and Malta, pretty out of the way places really. Ireland would easily have the largest Zed population out of that lot.

 

I do find it rather strange that you can get 98 RON in the Channel Islands, with their very low speed limits and The Isle of Man but not in Ireland a country of 4.5 million people.

 

Pete

 

You can get 98 Ron in Hungary, OMV sell it and that was 4 years ago when I took my Zed to Hungary.

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Let's also bear in mind that not all owners are on a forum.

 

Using the wrong octane isn't necessarily instant engine death as we've established previously but use it and you'll run the risk.

 

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

 

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But over time if it were killing engines off then it would eventually find its way as news onto the forum?

 

Maybe the zed engine is a lot more robust than we gave it credit for and relatively few are going pop over in Ireland...

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One thing to keep in mind is that the average Irish 350Z owner is slightly different to the average UK owner. Tax is 1809 Euro here for a year and insurance is much higher. So you don't get as many young guys ragging the @*!# out of them and running them on a shoestring like you do in the UK.

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Are the Irish zeds the exact same spec as their mainland counterparts? Or have they adjusted the timing to account for the lower Ron rating? I'm sure many countries may not have the equivalent of 98Ron unleaded petrol. Maybe that's why the Irish cars have been okay and also the reason his fuel cap says 95Ron.

 

Apart from the speedo and mileage readings in km's I believe they are the same spec, I doubt that they're going to alter the timing just for a couple of hundred cars. As far as 98 RON availability, there are a few countries in Europe where they don't have it. Places like Iceland, Albania, Hungary and Malta, pretty out of the way places really. Ireland would easily have the largest Zed population out of that lot.

 

I do find it rather strange that you can get 98 RON in the Channel Islands, with their very low speed limits and The Isle of Man but not in Ireland a country of 4.5 million people.

 

Pete

 

You can get 98 Ron in Hungary, OMV sell it and that was 4 years ago when I took my Zed to Hungary.

 

Not listed here though.

 

http://autotraveler.ru/en/spravka/fuel-price-in-europe.html#.Vq38xrKLTIU

 

Pete

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I've read many of these type of threads on here but posted here as it's the stickied one.

 

Thanks to the lads who see my point here - I literally just want to point out that Irish 350Z owners have been doing exactly what this thread says will kill your engine for up to 12 years with no known issues. We have no choice of fuel. I severely doubt the Irish ECU's are different.

 

I think this was worth posting as it hasn't been said here before and brings new info to the long standing debate.

 

I also wanted to point out that nowhere does it say Premium 95 RON is not good. Many people have paraphrased the manual and interpreted non-premium 91 RON as being 95 RON. In fact, the manual infers that different driving styles are only needed when not running Premium (i.e. 95 or 98).

 

I see that Abbey Motorsport referred to seeing several engine failures and have pointed the finger at the 95 fuel. Now that may be contributory but you have to look at any other possible issues, such as what other mods or tuning were done to those engines? What oil was it running? Were they getting very hard use? Was there previous poor servicing? The original car in this thread which seems to have caused all the hype was running the wrong grade plugs!!

 

Sorry to labour the point for those who have closed their minds already.

 

What I'd like established is whether or not any damage is being done to standard cars, that have been maintained and used normally and ran 95 over the last 12 years - what would the signs be? Burnt rings?

Edited by Kingers
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I also wanted to point out that nowhere does it say Premium 95 RON is not good. Many people have paraphrased the manual and interpreted non-premium 91 RON as being 95 RON. In fact, the manual infers that different driving styles are only needed when not running Premium (i.e. 95 or 98).

 

 

The manual doesn't leave it open to interpretation on what it regards as 'premium' fuel, I'm not sure why you keep saying 95 is premium.

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Because 95 has been regarded as premium for a long time and the manual only calls 91RON as 'regular', nowhere does it refer to 95 not being Premium.

 

I have read numerous times in posts on here that the manual says you have to drive differently on 95 RON - it simply does not say that, they are confusing it with 91RON.

Edited by Kingers
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95 RON is called Premium Unleaded here, 98+ is called Super Unleaded. Both appear then to be 'premium' in literal terms. I don't have the Zed manual but yes it says run on 98, don't use 91, it should have referenced 95 somewhere but doesn't seem to, so you will have to infer between those two known truths.

 

I wouldn't run my cars on anything other than the highest RON I can get from reputable fuel suppliers, you won't catch me putting 95 in, but he has a point if the only choice is 95 RON in Ireland how comes high performance cars are not littering the roads over there to the point that it would be common knowledge not to buy a performance car that needs super unleaded as it would quickly die due to fueling issues?

Edited by coldel
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Cheers Coldel, agreed - if I had the choice of 98 I would put it in as that is what is recommended.

 

What I want to try and substaniate is if we're in fact doing any damage by running 95.

 

It is worth saying that there has been known engine failures to Jap import cars (Sti Imprezas in particular) when ran on 95 without being remapped for it. Never heard of any other issues for a UK / European car being ran on 95.

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Because 95 has been regarded as premium for a long time and the manual only calls 91RON as 'regular', nowhere does it refer to 95 not being Premium.

 

I have read numerous times in posts on here that the manual says you have to drive differently on 95 RON - it simply does not say that, they are confusing it with 91RON.

Uk standard unleaded fuel is 95 ron - not premium. Google it and you'll see.

 

91 ron does not exist in the UK to my knowledge and the yanks will refer to 95 ron as 91 ron.

 

Dude I'm not trying to rain in your parade but if we can't agree on the above then the discussion is sort of moot to start with.

 

Read the wiki page on knock, detonation and pre ignition. It's a really good write up and explains the difference and why it happens.

 

I tend to agree with a more anecdotal comment from above. ......the Irish get utterly lamped on insurance, tax etc so chances are they're simply more careful drivers and less chance that some of the young twerps we get over here are not trashing the granny out of zeds because they can't afford to run them.

 

Basically if you run the car on the wrong fuel you run the risk of 'abnormal combusion'. This in itself can damage the engine over a period of time.

 

Worse though it can also lead to pre ignition (because it causes hotpots in the combustion chamber, raised temps, sharp edges etc). Combustion before the combusion stroke starts.......I. E piston on the way up.

 

That usually spells engine death.

 

I've changed the engine on one first hand and i'll tell you now it was a car thrapped everywhere by a toe rag and ran on ****. That was one of many weve seen........It was damn near one a week at one point

 

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

 

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I'm actually intrigued; why do those who do, find it so hard to believe the possibility of the ECU holding a different base map?

As I understand it, it's really not that difficult to flash an ECU with a generic map that even dealers could that at the point of sale. It's largely how you get "updates" from dealer (non mechanical) recalls, no?

Edited by ilogikal1
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As far as I understand it the DE engine can only control detonation up to 5k rpm if you run on 95 RON. Therefore at anything above 5k you do run the risk of det damage, how high you have to go and for how long isn't clear though.

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Mmmmm, i am not going to get into the debate but, how many engines have died from it, i should imagine its an absolute tiny fraction, thats not to say dont run it of course, but i am also not sure i go along with the, it will explode into a thousand pieces if you do hysteria.

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I'm actually intrigued; why do those or do, find it so hard to believe the possibility of the ECU holding a different base map?

As I understand it, it's really not that difficult to flash an ECU with a generic map that even dealers could that at the point of sale. It's largely how you get "updates" from dealer (non mechanical) recalls, no?

 

Adding a country specific map is child's play and can be done as part of any dealers car prep when selling a new car. If they are putting a different sticker inside the flap then they are probably flashing the ecu for that countries specifications too.

 

As an example, I don't know about the Z but I remember the Alfa 156 and 147 has a different map for every European country to cover all sorts of little things. One example is the way the car alarm responds to an unlock command which varies hugely - one blip, two blips and a flash, one long flash, two short flashes no blip etc etc all dependant on the country.

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