The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Ethanol free gas

Thinking about using ethanol free unleaded 87 octane in my 49 3100 w/216. Also thinking about it for my 2006 HHR and 2016 Sonata. Just looking for opinions. Thanks

I use non ethanol in my riding mower and in my Honda Pioneer side by side. I have noticed that it doesn't go bad over the winter like the ethanol gas did. I used it a few times in my 1994 Camry and it had more power and increased the mpg by about 10%. I'll definitely use it in my old Chev and GMC when I get them running.

All my small engines, old cars and trucks get non ethanol 91 octane fuel.
When it’s time to fire them up in the winter or spring, no issues with the fuel going bad.

Don

I agree with Don. All of my lawn equipment and older vehicles get non ethanol (usually 87 or more octane). Putting ethanol gas in older vehicles and small engines is looking for trouble.

John

I live where real gas is readily available. I use real gas in every gas engine I own, old or new. Better fuel mileage and more power. Yes it’s more expensive but I don’t care.

Here in Michigan it's called Rec fuel, I only buy it for our jet ski and outboard motor, they get $1 more a gallon for it, not worth it to run it in my daily truck.

I expect that very soon (after July 1?) that I will not be able to buy ethanol free gas locally. Even premium will contain ethanol. Apparently the additives you can buy are not effective. Maybe this is an advantage for those who have installed electric pumps. Turn the pump off and run the carb dry if the truck will be parked for a while.

Running a YF2100 carburetor dry would likely cause the accelerator pump diaphragm to dry up and turn hard and fail faster than if if you left the gas in the fuel bowl.

Yes, I forgot about the accelerator pump. We can run outboards, generators, etc dry since they don't have the pump. Hopefully some company will come with an additive that actually fixes the ethanol problem...

Forty9 -

Just say NO to ethanol.
I initially selected real gas for my older engines ; now I use it exclusively in everything I own. My snowblowers and lawn mowers start up after a 6 month layup with no problem. It would be a travesty to feed my 1967 283 ethanol diluted fuel.
Then there's my marine engines - how foolish would it be to go to great lengths to prevent water contamination of the fuel , then go and put ethanol in the tank?
That would be like barring drugs at the school door then making them available in the cafeteria , now wouldn't it?

Anyone running ethanol free in newer cars? Any problems switching from ethanol in any vehicles old or new? Thanks for the inputs. Ed

Absolutely no problem at all in any vehicle, new or old, switching from one to another and back again.

If the car is going to sit around not being driven, try to use ethanol free. If you're cycling through the fuel pretty regularly, it doesn't make any real difference if you use ethanol laced fuel.

All of my cars get driven regularly and all of them use ethanol fuel. It's about all you can find here in Atlanta.

Non-ethanol fuel won't hurt new cars, either. Many places in America - mostly rural - don't require ethanol to be added to the fuel.

You'd think that rural America would use the ethanol laced gas, seeing as how they are the ones producing the ethanol and getting their congress person to make it part of the default product.

I see you have been to Oregon lately...

Only if the vehicle sits for long periods of time not being driven is ethanol a problem. I've been using ethanol fuel in my '56 Cadillac since it was mandated in Atlanta in 2007 or so.

Aside from ethanol destroying the original fuel pump, everything has been fine since. I use my vehicles for everyday driving so fuel doesn't sit in them long enough to cause trouble. The AD turck has been driven almost exclusively on ethanol fuel since I rebuilt the fuel system. It has nearly 3000 miles on it without problems due to ethanol.

I'd prefer non-ethanol fuel but I'm not driving all over Hell's half acre to get it.

Maybe I'm lucky but I've never bought non-ethanol fuel. Run ethanol fuel in everything & buy it wherever I get it at the lowest price.
Best example is a generator purchased in 2005, gets started and run about 1/2 hr once every year. Always starts on the second pull, just keep adding a little fuel to the tank, do use Sta-bil in this one, but not the others.
Replaced the hose on the bottom of the fuel tank on my '41 last year, had been on since 2002. Cut it apart, no evidence of chemical attack.

The price difference between E-free and premium is not much more...and I get much better HP and MPG on E-free in my GM LS.
Always hated pre-ignition chatter on even premium, so it was a gift from the hotrod gods when this very liberal state started allowing the highly polluting E-free here.
Plus the long storage of everything else is a bigger bonus, like others have stated.
Trips to Montana are worth the extra cost, climbing all those mountain passes and all.

A couple years ago we got a new station in town which offered the ethanol free premium. I started using it till gas prices went through the roof. Since the ethanol free was the highest price of them all, I went back to the ethanol. I use Sta-Bil with it year round, which seems to help.

Otto -- Have you considered getting a tank and buying in bulk? We have a 100-gal tank here at HQ and I get 100 gals of 89 octane non-ethanol delivered every now and then. Yes, it *is* a little more expensive than the ethanol mix -- but for me, the piece of mind I get from small engines that start every time, a boat that isn't going to leave me stranded a long way from home and an antique truck that runs without problems is worth a little extra expense.

I made the huge mistake of running regular pump gas (ethanol) in our '65 GMC way back when. That crap destroyed ALL fuel lines, two fuel pumps and in the ensuing chaos, caused an engine bay fire on the shoulder of I-66. I never could get the Stromberg carb straightened out so I eventually replaced it with a Holley 300. Truck FINALLY ran good after that.

How can I tell who has none ethanol gas short of running around pulling into gas stations to read the notice on their pump? Are there certain major brands I should look for?

There is an App I have on my iPhone called Pure Gas, and it’s available for Android based phones. they also have a website you can look up Ethanol Free Gas stations in your area. Here is a link. https://www.pure-gas.org/

Im sorry to hear that, Gord.
I wonder if that would be the whole Province ?
Or just CRD.
I’m interested in that additive if it shows up.
C

I've thought about it but living intown is a lot different than living in the country. Since I'm not a business or a farmer, I'd be surprised if one of the local fuel suppliers would even consider it. City of Atlanta probably has rules and permits that would be required. Delivery truck would have to have easy access, etc.

There are a few places around here that sell ethanol free fuel but they aren't on my daily travel routes. The crap fuel has worked out ok so far since it gets used up pretty fast.

John, do you get any sort of discount buying fuel in bulk?

Here in eastern WA, Maverik stations offer it. Some other stations also, but it's hit and miss on the locations.
Try a search in your area, maybe?

Marathon stations seemed to always have ethanol free 7 years ago when I lived in middle TN. Don't know about now though.

The station we have here which has it is a Casey's. Their ethanol-free is 91 octane.

JW -- Nope. I doubt they consider me a "bulk" sale, anyhow, at only 90-100 gallons. I think I paid average retail price. The convenience of it, on the other hand ...

I should have read more closely. You said 100 gallons. I was picturing an overhead farm type tank.

My grandfather in Ohio had a gravity feed farm tank. It was cheaper because it was for agricultural use only and was exempt from the road tax portion. Of course that gas was for the tractor and farm equipment but it also filled the VW Beetle and the F-150.

Thanks Phil. I am going to try one of the stations on the list to see if they still have it and what Octane it is.

Octane rating for a Stovebolt is really irrelevant. It runs fine on 87 and would probably run ok on lower octane Mexican gas but you won't find that in the US.

Most non ethanol I see around here is 90 octane.

Agreed re the octane. We are not dealing with very high compression in the old engines.

On a side note , I used to have access to aviation gasoline. It had been drained from aircraft fuel tanks for maintenance and the standard procedure at that place and time dictated that drained fuel did not go back into the aircraft , thus the surplus , thus the great deal. Av gas has minimal additives and lots of lead. I'm here to tell you - that stuff made my older engines purr!

Av gas NEVER has ethanol added. The reason for that is : it can be very inconvenient when an aircraft engine stops running unexpectedly.

Unless I am mistaken I think the aviation gas is either 100 or 110 octane.

100 is correct. I wasn’t in it for the high octane; I wanted it for the minimal additives and lead content.

Interesting characteristic about a gas vs automotive gas- when sampling fuel from each tank sump as part of the pre flight it was common to get av gas on the hands. All that was required to clean the hands was a quick wipe with a rag or even just wave the hands in a fresh breeze- quick evaporation with near zero residue odor. If I spill auto gas on my hands I wash 2-3 times and there is still residual stink.
I attributed that to additives.

For reasons I won't go into, I once had access to free AvGas (100 Octane Low Lead). The '49 Chevrolet (235 at the time) ran like crap on it -- didn't like it at all. But ... the '51 Farmall M came ALIVE on that stuff! It would get down and BARK and pull a 2-bottom plow through hard pan like a hot knife through butter. I've heard that AvGas is strictly verboten at the tractor pulls around here ...;)

Anyway, I get the higher octane non ethanol primarily for the boat and the little engines. My friend Milt -- our local Stihl dealer, told me long ago only to use 89 octane non-ethanol in the chainsaws and other Stihl and Kohler engines.

Well, I once lived and worked in the gas fields of New Mexico, four corners area.
There are gas treatment stations on the pipelines headed out from the producing gas wells
which condense “drip gas” out of the natural gas, and deposit it into tanks.
This gas is presumably picked up and taken to refineries and made into real gasoline.
So, we used to help ourselves at the spigots available on the sides of the huge tanks, and fill a gas can.
Cars won’t normally run on this stuff, but at the time my 51 Chevy carryall had a very worn out GMC 248
in it, and it ran just fine. I was never sure why, but I figured it was because it had little compression.
Compression or not , I drove it all over the west that way, and enjoyed it.( I really only stole a can or two of drip gas).
But then I put in a good 235, and , man, it just pinged and rattled frighteningly on that hot juice fresh from the ground!
Gave that up quick᠁᠁..
1974, we know how cheap gas was then.

Hmmm. Some comments do not make sense.

1. You make more power on non-ethanol gasoline. Ethanol has an octane rating of 113 and is used to increase the octane rating of any gasoline it is mixed with. There are, of course, other octane boosters but ethanol is pretty much the choice of almost all manufacturers because it is much cheaper. All cars in NASCAR run on E15 (since 2011) and produce more horsepower than they did on non-ethanol laced gasoline. If you actually are making less horsepower it is time to determine why and correct (timing? carb adjustment? or???)
2. While it is true that ethanol does have its problems provided your ride has updated rubber parts in the fuel system you should not have a problem with rubber being damaged.
3. Ethanol is actually better suited to accommodate a small amount of water contamination as the water will mix with the ethanol while it does not mix with gasoline so settles to the bottom of your fuel tank (of course ideally you would NOT have water in your tank at all).

Having said the above I too sought out non-ethanol gasoline as long as they sold it here in Los Angeles but it has been a long, long time since it was available at a gas pump in a regular station and have not experienced any problems because of fuel.

Power isn't all about octane. Higher octane lets you get away with more compression and timing without pre-detonation, but ethanol's energy density is only slightly more than half that of pure gasoline. More energy per gallon lets you get higher mpg when tuned properly.

Skooter One Marathon station finally got ethanol free took 2 years,it's probably made in our local marathon refinery. I use airplane lo-lead 100 in chain saws and weed eaters,however tornado wiped out our airport so no airplane gas.