Featured Ethanol Free 90 octane fuel

Drain the tank is my motto for all my small engines. Since my use of the snow blower is very intermittent, I do add a stabilizer and I use ethanol free gas.

If I’m in the area and when I need gas in my Prius Prime (which so far has been only 8 times), sometimes I’ll stop and get ethanol free 87 octane which is only at certain gas stations. It’s 13 cents per gallon more but with my rewards card I get 10 cents off per gallon and it ends up being cheaper than local 10% ethanol gas at stations closer to home.


Unsupervised!

 

Drain the tank AND run it dry if you can.
If not, then stabilizer and a full tank.

It is a myth that ethanol somehow "eats" parts in engines or carbs.......IF the engine is a newer design made to use it.
"Pure" gas deteriorates too, just a bit slower.

Now.....if you do have a cheap small engine from China that seems to be damaged by Ethanol......and you buy a new one just like it......shame on you.
Quality small engines should handle ethanol as good as a car.

Modern motorcycles are designed for ethanol and annual winter storage is NOT a problem if stabilizer is used.
Extremely long periods of non-use likely will be a problem regardless.

 

15% ethanol works fine. I used it on my road trip over Thanksgiving. I was curious if it made any difference at all when traveling at 80 mph. Efficiency was a little lower, but what difference does it make at that speed and when you don't have the option of plugging in? The answer is, it's cleaner.

 

If it was me, I would be having some fun experiemnting with that choice.
I would get weight of gas can to try to calcualte density to see which I thought had the most energy.
Since we live in RFG area, no such choice, and the energy/density is constant among grades.
Conceivably Straight 90 is juicy energy (better than 3% over regullar E10) but not guaranteed.
Def my lawn mower gets E0 if avail.

 

There is an E0 pump a few miles away... but compared to E10 O87 they charge 50-60 cents more per gallon

 

Yeah, drain the tank. On the first fill of the season, I add some isopropanol or acetone to flush out any water that worked its way into the carb during the off season. Sometimes some carb cleaner or paint thinner to clean any gunk.

Managed not to fire any of the gas tools last year, but recently discovered a little water in the ethanol keeps it from attacking any aluminum parts.

The higher octanes tend to be less energy dense. An engine could run more efficient on it, since it would allow the ignition timing to advance further, even if it wasn't high compression.

 

It can be harder to find non-ethanol gasoline than it is finding a charger on a road trip. Plus the prices on non-ethanol can be outrageous in some places, especially where boaters can fillup without having to dock at a pump. $5.++ / gal.
I just pump regular on a road trip too.
I have 3/4 of a tank left over at this point and I don't really care how fast I use it up.
A month or a year. I hope I get another road trip before another year passes. lol

 

Oh my gosh... So much ignorance in this thread.

1) There are only two types of gas at that gas station, ethanol free and 10% ethanol... The difference in octane is nothing more than an additive in the tanks at the station. You can buy the same additive to reduce knocks and pings on regular cars but Prius has a better way to prevent that so lowest octane, cheapest price is recommended in the owner's manual.

2) Ethanol is hydrophilic, meaning it absorbs moisture, which damages engines, but the corn lobby wants to sell as much corn as possible no matter how much damage it causes when it fouls small engine carburation, as well as creates laminates. Ethanol-free gas means your fuel has 3% more BTU, which is barely noticeable, but it's also stable/no longer hydrophilic, so you can leave gas in your small engine yard equipment during winter months without moisture getting into the system. People who use no-ethanol gas and think they need to drain tanks and add additive to protect the engine are wasting time and money!

I live in the PNW, it's more humid year-round in this region, than anywhere else in the country. We know how much damage 10% ethanol can cause. No-Ethanol gas doesn't do that, but it's 50 cents more a gallon so makes sense for small engines and boats, but not for a daily driver where gas is moving through the system quick enough so car doesn't get broken down by water in the system and laminates are relatively minor. Had the corn lobby succeeded in getting 20-30% ethanol in our fuel that damage to ICE would of gone way up.

 

Small engine manuals were recommending that the tank drained and engine run dry at the end of the season before ethanol in gas became wide spread. It was because the tanks aren't tightly sealed like on cars. The lighter fractions evaporate off, and oxygen gets in. This leads to the octane dropping and the formation of deposits. We left the gas in the lawnmower growing up, and always had trouble starting it the next season.

What damages what depends on the materials. Ethanol attacks aluminum, but a small amount of water in the alcohol protects the metal. You can get hydrous E15 in Norway, and Brazil doesn't bother to completely remove the water from ethanol during production.

Ethanol is a good fuel system cleaner. It will loosen up the build up of deposits from old and straight gas, which could clog things up down stream.

A bottle of octane booster will raise a tank's octane rating by about 0.1. It would take gallons of it to raise regular to premium at a station. Refineries make regular and premium gas. These get mixed to make the octanes in between. For many stations, the mixing is done at the pump.

 

Another hint from my dad, from his small engine experience on the farm ---

Manually rotate the crankshaft to the point where all valves are closed. On his small 4-cylinder engines with an externally mounted pulley, rotate until the crankshaft key slot points straight up. We could even hear a valve snap closed as this point was reached.

I don't know just how this translates to common home yard equipment without a readily visible shaft.

 

Speaking of misinformation ...

Unless there has been a drastic change since my sister retired from the refinery, the highlighted sentence is not true of the fuel you buy in the Puget Sound portion of the Pacific Northwest. Octane differences are not simply an additive at the station. Most fuels are blended to different octanes right at the refineries, no matter whether it comes from a March Point (Anacortes) or Cherry Point (Ferndale) facility. (OK, I shouldn't speak for Tacoma, but it is the smallest player.)

The octanes leaving the refinery may not be same as at the pump, due to ethanol added at the distribution point, but that is a separate matter.

Decades ago, when they were early in their careers, there were weekends when my two chemical engineer relatives were responsible for all gasoline blending in the entire Puget Sound region.

 

Does anyone else notice the smell of fuel oil at some gas stations? or is it just me and my nose.

 

All the time. I can tell where a gas station is from the smell alone.


Unsupervised!

 

Sorry, I should have been more clear. More than half the times I'm pumping gasoline I get the same smell of house heating oil.
I hope that's a better description.

 

Not true TB higher density for higher octane in the non-RFG areas, but it can go either way, so you do not know which way, I'll agree that much.

 

Is this recent or ongoing? Does it seem to be coming from the pump you are using, or just the station in general?
The stink of old heating oil(it should be ULSD now) was from the high sulfur content. If the sulfur is too high in the gas you are getting, it will poison the catalytic converter.
Does the station sell kerosene? That still has a relatively high level of sulfur.

Or it could just be your sense of smell. I can't smell stink bugs, and coworker said her mother could tell who was over the night before by smell. So there is a wide range in human senses.

 

Could be from someone filling up without shutting off their engine. Around here in winter I see a lot of older rust buckets (or winter rats as they are called) filling up as their engine runs. Also a lot of construction workers and farmers still use kerosene burners for heat (as well as some small repair shops). Could be leftover fuel from that.


Unsupervised!

 

The main reason you seen on land gas stations having Ethanol free gas here in Florida as the Land based marine community uses that for their boats. Ethanol free runs around $5.00 on the water

 

Up here in Washington state a small gas station company in my area is the only one who has ethanol-free in the $3.80 range which is about 50 cents higher than gas with ethanol.