Gasoline without ethanol

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Because of my age, and also because of where I live, I am too often slow to realize stuff. IOW, I end up being surprised by things everyone else already knows. This could easily be one of those situations:

I was surprised and delighted this morning to find, for the very first time in perhaps (I really dunno) thirty or forty years, availability of gasoline, at a regular service station, containing no ethanol.

No trip to the airport needed!! :laughing:

Now of course this is something a much younger version of myself took for granted . . . . like so much else that has been lost in the more recent years. It was easy as pie, years ago, to buy 100% gasoline. I did so myself countless times. And I could buy, at my option, several different grades of ā€œreal gasolineā€ back then, too.

The real gasoline I saw offered for sale this morning was available only in ā€œregularā€. But thatā€™s still a wonderful thing. Did I buy some? You betcha! The cost? OK, here it is:

Regular gasoline with 10% ethanol was selling for three bucks/gallon. The real, 100%, regular gasoline was selling for $3.60/gallon. That is cheap considering I operate a 25hp mower engine, worth a lot of money, which dies a slow death when you try to run the ethanol garbage through it. But up until today I had no choice. And Iā€™ll likely switch my automobile over to real gasoline, as well, though this morning I ā€œfilled 'er upā€ with the junk gasoline, I guess just out of habit and because I was so ā€œtook by surpriseā€. I mean, again, it has been years since I could buy real gasoline so easily.

Anyway if you live where all this is, and has been, commonplace you are (in my eyes) very fortunate. So far I am finding this real gasoline at just a single station. I certainly hope it catches on and becomes widely available here where I live. Ethanol is junk.

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Ethanol is a farming / corn subsidy. Itā€™s lots less efficient than oil, which is why the more your dilute the gas with it, the worse your MPG.

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Absolutely. Iowa BS corn politics. Nobody wants their crap but they have the ā€œfirst in the nationā€ primary election and they force their lousy corn low BTU/gallon ā€œfuelā€ down our throats.

Gasoline has 114,000 BTU/gallon
Ethanol has 76,000 BTU/gallon

And ethanol is NO GOOD for engines.

The more I think about this the happier I am to get this ethanol crap out of my life. And to hell with the cost!!

Course the extra cost might not be what it appears when you factor in the additional energy and the enhanced engine longevity.

They need to feed that corn to their hogs and cease and desist trying to sell it to me!!

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For those of you that might not know much about ethanol levels in gas, generally speaking:

If your small engine power tool or car was manufactured after 2011, there should be no discernible benefit to running gasoline without ethanol. E10 has been the mandate since then (and E5 was for a while prior) and engine manufacturers have been designing engines to cope with what E10 does to them since before the mandate went into effect. If your engine was designed prior to 2007, then it definitely wasnā€™t designed to run E10 and could theoretically run better on pure gasoline.

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Thanks, good post and good to know. My entire automobile predates 2007 so I made an error this morning when filling up with corn.

Next time Iā€™m buying the real gasoline!

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I have a station nearby me that sells gas w/o ethanol. I think one of the shell stations ā€˜in townā€™ does as well. In my experience, you can usually find it in the more rural areas. Lots of people out by me who need it/want it for tractors and other smaller engines.

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Iā€™ve been able to find ethanol free gas ever since they started adding it in. This is the website I use:

Ethanol-free gas stations in the U.S. and Canada (pure-gas.org)

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Thank you, zzz, for posting. That is an absolutely killer website. I had no idea.

Itā€™s nice. The world has not gone quite as far to hell as I wrongly had supposed. Availability of real gasoline in 2021 is a Godsend!

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Iā€™ve read thisā€¦ (your quote, below) Iā€™ve also read and heard from small engine sales people that most small engines donā€™t like gas with ethanol.

Itā€™s crazy how in our information age it is so difficult to find the real truthā€¦

Anyone have more details? Like what part of the small engine was supposedly damaged by gasahol?

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I have not researched this extensively; tend instead to go with common sense and gut feel. Have seen mention of carburettor port plugging (the ports in small engines are smaller in diameter than those in an automobile carburettor) and stratification. But believe it goes well beyond those things.

Ethanol is hygroscopic. It is relied upon, when present in gasoline, to raise the octane of the mixture, which it does. However:

Should stratification occur, you end up with a portion of your fuel having more ethanol and another portion having less. Since the ethanol is critical to achieve advertised octane, what ensues is a portion of your fuel going below spec.

This is unimportant, and is not an issue, if your vehicle, or small engine, is in frequent use and you are constantly replenishing the fuel. But for engines used only intermittently, it is something to consider.

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Oh, the engines copes with it.
Everyone copes with taxes, but doesnā€™t mean we like it.

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Some dont have the ability to do a ā€œself relizationā€ on what they say.

Im finding this more n more lately.

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Every engine is going to quickly seize. The designing is all about what can be done to delay this from happening. Motor oil allows the engine to cope with the mere act of running. Newer engines are designed to handle/avoid/deal with other deteriorating factors as well, like E10.

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From what I hear, itā€™s usually the rubber/plastic parts that degrade and fail prematurely.

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Especially in two cycles with long, hot summers. I know, there is rubber/plastic in 4 cycles too, but they seem to deal with the ethanol better. Old outboards seem to hate it more than anything.

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I have had the same experience. Even had 2 seemingly well-informed people give me opposing information on the same day. I went with my gut and common-sense similar to Shinobi. Been a few years and everything still works :slight_smile: