GPZList Digest, Vol 84, Issue 6

Sun Nov 10 22:48:43 PST 2013

Pete,

IIRC the lowest octane I've ever used was 91. The lowest octane we have 
here in DK (Regular) is 92. Premium is 95 and if you want any higher you 
have to use Shell V-Power, which is 99 (I think). In Germany it's 91, 95 
and 98-99. With minor variations it's like that all over Europe. I 
cannot recall ever having seen octane numbers in the eighties, not even 
in eastern Europe although I know they used to have some very low (78 or 
so) octane. Long time ago the Danish Automobile Association adviced that 
if you were outside DK and the octane number was not shown on the pump, 
you should use premium rather than regular just to be sure. I've always 
followed that advice, so Kawasine has never eaten anything below 91 octane.

Romania was by far the most memorable trip I've made for several years. 
It was a group tour, 16 motorcycles and 25 persons led by a Dane with 
some 40 years of experience in Romania along with his Romanian 
assistant. It was unusual in the way that we were accommodated in 
private homes in a village (Geoagiu de Sus in Transsylvania in the NW 
part of the country). This was our base from which we made day trips. 
All our lunch meals on our tours were also arranged in private homes. 
This gave us a unique insight into the daily living among ordinary 
people. The family I stayed with had done this type of guest-housing for 
several years and had earned enough money to modernize their home with a 
modern bathroom. Some in our group had done this trip earlier (before 
2010) and had stayed in this particular house; by then the 'bathroom' 
was a barrel of rainwater behind the woodshed and the toilet an outdoor 
closet... This is still a widespread 'standard' in the countryside. The 
village had just recently had its main street paved and water from a 
waterworks installed along with a community drain. The problem was that 
the waterworks was not dimensioned for supplying the entire village with 
water, so officially water was available 3 hours in the morning and 3 
hours in the evening. However, after 20 minutes lack of pressure made it 
impossible to shower... Despite this, this particular village was doing 
quite well. There were places much worse than this that we didn't see 
for the very reason that we wouldn't be able to go there without 
offroaders... That being said the country has made considerable progress 
since the fall of the iron curtain and the execution of their president. 
If you drive through on the main roads, towns and villages do not on 
first sight differ significantly from that of southern Europe. The roads 
are not too bad, the houses look quite nice, shopping is available in 
full scale and appears to be doing well, the vehicle fleet is no 
different from ours, major cities are just like our major cities, people 
are dressed nicely etc. etc. But if you go into the countryside you'll 
still find horse-drawn carriages all over, villages that still do not 
have waterworks nor drains, unpaved streets, high unemployment rates, 
basically self-supplying households etc. etc. So generally it's a 
country which at first sight looks better than you might expect, but 
with enormous contrasts between rich/middle class and poor. In this 
country the poor are really, really poor... Enough now, I could keep 
going for hours... :)

Apart from that it was the first time ever that I've done a group like 
this with people I didn't know beforehand. But a very pleasant 
experience. There was one young man in the group (about 30), the rest 
were between 60 and 71 y/o. Although being 62 I actually lowered the 
average age LOL.

Ped
'96 "Black Stealth" GPZ
Denmark

Den 11-11-2013 01:25, schnowz skrev:
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Ped is it a lower octane?
> I got a consistant 50mpg in Colorado where I was using 85 octane.
> Lower Octane has more Btu/ gal.
>   
> How did ya like Romania? Did you do the Tranfagerren? sp?
>   
>   
>   
> From: "gpzlist-request at micapeak.com" <gpzlist-request at micapeak.com>
> To: Pete S <It's a German site but English language can be chosen. I've used it
> since 2008 but I didn't get around yet to punch in the numbers from my
> paper log book back to 1997. It looks like my average so far is a bit
> better than yours, 43.4 MPG since 2008. Peak was this summer in Romania,
> up to 61.7 MPG! I had a similar experience in Poland and the Baltic
> countries some years ago, where both I and my companions got exceptional
> mileage and we felt our engines run more smooth than usual. Maybe
> eastern European gas is of better quality than in the west, maybe it's
> just plain gas and not so much additives ;)
>
> Ped
> '96 "Black Stealth" GPZ
> Denmark
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