Common OBD Fusion dashboards

[vavet]

I bought a wifi OBD2 reader along with OBD Fusion to use with my previous car because I was troubleshooting some issues. It's mostly been in my desk drawer, but unused over the last 6 years.

The current spike in gas prices has me considering the benefits of E15. I tried a tank and seemed to get better MPG with no drivability issues. There's a Sheetz near my work where I frequently fill up that sells E15, so it's convenient to fill with E15. I decided there's probably ways to get data out of OBD Fusion to see the differences between E10 and E15. I'm specifically thinking I should be able to monitor short term and long term fuel trims to see if there's a difference.
Am I right? There's a PID for alcohol content of fuel, but that doesn't seem to work on my car. I know not all PIDs will pertain to every car. There's a lot of diesel and EV specific PIDs.

Do you use a OBD2 monitor regularly in your car, even if you're not troubleshooting an issue? How is your dashboard set up?

 

[2ndGearRubber]

Fuel trim will change. Whether it is easily detectable by you when there are many other variables that effect fuel trim is another story.

Alcohol % may or may not be an enabled PID, depending on whether or not your car is flex fuel, and actually has a flex fuel sensor to infer ethonal content.

E15 will have less energy content than e10, all else equal. Whether or not ypu realize any monetary advantages has to do with the price of e15 vs the loss of thermal energy, and thus economy, of the e15. For instance, you may lose 2mpg from e15. But if e15 is a dollar cheaper, that may be worth while. If it is 5 cents cheaper, not so much. Random numbers for the sake of example.

 

[2ndGearRubber]

Something else you could potentially watch is fuel injector on time in milliseconds. That is all that fuel trim is adjusting. Issue being is there are a bunch of things that effect on time, via fuel trim. Ambient temperature, oxygen content of the air, elevation/baro, etc.

The BEST test is just average mpg over a few tanks and compare that to the cost per mile. Without some sort of software to digest the data I don't believe a human can accurately compensate for the variables and injest enough data to find statistically relevant information just based on watching live data.