How much ethanol in gasoline will the discovery 2 handle?? Will the ethanol make the engine run hotter, so much so, that there should be concern??

 

I run Shell V-power in mine. That's 10% ethanol. I havn't noticed any issues from it, but I've also never run more than one tank of 100% gas through it because of the cost difference, and the difficulty of finding 100% in 93 octane, or even 89 octane.

I believe the manual specifies no more than 5%, but good luck finding that. Honestly I've heard of guys running 50%, though I can't imagine that would last long without pretty extensive modification.

 

From 04 D2 OM.
......

 

IMO unless you have a high performance engine I would stick to good quality pump fuels. Any increase in engine performance causes the engine to run hotter and the V8 Rover engine is susceptible enough to failures at present. So, adding additional ethanol to petrol will not give you any noticeable or tangible performance increase and may well screw your engine particularly starting it in cold weather. To use ethanol in any serious amount you will need to 'tune' your engine to accommodate this type of fuel and the more tuned an engine becomes the more unreliable. I have tuned many race engines over many years and some have worked OK but some have 'grenaded' on me far too quickly.

 

10% is pretty standard in the upper Midwest and I have never heard of anyone with any type of car having issues. If I were to store the vehicle for a length of time I would avoid it

 

One thing I did notice was a decrease in gas mileage using an ethanol blend. Now, its fall and I believe the gas stations here in Oregon use 100% gasoline, thus "increasing" my gas mileage.

 

Weird that you say Shell has ethanol, it doesn't here in Canada, because I worked where they make it. There's still a few places up here that don't add ethanol. It's becoming more rare to find though

 

Pretty much all stations add ethanol in the US because there are tax breaks for the businesses if they do because it is supposed to create corn farming jobs in the US. If they don't have ethanol, its specifically advertised as no ethanol and costs quite a bit more (30-50¢/gal).

 

Does that mean they will pay for all of the screwed up engines Alex.

 

Yep, and the whole ethanol program was really a bust truth be told. We were sold a bill of goods and so were manufacturers (remember FlexFuel E85 vehicles?) with this ethanol crap. Almost impossible to find E85 here in PA. Still plenty of oil to be refined, and corn is still best used for food products.