lets hear some more, bump

 

i would also like to hear other opinions too. im a little skeptical about using fuel stabilizer and the nearest ethanol free gas station to me would be at least a 5 hour drive

 

Have you had any bad experiences with fuel stabilizers? Please share why they might be bad. The marine formula seems to be regular fuel stabilizer + some ethanol treatment stuff, so we would want to make sure the stabilizer is not bad for the engine. They recommend using the product with every tank of gas and not just during storage.

 

Thanks for putting this thread up here ninadm . I hope I can find a station on that link not far from me here in Delmont,PA. that'll sell it to me for around $4 a gal. but not any higher. I Really like the performance of that fuel.

 

Looks like theres one about 30 mins from Delmont, PA:
pure-gas.org : display a station
No idea about the pricing though. You can call them and see. Would be useful to know if that is more expensive than regular fuel and by how much.

 

Looks like theres one about 30 mins from Delmont, PA:
pure-gas.org : display a station
No idea about the pricing though. You can call them and see. Would be useful to know if that is more expensive than regular fuel and by how much.

Thanks for finding that ninadm, I called them in No. Huntingdon(90 oct.) and they want $4.99 a gal. so I'll try around a little more first

 

I've used Startron for a long time no fuel issues. Star Tron Enzyme Fuel Treatment - HOME

 

Someone I know whos been running ATVs and buggies in the desert for years recommended this to me:
Ethanol Equalizer » Liquid Performance

Will be a while before I run out of the the Sta-Bil I bought, but I will probably try this next.

 

Notice the list has no NJ stations, so ethanol free gas isn't even an option.

If you replace the components that fail from ethanol (float needle valve with the rubber point, gasket material, on Honda's with CV carbsm the diaphragm) then the ethanol is not that big of an issue.

I use an external paper element fuel filter, so tank cleaning is not an issue.

The real issue is the lean condtion (ethanol is an oxygenate) caused by the fuel, and the lower energy density.

If needed, re-jetting is the cure for the lean condition.

Lower mileage is the only thing that can't be remediated.

Sea Foam has worked well for me, with no carb issues on all my various weedeaters, mower, gas engine blowers, generator, and 2 bikes.

As far as storage, even un-ethanoled gas loses most of it's volatiles and causes gum and varnish issues. Ethanol adds water to the mix, but under long term storage, condensation still gets in the fuel, as water is heavier than oil, so it sinks to the bottom too.

Carburetors are not worse off then older fuel injections sytems. the article suggests carbs have smaller passages than FI, but if you examine the Injector, it has much finer passages then a carb. In addition, I can change all the internal ethanol sensitive parts in the carb, while injectors need to be replaced if actually blocked with dirt.

So you can update most components to withstand ehtanol.

 

So you can update most components to withstand ehtanol.

Richard: Do you know of any ethanol-safe replacements for the needle valves and diaphragms? These can get expensive for the 350s, and I would definitely consider getting ethanol safe ones so I don't have to worry about this anymore.

 

just in terms of seat of the pants feeling of how the bike runs: there is a place just down from my house selling non-ethanol stuff for atleast 10% more than ethanol, and I have filled up there a few times and in terms of how the bike runs, I can't say that I have noticed a difference. Now, I normally use Chevron fuel, which I personally think is significantly better than Arco. If you compared Arco stuff to non-ethanol stuff, you may notice a huge difference but then again, you might notice that same difference just by going to Chevron. With my car, I switched to chevron and found that yes, it is 10% more per gallon, but that my mileage also improved by 10% and the car just ran better.

 

I've always liked Chevron

 

Not the needle valve for the floats, but my needle valve on my CB360 is all metal....So no rubber tip to deteriorate.

JBM makes replacement diaphragms out of TSR Stainless Clamps for JBM Rubber Carburetor Socket Boots /TSR Rubber

From that page:

The qualities of the TSR rubber are that it has high fuel and chemical resistance so
works well with fuels that contain ethanol. It also is very resistant to heat, ozone, and
age cracking. Age cracks are the small surface cracks seen in old rubber that can be
seen with just a slight bending of the rubber. Usually you will see many of them, and
they will not be very deep, but they do weaken and soften the rubber, causing more
flexing and so more age cracks.

So their diaphragms are ethanol resistant.

Many newer made parts use a better grade rubber....On the carb o-rings used on the jets, the size can be measured and you can order o-rings that are compatible.

I order from these guys:Metric O-rings - Buna-N - Nitrile - Viton - FKM - All Orings Online

Buna-N (HBR) or NHBR is the right material for fules with Ethanol.

They have a large variety of metric sizes.

If you go to a Honda Dealer Microfiche page, the size of most o-rings are listed, diameter and cross section....

 

Thanks Richard! I'm going to add that to the laundry list..

 

I purchased some 89 octane non-E fuel today just N. of Pittsburgh today in a town called Gibsonia,PA. @ a station named Rudolph's Auto repair. Full Service fuel stop w/ old pumps(but worked good),I think it's another good independent seller, $4.59 a gallon.I'm looking forward to putting it into my CB350.

 

Good stuff Bill! You guys out there at least have that option.
When I went to Walmart today, atleast a quarter of their Automotive Chemicals section was fuel treatment and ethanol stabilizers. Almost every brand has something - Lucas Oil, GumOut, Sta-Bil, Star Tron, etc etc. Just shows that this must be a pretty well recognized issue considering the amount of product available to try and fix it...

 

I started using racing fuel ($8 @ gallon) in my 71 CB 450 and it is running beautifully. Has eliminated the plug fouling issue I experienced last summer while using 93 octane.

 

I want to know if there's any way that our government can notice the problems being created in vehicles because of Ethanol ? Do they have lots of folks that are lobbying for Ethanol use? is that why we STILL have this ('E')stuff everywhere and REAL fuel is So rare to find ?

 

Hmm... Is gasoline that contains ethanol better for the environment in some way (IDK one way or the other)? What is the stated potential benefit of having it? Is that potential benefit achievable with newer vehicles?

If so - and please bear in mind that I go tomorrow to (hopefully) purchase a 32-year old motorcycle that will be my only transportation other than walking, so I'm probably going to be in the same boat as the rest of y'all - then it's a case of our bad luck for liking/riding older things that don't work well in today's world. They don't sell "road-legal" leaded fuel any more, AfaIK. (No, I don't really know if unleaded is "better" for us in any way than leaded, either, lol.)

There's a place up the road a piece that sells E85. Last time I checked, it was $2.799/gallon. The owner's manual to my brother's car stated that some of them would run on it. Turns out, his isn't one of them, but while I was trying to find that out, I did some reading about E85 and learned that in most vehicles that can run it, there's a fairly substantial mileage hit, but with others, the mileage drop wasn't that much (I think I read if his had had the right setup from the factory, he'd only have lost about 6% on fuel mileage... and 87 octane unleaded here is $3.359/gallon, so he'd have won that particular lottery) because with modern vehicles, they can be set up to run on two different fuels.

According to the Wikipedia article (yeah, I know, take it with a grain of salt) on E85:

E85 promoters contend that automotive manufacturers currently fail to equal the fuel economy of gasoline because they fail to take advantages of characteristics which are superior in ethanol-based fuel blends. They claim that some ethanol engines have already produced 22% more miles per gallon than identical gasoline engines.

Now that's fuel that is 51%-85% ethanol, coming out of a pump that is marked as such(+/-), beside other pumps that still dispense unleaded(+/-). It's kind of (IMO) like having a gasoline pump beside a diesel one, you grab whichever one your vehicle uses. That's different than only selling something that your vehicle might not like. Now this is assuming that the - what are we talking about here, 10% ethanol / 90% gasoline? - blend actually has some benefit in the first place, otherwise it's all just legislative malarkey. But if that's the case, I think it would have been better to offer the blend at one pump and one price and "regular" unleaded at the pump beside it at a higher price. Pick a number of years (ten? 25?) and start ramping the price of the non-ethanol unleaded so that at the end of your time-frame, that unleaded is really expensive compared to the fuel you're trying to get people to use. Let people know a few years ahead of time that it's going to happen so that the poor folks have some warning. At the end of your time-frame, continue to sell the unblended unleaded for a while longer for those who have what'll amount to antiques. No, not forever, but for a while.

That would give people a chance to get a different vehicle, change out affected parts in one that they wish to keep, et cetera and it'd give manufacturers time to set up their vehicles from the factory to actually benefit from the newer fuel type; if those manufacturers do not choose to take advantage of that time, let reality punish them with zero sales instead of the government coddling them with tax breaks and bailouts.

I'm all for the federal government not getting even more power and a larger bureaucracy, but I feel that stuff like this ought to be decided/implemented on a national level. This current situation of having fuels available in some states but not in others makes no sense to me and makes the whole thing seem like just a bunch of political bullsnot. Whatever fuel you get, it ought to be available everywhere. The only variations from that ought to be climate-based (IOW, it'd probably be pointless to offer the fuel you need in Alaska in the middle of Winter to Texans in August).

The above is just my opinion, of course.

On-topic content, lol: Thanks for the links to the websites and products. I expect all of them to come in handy!

Regards,