Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Air in fuel supply

The ethanol in fuel eats tubing. On my hedge trimmer it literally vanished over winter.
That could well be the issue.

I think you've cracked it Chris.
Even an old 2.3 diesel will manage more than 35mph (a little ).

My old S3 2.3 diesel would do 55 flat out and cruise at 50 - once I had fitted new pistons, rings and big ends. I once saw 58 down hill. Ear defenders might have been a good idea though.

I once drove an SIII diesel belonging to friends of the family. They wanted me to tow our horsebox (but my SIIa was in for remedial work). Have to admit that my petrol was far better, even for towing than their newer motor.
It wasn't that much worse on fuel either...

I think ethanol gets a bit of a bad press. We used to blend methanol into fuel in the 80s and that was really bad , and fuel line elastomers were changed to cope with the solvency power of this alcohol. Ethanol is much less aggressive than methanol, but it seems to get more brickbats thrown at it than methanol ever did.

Most premium fuel has 5% ethanol (10% in France) , but there are many other compounds used in blending fuels which can swell rubber. Obviously the blenders try to avoid the worst of them, but modern elastomers should be able to cope well enough. I suspect one of the problems is that OEMs tend to down spec rubber hoses in order to cut costs, and hence the problem has re-surfaced again.

I could get 29mpg out of mine - if I cruised to work at 44mph - a speed arrived at over a 6 week period when mortgage rates were at their peak of around 16%.

I could also get 18mpg with 2 horses in a large Rice trailer on a deafening trip down the M1 - which has more hills than you realise when you are trying to get 60bhp (optimistic) to tow 3T.

29, blimey!
Don't think I ever got more than low 20s.
At worst, somewhere around the 14 / 15 mark. I was quite hard on it though

Our mortgage payments doubled that year - has a significant moderating effect on the right foot!

was not very happy when I told her I would not tow the horses until I had got past 500 miles on the new engine components. We were off to Essex to see my brother - so we went in the S3 at 30mph to run it in.