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Old 10-06-2012, 11:28 PM
iajim iajim is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 151
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The topic of ethanol, gasoline, av gas, etc. seems to go on forever. Please be very careful about "removing" the ethanol from gasoline. It only constitutes about 10% but it also acts as an octane booster. You'll need to make up that difference somewhere(Klotz, VP?). I agree with cbutler, I've never had a problem with ethanol. Other people I'm sure have had some problems. Some gas retailers/tank farms were blending Methanol, not Ethanol with the gasoline. It was all advertised and believed to be the same but as you can imagine it only created more problems. Methanol is very corrosive but it is favored as a fuel in race cars( where allowed) because it produces more power. The alcohol doesn't cause the fuel to go "stale", it may absorb some moisture but most of the time it prevents fuel moisture problems from occurring as you might have with winter time icing. The first aspect of fuel degredation is loss of vapor press. Then you have a loss of "light ends", light and medium naptha.These two events overlap somewhat. Plastic fuel jugs, the tank on your bike, they don't work as well as metal cans. By now the ethanol has had time to absorb some moisture from the air because it wasn't sealed in a metal can and the ethanol is doing its job of removing the moisture, not boosting octane or carring oxygen to lower emissions. Now you've lost some octane rating and remember mixing 2 stroke oil with gasoline of any type will drop the octane. At this point the fuel should probably be dumped into your car/truck, anything that isn't too picky about fuel quality. It isn't usually necesary to run race fuel, but octane booster or stabilizer is a good idea. If your bike doesn't use the gas as quickly as planned, use it somewhere else. Jim
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