Gasoline

[mrmike]

  I know that my People S 150 will run just fine on regular 87 octane gas. How about ethanol-free gas?
 My local gas station has 90 octane ethanol-free gasoline. It is the same price as their 93-octane gas. They both cost $.81 more per gallon than the 87 octane. My scooter is fuel injected. Is there any advantage to running ethanol-free that would justify that price difference?

[Stig / Major Tom]

Some people never drain the tank over the winter - or for the 4 years it sits in their generators....and never have a problem with the gas from their local stations . And for most of America that is the E10 - ethanol mix.

In 25 yrs I've never drained a mower's tank. Many of those years with E10 in the tank. The mower ran just fine afterwards.

We don't have ethanol free pumps around here. The very large dealer in town, all brands of machines, Ducati's on down to Kymco's....jet skis, 4 wheelers, etc., etc. fill the tank in your new vehicle with Shell E10 87 or 93, from down the street, depending on the manual.

What gas?....
Whatever you think is best.
But, I'd always recommend (as does the service desk at above dealership) that one use gas listed on the pump as a Top Tier fuel. They don't cost a penny more.
They are blended to keep modern engines healthy and running cleaner.

Stig

[Tromper]

If it's happy with the cheap stuff, keep using it.
My injected Burgman does not care.
My carb'd SYM does run a bit better on non eth usually.  Not generally enough to justify the price, but at 70+ mpg I'm not too worried about that.
Maybe run a couple tanks of the cheap stuff, track your mpg, & do the same with non-eth 90 (overkill for octane but lack of eth is the point).

[Iahawk]

fuel injection cures many (ethanol) ills.. you're fine to run the ethanol fuel. I would not recommend storing ethanol fuel for long periods of time as ethanol will attract water into the fuel over time. (Chickanic (sp?) has a small engine youtube channel and did a big video on the #1 issue she encounters in small engine repair...water in fuel.)

 In a fuel injected vehicle this is not a big deal...in a carbureted engine? Not so good. I live in Iowa, dislike ethanol immensely, and run non ethanol fuel (readily available at every station) in all my engines except my cars.

[rjs987]

I would stick with Ethanol. The octane matters more than Ethanol or non-Ethanol. Higher octane in an engine that only needs the lower octane sometimes ends up with worse economy. Sometimes. The only fuel related issues I've ever had in any vehicle was with NON-Ethanol in a carbonated car engine... And switching to Ethanol fuel solved that particular problem. I did a test a LONG time ago in that same car going 30 days of a long distance commute using non-Ethanol and then 30 days of the very same driving in the very same temps and road conditions and speeds using only Ethanol. I found no difference in mpg! Some tanks of one were 2-3 mpg better and some tanks of the other were 2-3 mpg better. Mostly Interstate driving, same route and traffic both ways both times.

BTW- the fuel related issues were a frozen fuel line in below zeroF temps one time and a plugged fuel filter another time. Ethanol prevented the freezing and also cleaned out the gunk in the fuel lines and I never had a cleaner fuel filter after replacing it from the collected gunk that was cleaned out. Similar result for cleaning by switching from a paraffin based oil to a graphite based oil (paraffin left a wax deposit everywhere).