Hi all,
I am not sure whether the impact on the mechanical components inside our old ladies is really that severe. In Brasil, they run E100 and the enfines aint made of wood or leather, but alloy, iron cast etc.
German ADAC has published a nice article about E10 and all the fuss around it. There an expert said that concerning oxidation E5 was worse than E10. Why? He explained that there is an anomaly with alcohol dissolved in gasoline - it becomes less hygroscopic with increasing ethanol content.
Although he still says that alcohol may be affecting alloy.
To judge this article one must know that ADAC is strongly opposing this E10 measure and recommending not to use it if any doubt.
Sealing material resistance is a matter of quality. I had the experience with my '74 BMW R75/5 with E5 when I had overhauled the carbs. I had replaced all sealings and o-rings with new ones purchased from a BMW dealer. That very summer the bike broke almost down due to non-existing idle / low load engine speed. In the end it had turned out that the new o-ring for the idle jet of the Bing carb had started to dissolve. I contacted the dealer, he sent me another quality o-ring and since then I have never had any more issues with that.
Futhermore in pre WWII there was a measure introduced by the German government that fuel must contain some amount of ethanol:
In August 1930, the German government required all gasoline importers to buy 2.5% of the volume of their imports from the German Alcohol Monopoly, and the ratio was increased to 6% and then 10% by 1932. Estimates of alcohol used in 1932 vary from 44 million liters to about 175 million liters. Some 36,000 small farm alcohol stills, owned by the monopoly, were in operation at this time. By 1938, Germany was producing about 267 million liters of ethanol, about two thirds from potatoes and the rest from grain, wood sulfite liquors and beets. Some 89 million liters of methanol were produced from coal, while other synthetic fuels included 550 million liters of benzene and over one billion liters of synthetic gasoline. All told, 54% of the pre-war German fuel production was derived from non-petroleum sources, of which 8% was ethanol from renewable sources
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuelSo maybe there is an anomaly with the age of your bike and its susceptibility to be impacted by E10 - the older it is the less risk there is. That's technical progress for you
As usual - lots of pros and cons. Ask 3 experts and you get 4 different answers.
To my mind this whole discussion is obsolete - the reason for me not to opt for E10 is that I am not the one to explain to a starving child in Africa that we don't manage to send them food because we now start to burn it in our combustion engines.
This is crap and we should send these bloody incompetent EU-politicians down there exactly doing that! See how they will vote next time in parliament then.
Cheers,
horaceworblehat
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