"E10 ate my hamster" - Ethanol in the real world

[droog]

Thanks for the suggestion regarding super unleaded.

[ThatDippyTwat]

[Islander]

If push comes to shove, you can remove the ethanol by adding water to the fuel and agitating. Let it stand for 12 hours and pour off the water and ethanol mix. Food colour can be added to the water to make the distinction more obvious if required.

Ethanol is hydrophillic, petrol isn't.

[Easy-X]

[Islander]

[droog]

[xX-Alex-Xx]

Or take your O2 sensors out and run Avgas. Just don't get caught.
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DILLIGAF

[Polarbear]

[Islander]

[JackButler]

Almost every biker I know is into the older 70's/80's/90's bikes & some have more than several.

Concensus seems to be that the official E10 checklist is a tad misleading in assuring you your bike is OK. Yes it may run but it gives no indication of the level of damage being caused in the short or long term.

I'm hearing a lot of grumbling that anything with copper/brass floats is fucked, ethanol is eating the solder.

I have it from a 90's era factory race engine builder that the big 4 were told sometime in 2000 to expect ethanol in fuel within 10yrs time !!!
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I clean my guns with the tears of the snivelling, left wing scum.

[droog]

[JackButler]

[jaffa90]

THE FUTURE IS ELECTRIC AND THAT`S WHAT THE GOVERNMENT WANT.
£100.80p road tax for bigger engine bikes.

[stinkwheel]

Just remember if you de-ethanol E10, the remaining 90% of the fuel will have a lower octane rating.

If it started as 97 and was actual 10% ethanol, removing the ethanol will leave you with 95 octane fuel. If it started as 95 octane, you'll finish at 93. This could be an issue in a highly tuned engine.
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Bhud]

Swapping your fuel tap over to a manual fuel tap may solve a myriad evils. It's what I always do with every one of my bikes, anyway. Ever since my 600 Diversion started sucking petrol through the vacuum hose, and then the fuel tap repair kit I bought didn't work (I probably didn't install it gingerly enough, but whatever).

A manual fuel tap is a good thing. I know most of you guys are highly experienced so don't treat this as lecturing you but rather a description of what I do, related in the second person for convenience:
When you bring your bike back home, switch the tap to "off" when you're half a mile or so away from home. When you get home, let the bike run for a couple of minutes with the manual fuel tap switched to "off". Put the bike in its resting place in the garage. Now your carb/FI fuel system is protected from ethanol damage.
[The next bit is something I haven't done yet]
Open your tank cap and add half a cup of water that's had a few drops of food colouring (not green/yellow) added. When you return to the bike the next day, don't wheel it out of the garage or move it from its resting place. Simply disconnect the main fuel hose, and place an empty water bottle below your fuel tap. Switch the fuel tap to "on", and let the coloured water run out. Throw this away or store it to later put in the back of a 1932 Ford hotrod to ship around the county - it's up to you. When the fluid you're allowing to escape isn't coloured, collect it in a cup. If it's cloudy, you sit and wait a few hours. If it isn't, your fuel is now ethanol-free. Switch off the fuel tap, put a quarter bottle of octane-booster in your tank, and reattach your fuel line. All ethanol-related problems, solved.

[xX-Alex-Xx]

[Bhud]

[Islander]

[Islander]

[weasley]

I also wonder whether doing a solvent extraction like that might remove some of the other additives in the fuel.
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Yamaha XJ600 | Yamaha YZF600R Thundercat | KTM 990 SMT | BMW F900XR TE

[Islander]

[Easy-X]

Trying to get empirical data about ethanol blended fuel is actually pretty tricky. This is where the Internet (Google Search) fails as the hysteria articles drown out everything else Let's have a look at three main "problems" everyone's panicking about...

Metal Corrosion

Ethanol doesn't do anything to metal! Yay, let's pack up and go home However Ethanol contaminated with water is something else entirely:

Study of Corrosion of Metallic Materials in Ethanol–Gasoline Blends: Application of Electrochemical Methods

The names of scientific papers always seem to be the exact opposite of poetry Anyhoo, they're basically testing the material loss of steel, aluminium, brass and copper with E40/60/E85/E100 with or without water contamination (and various other things like resistivity which we're not interested in.)

For our purposes the results seem to be that "fresh fuel" (uncontaminated with water) is nothing to worry about, certainly of E5/10/15 that we're likely to see in Europe, bearing in mind that even Ethanol-free petrol could be corrosive if it has high sulphur contamination. E60 to E85 with water seems to be particularly harsh for all the metals tested but strangely E100 (pure Ethanol) is perfect fine with steel and brass.


Plastics and Rubbers

There's a reason why you find Diamond White in plastic bottles and everybody else uses glass or metal I'm sure I've gone over this before but just for completeness:

Obviously there's the whole Ducati fuel tank fiasco but outside that I think we can all guess that using an organic solvent (Ethanol) on a long-chain organic polymer (plastic) is going to do something But from what I've read Polyethylene & Polypropylene stuff should be just fine and everything else (including old-skool rubber) will stiffen and lose integrity given enough time.

Unlike the previous test on metals the presence of water is neither here nor there and the degradation of non-Ethanol safe plastics will be an ongoing problem whether you use your bike or not


Performance

Ethanol is a perfectly good fuel that's slightly less energy dense than petrol but has the benefit of burning a bit cooler. Performance is not even worth worrying about for E5/E10. Maybe one could argue E15 warrants a tweak to an EFI fuel map for maximum performance but that's about it.


Conclusions

I would conclude that any bike would benefit from draining the fuel system over winter... if you're one of these namby-pamby fair weather bikers Ironically a classic bike might employ more steel and brass than the current vogue for aluminium and therefore survive better! However a classic bike would also likely employ plastics unaware of Ethanol fuel.

tl;dr modern bike used regularly will be fine, classic bike use sparingly, any bike laid up for several months or more drain the fuel system.
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Husqvarna Vitpilen 401, Yamaha XSR700, Honda Rebel, Yamaha DT175, Suzuki SV650 (loan) Fazer 600, Keeway Superlight 125, 50cc turd scooter

[Tdibs]

[Easy-X]

While I'd be upset like anyone else if my plastic tank started swelling up it seems a bit unreasonable to expect an engine to run flawlessly (assuming the proscribed maintenance is done) from now till the end of time. "But this Ethanol is wearing out my bits!" True but the swing arm will probably rust and collapse before that's an issue
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Husqvarna Vitpilen 401, Yamaha XSR700, Honda Rebel, Yamaha DT175, Suzuki SV650 (loan) Fazer 600, Keeway Superlight 125, 50cc turd scooter