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normal chinese petrol is 93, and most chinese market cars are specced to run on this.

97 is reasonably easy to get hold of in big cities, but you can't always get it on motorway service stations. It's about 10% more expensive.

98 is rare, but there are certainly places to get it in shanghai, but unfortunately not close to the race track. It's another 10% on top.

generally the spec of chinese fuel isn't well regulated which causes problems. they use a lot of MMT as an octane increasing additive, which contains manganese and blocks Catalytic converters, increases wear of valvegear and pistons, and forms electrically conductive deposits on the spark plugs. I think it may also do something to your brain, which is why it is banned in many countries.

i keep reading that shell and bp are going to build filling stations, but they keep not appearing. I have seen a few SK ones (Korean). the biggest problem with Chinese filling stations is that they don't sell pies.

chinadragon racing now have a shop at the track, and he sells octane booster additive. I usually use 97 Ron and that's what I set the car up on, mainly because the 98 shop is not on my normal commute.

The problem I guess you have with the saab, which I had when I was using efi, is that if you optimise the timing for high grade fuel, which gives a small but useful increase in power, when you switch back to low grade you get close to knocking sometimes, and the ecu/ knock sensor sees this and makes a huge retardation of ignition to protect the engine, and this robs a lot of power. with a clever ecu it will remember the problem, and even after you go back to good fuel it might take a couple of days to gradually return to the optimum timing.
 
fightingtorque said:
fm.i , I wrote that in my Ferrari phase, don't worry about it. Much respect to your 540, I have an E34 530i touring with the V8 motor.

In England, I would also never consider buying a new car with my own money. However, Egypt may be a bit like China: in China, because the car sales have been growing every year, there aren't that many older cars around compared to the potential demand. Certainly in China I wouldn't buy a secondhand car, because people's expectations of value are just way too high - I'm going back a couple of years now but I've met people who bought secondhand cars with 300k km on the clock for around 40% of the new car price - in England that mileage would put the value at 10% of new or less.
Ahh, I see your point.

And on a different note... you have an E34 530i Touring?? How does that 3.0 V8 sound? How is it on realiability? For some strange reason I've always liked the small V8 (I wish they imported the e39 535i here).
 
it's a nice little V8 - sound is spot on, except of course that with an auto box hanging off the back of it you are quite limited in what noises you can make - no blips and barks I'm afraid.

Reliability has been fine so far, I picked it up about 3 years ago with about 140k miles on the clock, and because I only use it a few weeks of the year when back home I think it's only up to about 155 now. Occasionally have to feed it a little engine oil, but not much and it doesn't smoke.

Fuel consumption is about 22mpg, for some reason my wife gets more like 25, I guess it's because she is lighter than I am. Presumably the 535 and 540 use more fuel in return for an increase in performance that you probably don't need if it's your sensible car and you aren't trying to prove anything.

Note that it's always difficult to justify not having the most powerful version!
 
I am from algeria, and i have a chinese car , the reason for which i bought it is that is the best ratio quality/ price i have found, the are indian cars who have a low price but the chinese cars are betters, than if you are a rich man don’t buy chinese car, i suggest you BMW, MERCEDES, AUDI, or PORSCHE. It’s that that I would have made if i was rich.
 
benouna said:
I am from algeria, and i have a chinese car , the reason for which i bought it is that is the best ratio quality/ price i have found, the are indian cars who have a low price but the chinese cars are betters, than if you are a rich man don’t buy chinese car, i suggest you BMW, MERCEDES, AUDI, or PORSCHE. It’s that that I would have made if i was rich.

hi benouna, what chinese car do you have in algeria? and which ones are available??
 
fightingtorque said:
it's a nice little V8 - sound is spot on, except of course that with an auto box hanging off the back of it you are quite limited in what noises you can make - no blips and barks I'm afraid.

Reliability has been fine so far, I picked it up about 3 years ago with about 140k miles on the clock, and because I only use it a few weeks of the year when back home I think it's only up to about 155 now. Occasionally have to feed it a little engine oil, but not much and it doesn't smoke.

Fuel consumption is about 22mpg, for some reason my wife gets more like 25, I guess it's because she is lighter than I am. Presumably the 535 and 540 use more fuel in return for an increase in performance that you probably don't need if it's your sensible car and you aren't trying to prove anything.

Note that it's always difficult to justify not having the most powerful version!
Well, I can justify it for you, my 540i gets an amazing 12 miles to the gallon, city, although I do get about 22 mpg highway. :D

155K and not major problems is pretty good too, I guess I hang around bimmerforums.com too much, everyone goes there to complain about their problems and sometimes I forget that BMW's are actually pretty reliable.

On a different note, you should do a manual conversion, that would be cool. :thumb:
 
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