E10 Petrol

[woa2]

I am getting my vehicles out for the year and wondering if anyone here has experience of the new E10 unleaded Petrol. Is it as bad for old vehicles as I have heard? Anyone been using it and what are your experiences?

[gordonb]

I am using E5. It is a risk thing, do you want the hassle of possibly having to find obscure rubber diaphragms, carburettor floats etc if the E10 decides to attack parts of your fuel system.

[earlymb]

I would not risk E10 as it can even eat away some metal alloys used for older carburettors, apparently. It seems that most of the 'premium' fuels sold by the big oil companies contain no, or only very limited amounts of, ethanol even if marked E5... might be worth some research?

Another option is to remove the ethanol from E10 by mixing it with water and separate the resulting water/ethanol mix. Not difficult but a bit of a hassle in larger quantities. There are tutorials on youtube how to do this.

[Hair Bear]

What about 100LL from a local airfield?

[Adrian Barrell]

Avgas is not taxed for road use.

[Hair Bear]

Fair point, but I was thinking more along the lines of generators, pumps, or domestic stuff like mowers and chainsaws and anything else that doesn't see regular use that ethanol could gum up and damage.

[earlymb]

2 hours ago, Hair Bear said:

Fair point, but I was thinking more along the lines of generators, pumps, or domestic stuff like mowers and chainsaws and anything else that doesn't see regular use that ethanol could gum up and damage.

There are special alkylate fuels like Aspen for this specific purpose, but the cost (£4-5/liter) might be a bit prohibitive for use in vehicles.

Premium fuels are still the best option I think, for instance Esso claims that their Synergy Supreme+ is ethanol-free in most of the UK: "Although our pumps have E5 labels on them, our Synergy Supreme⁺ 99 is actually ethanol free (except, due to technical supply reasons, in Devon, Cornwall, North Wales, North England and Scotland)." (https://www.esso.co.uk/en-gb/fuels/petrol ). You should be able to find out if the premium fuel of your brand of choice contains any ethanol.

If that fails, removing the ethanol yourself is simple but a bit of a hassle, although less hassle than periodically replacing your fuel system components I think... See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opPZD8-2fLk&list=PLXaf5EqG6RkflW4MU1f1Cc5NJjcB0JtSl&index=4&t=16s for the principle, just enlarge the scale.

Avgas will work fine too but might be prohibited for vehicular use, although the chance of someone actually checking what sort of petrol you're running is quite small I guess? I think it does cost substantially more than premium car fuels though.

 

[Adrian Barrell]

8 hours ago, Hair Bear said:

Fair point, but I was thinking more along the lines of generators, pumps, or domestic stuff like mowers and chainsaws and anything else that doesn't see regular use that ethanol could gum up and damage.

Good point. UL91 avgas is probably even better for that use, but still expensive. 

[attleej]

Dear All,

One of the advantages of having an electronic fuel injection system is that it can be all new. so that there are no compatibility issues. There are four component classes:  The fuel filters, the fuel pump, the pressure regulator and the injectors..  I now only use copper, aluminium, steel and modern fuel quality rubber hose.  Soft solder is a disaster area (as I have posted before) so I only use silver solder for joining steel components where I have not used TIG welding.

The problem is that for so many of our vehicles non-originality to the extent of EFI is completely inappropriate, I accept that.

It would not be too difficult to buy a large quantity of ethanol free petrol but for the impracticality of storing it legally and safely.

John