10% Ethanol and your Speedster

According to what I have read, the advantages are a slight increase in octane rating and lower carbon monoxide emissions. On the negative side, alcohols tend to separate from the gasoline at lower temperatures and the quantity of water absorbed will then increase. Thus, the quality of the fuel may decrease.

Alcohol in any form is corrosive to aluminum carburetors. Racers always drain their fuel system at the end of a meet.

Good question Eric. There has been a lot of press in the old car mags about the negative issues with ethenol added gas. One of the issues is it's effect on the rubber fuel lines and any rubber, gaskets, etc within the carb. I understand it tends to deteriorate those items. The newer style fuel lines found on modern cars are OK from what I've read and experienced. In Illinois and now in Southern Oregon all our gas has the ethenol added to it for pollution issues, must burn cleaner I assume. My modern American cars handle the stuff OK but now I'm wondering about the Speedster. I better give JPS a call and find out if the fuel lines installed are the ethenol proof lines. Thanks for bringing this up. I know in the Midwest the alcohol based fueled are prevelant, in fact I found in Nebraska last summer that the medium grade gas, 89 octane, was about 5 cents cheaper than the regular 87 octane. I guess because they are promoting the corn based gas.

Bruce

Anyone have an opinion, experience, or proven data about the use of the 10% ethanol blend gasoline sold in North America? I just started to buy this fuel for my water cooled car.

I like the idea of using the corn oil product. I hope it can be used in everything. I am in Massachusetts and I only discovered that a local station was using 10% ethanol blend after two fill-ups.

In the midwest many of the state fuel taxes are not included in the ethanol blends this gives a slight price advantage.....it should be more price difference but the suppliers absorb some of the savings because they say they have increased handling costs.....I once saw a study that argued that they are just keeping the extra as profit, but I don't know if they were right.

We here in Iowa have been running ethanol for a long time and the most important rule most commonly known to me is that you never want to use ethanol blend on a car that has spent its hole life on non ethanol gas.

I have a 92 nissan sentra that never burned ethanol for 155 thousand miles.....I wanted to see if the fuel system would really be effected by ethanol blend so I used it for about a month and BAM....my fuel injectors all started messing up....the mechanic looked me square in the eyes and said, if you have recently changed what your putting in the car STOP.....I'm now a believer, but then again maybe it was just a conincidence...I'm not taking any chances in the future I'll stick to one or the other

It will affcet jetting and tuning of the engine.....