Speaking of knock sensor ignition, where the ecu ad knock sensor are
'smart' about ignition timing.....
..just one reason of many to have subaru power in a vanagon.
- just in case anyone didn't realize this is  a standard feature of '90 and
up subaru engines that fit nicely into vanagons.
Scott
www.turbovans.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Matt Roberds
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 3:42 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: 1990 2.1L Digijet European Caravelle wiring diagrams

> From:    Kim Springer <kimspringer@RCN.COM>
> Date:    Mon, 3 Sep 2007 11:51:17 -0700
>
> I belive that the Europen octane ratings are different that those used
> in the US, (meaning the numbers don't compare exactly), but I'd have to
> research this again to see if it is still true.

I'm pretty sure this is true.  Digging up a couple of my old Usenet
posts...

Octane ratings are determined in the lab on a test engine, and there are
two slightly different test setups.  This produces "Research" and "Motor"
octane numbers, with the Research number being larger.  The octane rating
of gasoline in the US is the average of these two numbers.  I know in
Germany they like to quote just the Research number, and I suspect the
UK is similar.  IIRC, 87 octane (R+M)/2 is something like 91 Research
and 83 Motor.  If I'm making the right assumption about UK octane ratings,
your standard 95 octane corresponds to our premium 91 octane.

When researching this once, I found a report
( http://www.api.org/pasp/rs083.pdf ) with the statement that "Octane
numbers at the end of 1968 averaged 90.4 for leaded regular and 96.2 for
leaded premium."  These are probably (R+M)/2, and going by the average
R-M spread of 10 on modern gasolines, probably correspond to around 95.4
Research and 101.2 Research.

Flipping through the back of the Bosch Automotive Handbook, 5th edition,
it seems like in 1996, most "ordinary" cars used something like 9.5:1-
10.5:1 on 95 Research gasoline.  Of course, the gas itself is fairly
different, and many of them have knock sensors to back off the timing
when the engine starts to pin(k|g).

For far more than you ever wanted to know about it, see
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part3/ .

Matt Roberds