Ethanol! Aargh!

[kxfreak]

Use some type of uel stabilizer. I use the Startron blue stuff but I only use it if the bike is going to be parked longer than a few weeks. Ethanol manufacturers and the government are trying to up the amount of ethanol to 15 percent. You might want to join the AMA and add your voice to the efforts to stop these increases...

This is one of the stabilizers we carry in our works office, and I take it home and use it on my toys as well. I've had really good luck with it though and am pretty pleased with the results. About a year ago we started carrying another stabilizer called K100, has anyone here used this stuff? I've seen that now my local dealership carry's it as well?

[Jason76]

It all has ethanol. Unless specified as not at a very few gas stations.

No man shell v power does not contain ethanol in Canada as specified on all there pumps.

[BOAB]

No man shell v power does not contain ethanol in Canada as specified on all there pumps.

 

I was referring to US.

[hadfield4wd]

I have an ethanol free gas station less than 10 miles from the house. All I run in my small engines is that.

[pzeiler]

I was also told by an old timer that Sta-bil wasn't meant for 2 strokes. Dunno....i went the safe route on the 100 oct. racing fuel.

[EmpireofDerp]

📎Screenshot_20170102-090033.png

Look at the difference between Oregon and California in quantity of stations. Kinda nuts. I found an ethanol free map when I googled "ethanol free gas".

Yeah, i was gonna say, it's not that hard to find in Oregon, the station right next to my house has clear 91, clear 100 and leaded 110. There's just no reason to put that ethanol garbage in my tank, ever. Edited January 3, 2017 by BetaCuck

[07KTM250]

If you are truly interested in learning more about the ins and outs of ethanol, you need to get the whole picture.  Much mis-...and old-information out there.  THere was alot of whining about it pushing up the price of corn back when corn was 5-6$/bushel.  Have you looked at the market lately?  Corn prices are very low and the ag industry is suffering.  Layoffs at equipment manufacturers, farmers having trouble getting financing to pay the rent etc.  If not for ethanol it would be worse of course.  We have a glut of corn, have for years.  Yields have increased much faster than the population and the demand for the corn.

i'm not sure you're looking at the big picture.. the amount of water needed to produce ethanol is about 3 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol.. that's not including the water to grow the crops.. plus add in the cost it takes to truck the ethanol (it can't flow through a pipeline cause it's too corrosive.).. i don't really think ethanol is the farmers saving grace..

[TimeToStartRidingAgain]

http://www.pure-gas.org

[Piney Woods]

I was also told by an old timer that Sta-bil wasn't meant for 2 strokes. Dunno....i went the safe route on the 100 oct. racing fuel.

 Don't depend on old timers who can't read. Instructions for use are on the label.

[hadfield4wd]

I was also told by an old timer that Sta-bil wasn't meant for 2 strokes. Dunno....i went the safe route on the 100 oct. racing fuel.

Like I said earlier we have a local station but I burn through so much gas I'm not sure it matters. We have trails in our back yard so we burn through about 10 gallons a week. More in the summer when I have 2 acres of grass to cut.

[motometal]

i'm not sure you're looking at the big picture.. the amount of water needed to produce ethanol is about 3 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol.. that's not including the water to grow the crops.. plus add in the cost it takes to truck the ethanol (it can't flow through a pipeline cause it's too corrosive.).. i don't really think ethanol is the farmers saving grace..

Moving ethanol through a pipeline can, and has been done, although there are challenges.  As Americans we tend to not have many pipelines anyway due to environmental and other concerns...so we use rail for crude and ethanol, probably more than we should.

 

Let's talk about the water part.

Sure I see the big picture.  I don't love the water usage, but one must put it in perspective.  That 3 gallons is probably close but improving. Used to be much higher, but more water is being recycled these days.   Some of that 3 gallons leaves the ethanol plant in the form of DDGs and is fed to animals, which would need water from one source or another.

 

We humans put a much lower price on water than we do something like fuel.  Good drinking water in most areas is worth around a penny a gallon or less.  How much gasoline do you use per day?  Maybe 1.5 or 2 gallons?  So lets say 10% of that is ethanol so on the high side .20 gallons of ethanol times 3 = 0.6 gallons of water.

 

The average person uses around 50 gallons of water per day.  So you have allotted 1.2% of your water usage towards renewable fuel.  I don't think that's too crazy but depends on your perspective.

 

If we took a closer look at that 50 gallons per day, we would find that most of it is waste.  There is much more waste to be cut on other loss of (potential) drinking water than the production of ethanol.  Many of us like to take nice long showers, or flush when we don't really need to, or let the faucet run the whole time we are brushing our teeth (strange but common habit).  When they changed the faucets years ago to be "water saving", it was clear that a lot of water was being completely wasted for no good reason.  It still is, just to a bit lesser degree.

[hadfield4wd]

Moving ethanol through a pipeline can, and has been done, although there are challenges. As Americans we tend to not have many pipelines anyway due to environmental and other concerns...so we use rail for crude and ethanol, probably more than we should.

Still a lot of pipelines

[motometal]

Maybe poor choice of words on my part, depending on how you look at it yes there are a lot of pipelines but...by the time you split out out into crude, CO2, HVLs, natural gas, and of course gasoline, it's not as impressive looking.   The lack is in the pipelines from the midwest where ethanol is made, to markets such as the west coast where it's consumed.  California etc.

Edited January 8, 2017 by motometal

[motometal]

Actually, my response above regarding the water should have been more along the lines of, suggesting you guys research how much water it takes to make a variety of things in our daily world.  I just did some reading, had no idea.  A real eye opener!  150 gallons for that Sunday paper etc etc

Edited January 8, 2017 by motometal

[Chocos]

I had good luck with grey tygon fuel hose from motion pro. Supposed to last for decades.

[07KTM250]

Moving ethanol through a pipeline can, and has been done, although there are challenges.  As Americans we tend to not have many pipelines anyway due to environmental and other concerns...so we use rail for crude and ethanol, probably more than we should.

 

Let's talk about the water part.

Sure I see the big picture.  I don't love the water usage, but one must put it in perspective.  That 3 gallons is probably close but improving. Used to be much higher, but more water is being recycled these days.   Some of that 3 gallons leaves the ethanol plant in the form of DDGs and is fed to animals, which would need water from one source or another.

 

We humans put a much lower price on water than we do something like fuel.  Good drinking water in most areas is worth around a penny a gallon or less.  How much gasoline do you use per day?  Maybe 1.5 or 2 gallons?  So lets say 10% of that is ethanol so on the high side .20 gallons of ethanol times 3 = 0.6 gallons of water.

 

The average person uses around 50 gallons of water per day.  So you have allotted 1.2% of your water usage towards renewable fuel.  I don't think that's too crazy but depends on your perspective.

 

If we took a closer look at that 50 gallons per day, we would find that most of it is waste.  There is much more waste to be cut on other loss of (potential) drinking water than the production of ethanol.  Many of us like to take nice long showers, or flush when we don't really need to, or let the faucet run the whole time we are brushing our teeth (strange but common habit).  When they changed the faucets years ago to be "water saving", it was clear that a lot of water was being completely wasted for no good reason.  It still is, just to a bit lesser degree.

i get it, don't get me wrong, i'm not opposed to using renewable fuel but at what cost.. the whole purpose of adding ethanol was for "greener" emissions.. you lose power, which in turns uses more fuel to move from A to B, which creates more emissions.. yet, a well tuned engine will produce less emissions, more power and use less fuel to move from A to B. So if you have a higher quantity of "clean" emissions compared to a lower quantity of "dirty" emissions, you're not really saving the planet.. All i'm saying is they either need to design engines specifically for ethanol and run ethanol only or use the current engines we have and use gasoline only.. you're paying the same price for 10% ethanol as you are for 100% gasoline and you're losing 1/4-1/3 power.. for me I want the most bang for my buck and 100% gasoline is exactly that.

[TomTopDog12]

Ethanol is the worst stuff you could put into a high performance engine. Stay away from it. 

[turbo dan]

Ethanol is the worst stuff you could put into a high performance engine. Stay away from it. 

 

And now we have come full circle.

 

Lots of high performance engines run specifically on ethanol.  Every high performance engine I have ever run has been on E10.  Its really not that big of a deal.

[TomTopDog12]

And now we have come full circle.

 

Lots of high performance engines run specifically on ethanol.  Every high performance engine I have ever run has been on E10.  Its really not that big of a deal.

I'm sorry, let me modify my post-

 

 

Ethanol is the worst stuff you could put into your Somewhat high performance engine but not enough high performance for it to run entirely on ethanol but can still withstand some. Stay away from it.

[turbo dan]

Makes even less sense the second time you said it.

 

Ran my 468rwhp 5 series on 91 octane E10.  21 psi.  Ran every two stroke MX engine I have ever owned on the same stuff, 91 octane E10.  Currently running my 14000 RPM 90whp Yamaha on the same stuff.  Any of those engines could have been retuned or rejetted to run E85.  If you're making a point I must be missing it.

 

High performance is no problem.  Its the economic aspect of ethanol that are the problem.