NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF ETHANOL

[largeviking]

On the following page or pages to the above, Draganfly advertise a sealant that is not affected by ethanol.

[bikerbob]

Hi there
Have just received a reply from my local MP about Ethanol he sent a letter that I wrote to the Minister for Transport I have attached my original letter also the reply from M.O.T. you will see that they have not addressed my main concerns regarding safety the compulsory displaying of labels on pumps to show levels of Ethanol and also a major publicity campaign.

[johnnyboy-wonder57]

Bob,
I will look into this time permitting because the effects of ethanol affects old cars, boats, stationary engines and of course older cars and motorcycles, the fact is that  the situation we are now in Politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels set targets, irrespective of the outcome on many peoples lives & interests, hobbies e.t.c.

Beside ethanol being a solvent and of course poisonous to the human body when concentrated, it also has a less  octane, energy rating, through having a lower calorific value, which in effect will if not corrected by an additive decrease the performance of your machine and also give less economy in MPG.

Do you remember LRP in 1988 where has that all gone now!  Also when unleaded came in use in 1988, on many vehicles they retarded the timing to make then  compliant, to using unleaded, again performance wise  & economy was compromised.

Old piston engined aeroplanes have the same problem with not being able to source adequate  fuel suppliers to allow them to still be in service & allow them to fly unhindered.

Look we are a minority Petrol Heads, plus the interested parties, Car owners, Boat people,  do not seem to be able to get it together and object to what's happening with one voice!  National Governments, seemingly have little enthusiasm for petrol powered vehicles & the Autocrats in Brussels even less so.  Soon if fuel prices rise, I will like 1000's of others be forced off the road as we approach £1:35 @ litre unleaded X it by 4.55 and you have the price of fuel @ 614.25 pence a gallon, this is unsustainable and will wreck havoc with the economy and the  personal lives of millions.  The best brains in Britain came up with higher taxation on fuel and  an increase in VAT, to get us back in economic recovery, I ask you!

The BMF ACU and other motoring organisations should be protecting our and their interests, but it doesn't seem to be happening, perhaps motorcyclists should set up a national garage chain with the fuels that we need and support it & challenge & ignore conventional wisdom.

Its a Free County isn't it!

Cheers

JBW

[bikerbob]

Hi there
 I have again contacted my MP and informed him that I am not satisfied with the reply given by the minister he did not answer my main concerns all he said was to quote the regulations and say do not repair old petrol tanks buy a new one he probably thinks you can just nip down to the local bike shop and buy one he also probably has no idea how the the classic bike market works. My MP has replied saying he has written a letter to the minister asking for detailed replies to my concerns I await his response.

[bikerbob]

Hi there.
Some  further info on Ethanol I have read most of the research carried out by Qintiq who were commisioned by the government to look into the effects of Ethanol on vehicles and I cannot get over how complacent the government's attitude to this is when you consider that it states in the report that when in 2013 we will be on 10% Ethanol  there will be something like 8.5 million vehicles on the road over 10 years old that could be affected adversely by Ethanol also some early fuel injection systems as late as 2005 could also be affected, it also states that the classic vehicle industry employs some 27,000 people in the UK and is worth about 3billion pouds.

[johnnyboy-wonder57]

Bob,
Send your findings to MCN, I know its the Motorcycling equivalent to a Red Top Daily but let's see if they have the balls to launch a campaign!
Cheers

John

[HoraceWorblehat]

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

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel

So 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

[bikerbob]

Hi there
Have just recieved another reply from the minister via my MP he does clarify some points and I notice that he does now say that it is not the governments "firm intention" to go to 10% Ethanol from 2013 which in their original report they said it was a firm intention. But to me it means that they have just not made up their minds yet. I still believe that their should be more publicity about this.

[MickJR]

Hi.  I have read this thread with great interest. I have a 1965 Triumph 3TA and I have been experiencing the problems that have been described in the replies to the original post, ie: fuel taking the paint off of the tank, problems with the slide, float sticking, jets blocked, sticky valves, etc. Upon stripping the carb I found everything was covered with a sticky substance. After further investigating I found that, at sometime in its life, the inside of the tank has been coated with some sort of sealer. This has started to deteriorate and lumps peeling off. Until I read this , I almost bought a new carb ( £160, ouch, that's more than my weeks pension ). Now I realise that the problems could well be caused by Ethanol in the fuel. Short of cutting the bottom out of the tank to get rid of all this muck, can anyone suggest an easier way? Bearing in mind that I have just had the tank re-sprayed ( an arm and a leg, lol.)
I don't really mind stripping the engine and carb to get rid of this sticky stuff but mucking about cutting holes in the tank is a bit much for me.

[Welsh Wizard]

this page may be of interest with this subject.

http://www.burtonbikebits.net/ethanol-in-fuels.htm

[bikerbob]

Hi there
To mickjr I have just done two tanks on Bsa's with old sealant in them, you can get a complete Kit from www.tankcareproducts.co.uk which will provide you with everything that you will need to do the job remove the old sealant and reseal with Ethanol proof sealant.

[MickJR]

To BikerBob.

Hi.  Thanks for the info. Have looked on their site and it would appear that their product would solve my problem.
Just out of curiosity, which pack did you use?  Have looked at " Kit 1" and "Kit 2" ( bit pricey but cheaper than a new tank, lol.)
Me being way past the " sell by date", is it a comparatively easy job to do?

Regards.
Mick

[johnnyboy-wonder57]

Hi, Sent out a few concerns to historic vehicle organisations,  I am concerned about the lack of effective organised opposition to moves to alter radically the way we live in a non-democratic way,  what we have in our country is no longer traffic management but traffic control.  I was I never asked about in a democratic way, about non-targeted use of speed cameras, nor as a fee paying motorist/rider, did I have a say in the  speed bumps, chicanes, the constant lowering of road speeds to new "Safe" speed limits, and the fact that I also now pay, twice as much road-tax as  a new plastic-bubble car for a 740cc motorcycle?

Globally, it is an very important point on bio-fuels being grown on land that should be producing food, as important as constantly building homes on grade 1 & 2 Farmland in the UK, I unknowingly do not want anybody to starve anywhere on my account, but as long as Politicians and Agencies pursue Outcome driven policies this kind of crap will happen, incidentally it has been identified that in the UK 750,000 children do not get enough to eat daily.
The French may have there idiosyncrasies, but they no how to organise and protest when their well-being and personal rights are being challenged.  Ethanol is for some a life & death issue as a previous contributor has pointed out, for me at the moment its just another thing being imposed and controlled by those that effectively consider "they know better" and a hobby and interest for many, that may be "dead in the water" through imposed fuel policies.

Of note, I do not consider CO2 as a pollutant either, but consider polluting  and over-fishing the seas,  cutting down the forests indiscriminately to be the initial criminal acts. Plant more trees globally and we would all see, better living conditions and a corrective naturally assisted process taking place.

And  please consider too, that some Hedge fund managers & their corporations are controlling global food prices and one such firm controls 50% of the Global copper reserves & 60% of the Global zinc reserves, power isn't often where many of the papers would have you believe it is.

Cheers

John

[bikerbob]

To MickJR
I used the Kit1 for a Bsa A10 tank which is 4gallons from start to finish that is when you can put fuel back in the tank  took about 8days. You must follow the instructions carefully the only things that I found slightly different were after using the tank sealant remover I left the petrolcap on for 24 hours then removed and left for a further 2days until the inside dried out  completely the original sealant had been removed and was broken down into small flakes which took some getting out I put some old nuts and bolts in the tank and shook up to remove the few flakes that were sticking to the sides of the tank. After which I followed the instructions until I came to use the new sealant I found it flows much better if you pre-heat the tank I used a hot air gun also after swilling the sealant around inside the tank I reheated the tank with the hot air gun and again swilled the sealant around a few times to get an even coating. I might add that you have to leave the tank for about a week before you again put fuel in this is to allow the sealant to cure. I have had no problems with the newly sealed tnk.

[MickJR]

To BikerBob.

Many thanks for taking the time out to reply, much appreciated.

I'll order the kit1 and have a go, if things go pear shaped it will not be any worse than it is now, lol.
Just a final question if I may. As I have only just had the tank resprayed, will this stuff have any adverse effects on the new paintwork should I be hamfisted enough to get some on it ?  It was done with "Twin pack or 2 pack" whatever it was called.

Once again, many thanks for your feedback. I feel a lot happier now that I know I might not have to fork our for a new tank.

Mick.