Fuel question
Thread Starter
Safety Car
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 4,688
Likes: 657
From: Blairsville , Georgia
There is no ethanol-free gasoline in the Chicago area. You can get 100 octane Sunoco at the Citgo down the street, but it is still up to 10% ethanol. My 435 really liked it and I could time it the way I wanted, but on hot days it was non-optimal.
For my FI car (which I don't drive a lot) I am ordering 110 octane leaded Sunoco which is ethanol free. It runs amazing that way. It will run even better once Ken Hansen restores it.
For other old cars like my Porsche 993, my 1964 Porsche 356, other old cars and trucks, the ethanol seems to have no impact. But never leave it in a lawn mower or snow tractor for more than 60 days, it turns to cloudy brown water that wont burn. This is a fact.
For my FI car (which I don't drive a lot) I am ordering 110 octane leaded Sunoco which is ethanol free. It runs amazing that way. It will run even better once Ken Hansen restores it.
For other old cars like my Porsche 993, my 1964 Porsche 356, other old cars and trucks, the ethanol seems to have no impact. But never leave it in a lawn mower or snow tractor for more than 60 days, it turns to cloudy brown water that wont burn. This is a fact.
This is my first experience with non ethanol gas. In the past I had no choice and had to run 10% Ethanol in everything including the lawn equipment. I made due but it was not ideal for sure. Glad to hear that you are able to order what you need for the FI. That is the perfect solution. I will now run non Ethanol in everything.
Jay
Safety Car
Joined: Jun 2017
Posts: 4,786
Likes: 425
From: North Georgia, USA
The biggest issues I've seen with ethanol damage to older engines is damage to the rubber gaskets in the carbs and to other rubber parts. Ethanol hardens rubber and makes it brittle.
I've seen numerous old Mercedes Benz engines with the Bosch CIS systems have major issues in the fuel mixture control units. That's a mechanical continuous flow fuel injection system, and there's a large rubber diaphragm in there that hardens and cracks. It can be $2K-$4K to repair that damage. I owned a couple of those that failed, and bought one dirt cheap because the owner didn't want to pay for that repair.
There's a classic British car I'm taking care of now that got an engine swap back in the early 1980s to a Chevy Straight 6 (250CID, from either a Camaro or a Nova). That one had a carburetor that was leaking everywhere when I first started taking care of it, and it just had the diaphragm in the mechanical fuel pump go out this past week. It's now on an ethanol free diet and those problems should not occur again without ethanol blended fuels. The owner was replacing carbs every 2 to 3 years and wondering why they didn't last. Hopefully avoiding ethanol will resolve that for the moment. We're also looking at upgrading either with an engine swap or carb/intake/cam/headers/exhaust to get more power in that one, because it's in a car wtih a 5,000 pound curb weight (fueled, but empty) that sometimes hauls 6 passenger + 1 chauffeur + luggage for 2 of the passengers, hitting about 6,500 pounds at that load.
I've seen numerous old Mercedes Benz engines with the Bosch CIS systems have major issues in the fuel mixture control units. That's a mechanical continuous flow fuel injection system, and there's a large rubber diaphragm in there that hardens and cracks. It can be $2K-$4K to repair that damage. I owned a couple of those that failed, and bought one dirt cheap because the owner didn't want to pay for that repair.
There's a classic British car I'm taking care of now that got an engine swap back in the early 1980s to a Chevy Straight 6 (250CID, from either a Camaro or a Nova). That one had a carburetor that was leaking everywhere when I first started taking care of it, and it just had the diaphragm in the mechanical fuel pump go out this past week. It's now on an ethanol free diet and those problems should not occur again without ethanol blended fuels. The owner was replacing carbs every 2 to 3 years and wondering why they didn't last. Hopefully avoiding ethanol will resolve that for the moment. We're also looking at upgrading either with an engine swap or carb/intake/cam/headers/exhaust to get more power in that one, because it's in a car wtih a 5,000 pound curb weight (fueled, but empty) that sometimes hauls 6 passenger + 1 chauffeur + luggage for 2 of the passengers, hitting about 6,500 pounds at that load.
