Beware of the new E15 gasoline

[Chris Haynes]

A GASOLINE DANGEROUS TO YOUR CAR & MOTORCYCLE

New gas coming to your gas station; PAY ATTENTION! (You can skip over the ad > )

Also for your information. Harley-Davidson Motorcycles says that this fuel burns so much hotter then regular or high test gasoline that the air cooled engines may seriously overheat and destroy the engine.
If you like your car, please watch this short video. It's the real deal! �I'm not sure how the EPA could okay something like this.....
New gas coming to your gas station, so pay attention. Watch video about E15 gas if you have a car older than 2012
OR WATCH ON YOUTUBE (recommended)

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ceW9Nc1...yer_detailpage

[sirhrmechanic]

The EPA can OK it because the polar-bear-hugging fruitbats want anything off the road that isn't a Prius or a humanely-raised, organic pony.

If you want some good insight into Ethanol and vintage vehicles, I am glad to write a tome. Just don't expect any PC.

Cheers and thanks for posting, Chris. you are more right than you know.

Sirhr

[BoschZEV]

There are important issues affecting old motorcycles with ethanol fuel (including E10, not just E15), but you don't get a discussion of any of them on political diatribes like that one on youtube. The reporter actually claims at one point that she covers this topic in her reporting but she says it's all so confusing that she doesn't know what the difference is between E85 and E10. To expect any sort of relevant, let alone accurate, technical information from a reporter who claims she doesn't know E85 simply means 85% ethanol, and E10 10% ethanol, is to expect too much. Just the fact she makes this unbelievable claim should tell you this "news" story was concocted to bash the EPA, not to convey useful information.

Also, simply substitute "diesel" every place in the story where they say "E15" and see if the hysterical tone they used is reasonable. Would you expect a car company to cover damage to your new car if you put diesel in the gasoline tank? No, of course not. Does the fact diesel is available at your local station mean the EPA is "trying to ram it down your throat," as the woman interviewed for the story claims about E15? No, of course not. E15 is a new fuel, intended for the latest cars, so the fact AAA decided to issue a warning to their members not to put it in older vehicles says no more about the EPA than if they had issued a reminder not to put diesel fuel in a car intended to burn gasoline.

Ethanol fuels definitely merit discussion. But nothing will be learned from stories like that on Fox.

For what it's worth, the in-tank fuel line in two of my modern bikes turned to jelly ~5 years ago even though the line was rated for E10. As a result of that, for the past five years I've been conducting controlled experiments on the effect of straight gasoline, E10, and E100 (i.e. pure ethanol) on a variety of materials used in old motorcycles (e.g. rubber, brass, zinc-based metal, etc.). I've also read a lot of scientific papers on the topic, and have a pretty comprehensive understanding of what is know and what is unknown. As I said, there are important issues that affect us, but nothing useful is learned from a diatribe.

[pisten-bully]

Not so fast. E15 might not become a reality, depends on which interest group has the strongest lobby:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...99A09420131011

[rickgeo]

FYI.
The AMA government affairs dept has been mounting (?) a concerted effort towards banning E15 fuel for the last few yrs.
Don't know how succesful they've been,but I'm always getting i-alert petitions to forward to the feds

Rick Stambaugh #2472

[silentgreyfello]

Here is a little experiment that I did on my own in my pickup. One day per week, I run to a jobsite in the eastern part of the state. I drive the interstate and set the cruise control at the same speed. It takes one tank of fuel for the out/back. I wanted to know how much fuel I would use with E10 versus pure gas. Also, weather was very similar. What I found was interesting (at least to me).

Fuel with no ethanol: 410 miles driven, 21.4 gallons used, 19.2 mpg, $3.46 per gallon, $74.00 spent
Fuel with E10: 413 miles driven, 23.5 gallons used, 17.6 mpg, $3.30 per gallon, $77.55 spent

So, who loses here if you use ethonal? everybody that uses it. Have you seen what happens to the inside of a carb on your motorcycle? Holy crud!

Who wins? The farmers getting the subsidies and the government that is taxing EVERY GALLON purchased. Not much fossel fuel has been saved for the tree huggers. If you take 90% of the 23.5 gallons of E10, 21.15 gallons of that is pure fuel. And how much fuel was burned combining the corn? How much subsidy was given by the government to the farmer from our taxes? Believe me, I am not against farmers unless they are on the government handout program.

[Chris Haynes]

I filled the tank of a 1991 FXDB with E-10 and parked it in te garage. A few weeks later I went into the garage to find 3 1/2 gallons of gas on the floor. The E-10 had destroyed the fuel valve and ate through the fuel line dumping the tank contents on the floor.

[T. Cotten]

We all know mixing ethanol and gasoline is tragically absurd, Folks,..

So I won't preach to the choir.
But I must remind all that ethanol ain't the only pee in the pump.

My region has had E10 for decades, and it became obvious that the additives that govern its digestible nature vary greatly by season, brand, and year:
If things ever get as bad as '06 again, I'm back in the Linkert float business!

....Cotten

[pisten-bully]

The E-10 had destroyed the fuel valve and ate through the fuel line

For fuel lines, if they're certified to SAE J30 R11A or R12 (it will be printed on the fuel line) it will withstand the ethanol blends.

[BoschZEV]

For fuel lines, if they're certified to SAE J30 R11A or R12 (it will be printed on the fuel line) it will withstand the ethanol blends.

Unfortunately, that's not necessarily true. The OEM fuel lines in my two modern bikes that were attacked by the E10 had markings still visible on them that certified they were made for ethanol fuel. The outside (and I assume inside) of the lines, which were made for this application, turned to something that felt like silicone sealant freshly squeezed from the tube. However, these two "modern" bikes were made in 1999 and 2001, which was early in the adoption of ethanol fuels. I would be surprised if lines certified to those SAE standards being sold today weren't fully up to the task.

But, for the purposes of our old bikes I would propose there be two completely independent threads dealing with ethanol fuels. One where people could rant and rave all they want about these fuels. And a second one limited to actual useful information (like these SAE standards) for dealing with these fuels in our old bikes.

[T. Cotten]

BoschZEV!

I don't doubt that the hoses were rated to be resistant to E15 alone.
But what other digestives were there present to catalyze the damage?

There are at least 150 allowable additives in the USA, and some of them are mandated.
Some are seasonal.
Some are proprietary.

Some, or perhaps a combination of some, does the most damage, and it can be selective.
Since it changes every year, we may never have a handle on it.
Yet the fact of life is that if you are going to ride your machine any distance, you are at the mercy of pump gas, whatever it is at that time and place.

So the best approach for our vintage machines is to avoid using anything that the P4gas might eat. Avoid tank sealers if you can, avoid gascap seals that swell, manifold O-rings that swell, etc.

Political threads are futile and frustrating, but I'll be there anyway.

....Cotten

[BoschZEV]

Some, or perhaps a combination of some, does the most damage, and it can be selective.
Since it changes every year, we may never have a handle on it.... Political threads are futile and frustrating, but I'll be there anyway.

It's not nearly as bad as you seem to think. I have a comprehensive set of SAE and ASTM books and documents on fuels and lubricants in my office (and more at home). I'm not going to take the time to look up specific information now, but the U.S. is divided into quite a few regions for the distribution of gasoline, and those regions also are divided into time periods. For example, you want a higher percentage of volatile components in gasoline that is distributed in N. Dakota in January than in July, but lower in both case than that distributed in Arizona in July. Anyone competing in previous (or future) Cannonballs would have had dozens of different blends through their bike even if they only stopped at, say, Exxon stations every time. My point is, throwing up your hands and saying it is too complicated is not the thing to do.

As for political threads, it is my experience that most people who have the training and expertise to understand technical issues, such as the effect of different fuels and lubricants on old engines, are unlikely to want to spend their time in threads littered with futile ranting and raving. Most such people are interested in contibuting useful advice that actually can be implemented.

For some reason I'm reminded of my, ahem, experience in traffic school. One person persisted in asking about several regulations (no doubt ones that he had violated) more than once each time throughout the day, each time insisting that the instructor "needs to change the law." Unfortunately, the instructor wasn't very experienced at dealing with disruptive morons, so the guy ranted and raved about how these particular regulations made no sense, we shouldn't have them, the instructor needed to change them, etc. If I could have left that discussion and gone home, believe me I would have.

Fine, but since the traffic school instructor can't change the law, the point is to focus on how to deal with the situation that we were handed. Which, in that case, was to sit quietly for 24 hours (well, it felt like 24 hours...) and go home to have a drink of single malt E50. In the case of E15 fuel, it's important to focus on how to make our old bikes work with E15 (or E20, or whatever is available in the future) so we can keep riding them.

[exeric]

Very funny, and insightful post. The older I get the less resistance I have to hearing b.s. from an alumni like your traffic school guy.

[BoschZEV]

The older I get the less resistance I have to hearing b.s. from an alumni like your traffic school guy.

Before being dismissed for a one-hour lunch break the instructor could not have been more clear that we had to be back by 1:00. If anyone came back even 1 minute late they would not be admitted and they would have to repeat the entire day. Two girls sauntered through the door around 1:30 and were dumbfounded to be told they couldn't rejoin the class. By the end of that day I was convinced that if someone had come in and killed all of us in that room, the average IQ of the world would have increased.

[sirhrmechanic]

Just to add a bit of info which is useful to us old bike/car/engine type people....

The biggest issue we see is not eaten fuel lines and valves, etc. I know that happens. But many of our vehicles are from a time when solid brass and steel parts were used for fuel systems, so ethanol has little effect.

Here is where it does affect vintage vehicles, badly. And this is the fact that the ethanol dissolves old varnish very effectively... so all that old crap that has been in your tank for years, living happily with non-ethanol gas ends up going into solution and then getting into the valves, cylinders, etc. where it turns into what we call the 'candy apple coating.' It gums everything up. 100 percent of the cars coming into the shop these days must have the tanks removed and they must be professionally cleaned and sealed. Here is a picture of a carb after ethanol fuel. That black tar substance is varnish that was re-deposited from the tank into the carb.



The second thing that we have noted (and we are still experimenting on this) is that we have had bad float needle sticking problems on carbs lately. Once they are 'wet' and tickled, the problem goes away. But for cars with pressurized fuel tanks (or gravity feed) it's a problem as a sticking float needle can dump a lot of fuel out of the carb. So we did some evaporation tests. With ethanol fuel, the evaporation test left sticky residue on the container walls. Really sticky. We ran the same test in a carb and the float needle was stuck solid enough that without tickling, the needle would not simply lift. It was glued in place. Not really hard, but enough that the float could not lift it. We are still experimenting with this to find out what/how much this is an issue. And this may NOT be the ethanol, but may be residue from the additive packages. I can't blame ethanol on this... yet. But I don't know for sure.

Remember that modern fuel is blended and refined to go from refinery to 'out the tailpipe' of Mrs. Blivetsphincter's minivan in about 20 days. It has none of the ability to 'hang around' that we remember from the good old days. You leave gas in a tank now for 60 - 90 days without Stabil or similar and it will go skunky and rancid. Used to be you could leave it a year or more and have no issues. No longer. Use Stabil or similar additive.

I won't go into the energy budget required to make ethanol... it's a giant waste of effort. But the corn lobby is a strong one and Iowa is an important state for Presidents-to-be. So guess we'll have to burn corn for the forseeable future. But CLEAN YOUR TANKS out! Get rid of the varnish. Line/seal the tanks. There are threads on that elsewhere on the forum. Ethanol may not wreck engines at E10 levels (can't speak for E15 and E20 levels as I have no direct experience with them yet.). But it sure as heck pulls out varnish and other crap that can help wreck engines.

Cheers,

Sirhr