The BSA A7-A10 Forum
Bikes, Pictures, Stories & more => Chat, Offtopic & Everything Else => Topic started by: bikerbob on 30.07. 2021 13:53
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For anyone who is interested or worried about the effects of E10 in petrol there is an excellent article in the August issue of the Bsa Star magazine It explains The Good The Bad and The Ugly which is the title of the article.
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THe Good, it is cheaper
The Bad you use more so no net advantage
The Ugly Highly unstable adsorbs water & grows very acidic bacteria that attack base metals so it has to be fresh & should always be drained out of the carb if the bike is going to sit for a couple of weeks or more.
been using it down here for near 20 years.
Will be a problem running HC engines but who runs bigger pistons than 9:1's now days
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A quick Google Search "Bacterial Contamination in Petroleum Fuels" brought up a whole list of learned papers. Looks like ethanol is being added to diesel and aviation kero as well and the problems are well documented. In normal everyday use less of a problem, but vehicles and plant left standing gives the bacteria a chance to grow and cause problems as the acid attacks some metallic elements of the fuel system.
The culprit is a species of acetobacter, whose metabolic pathways end in the production of acetic acid. Good old Vinegar to you and me.
Like I said, sourced from Google, so must be right. Er well.......
Swarfy.
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A brief summary of the article. The research was carried out by Manchester University using an engine designed in the 1930's. The Good is all petrol engines suffer from Cyclic Variability a term I have never heard of or understand but depending on the amount it can cause serious damage to engine E10 reduces the effects. The Bad is yes itcan have detrimental effect on some materials such as hoses and seals etc, but the reaserchers say that if you are aware of these effects then there is alternativematerials available that are not affectd by E10. Also E10 contains oxygen which will give you a weaker mixture but this also is fixable only carbs with fixed jets such as Weber or Zenith could be problimatic but are still fixable. The Ugly is if you get water in your fuel the Ethanol turns the water acidic and quite quickly can lead to severe corrosion. The reaserchers think that this is not something to worry about as long as you do not get water in your fuel. The final thing they said was that the inhibitors that are sold at the moment do not prevent this type of corrosion. The water in the fuel they talk about is rainwater getting in from heavy downpours through leaky filler caps.
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Thought ethanol was hygroscopic - like methanol - in that it absorbs moisture from the air? In other words, the ethanol creates the water problem.
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Keep your petrol tank either full or empty. It's the part-full ones that get the problems with water vapour condensing out as the tank expands and contracts with temperature changes moving air in and out of the breather.
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THe Good, it is cheaper
The Bad you use more so no net advantage
The Ugly Highly unstable adsorbs water & grows very acidic bacteria that attack base metals so it has to be fresh & should always be drained out …..
No net advantage? *pull hair out*
Are they actually saying for example, if you add 10% Ethanol you use 10% more overall? ( which would be 1% advantage but you know what I mean!)
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As I said at the start it is an excellent article in as far as it goes but basically what it tells us is that there are problems with Ethanol for older vehicles but if you know that, then they are manageable. But it did not say anything about Ethanol being hydroscopic, I would also like to see some serious reasearch done on these additives that are being sold as cures for Ethanol problems, Can anyone explain in layman's terms what cyclic variability is all about I have googled it but still cannot understand what exactly it is.
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Cyclic variability = every stroke burns differently with no pattern to the variation. Due to ignition wandering, gas flow variations. Even modern computer controlled engines suffer from it. Our rag tag engines must be particularly bad, but I don't think anyone has worried about it.
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B.B From what these learned studies show, there is a variation in the combustion process between every engine stroke or cycle. Just like the gas flame on your stove flickers and wavers slightly, but still burns well enough to boil the kettle, it hardly matters. Likewise our engines run well enough, but as researchers investigating combustion of hydrocarbons at the molecular level find, sure enough in the real world nothing's perfect and there are variations. It don't need some genius to tell them that.
Whether this is of any consequence barely matters, as we ride our bikes a changing throttle setting, gradient, spark intensity, fuel flow etc are all additional variables, let alone the fuel itself which may contain hydrocarbons of varying chain lengths, water, organic material etc, all contributing to a less than 100% perfect and identical combustion on every stroke. If I'm screwing it on down the white line I tend to concern myself with safely completing the manoeuvre, and I'm well happy that it keeps going, imperfect combustion and all.
All storage tanks will accumulate water to a degree, this enters as water vapour which condenses, or by direct water entry through leaking or missing caps etc. The water in the fuel provides opportunity for anaerobic bacterial growth.
Previous posts and threads discussed the merits of adding water directly to ethanol containing fuel, then decanting off the upper petroleum fraction to leave the ethanol in the aqueous lower layer. Most fuel tanks draw from slightly above the bottom of the tank, above the level of contaminants. Our gravity fed arrangement would benefit from a water trap/filter below the carb. I'm thinking transparent inline jobbies at the lowest point of the fuel line. Certainly easier than messing with barrels, funnels and the inevitable spill.
As for additives, I reckon its the snake oil salesman's next prospect.
Swarfy.
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experiment coming up with two open containers on the back yard. i am doing this because when i clean parts in petrol the petrol goes milky with what i consider to be moisture. i will do one with petrol and one with tetraboost because i am conviced it keeps the petol stable. results later and it might prove me wrong. you never know untill you have a go *good3*
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wowzer i knew it stopped my petrol going bad over winter and turned my betsy into a kawasmacker nutter h2 , well not quite. result in and that took less time than it took doris johnson to put his brolly up but not as quick as he got his johnson up again *lol*.... esso E5 is very milky and has globs of water that look to be anything betwwen 2mm and 6mm and lots and lots of them. esso E5 with tetraboost [ it is expensive and i have nothing to do with it ] has small 1/2 mm to 1 mm globs and about 6 of them. may the lord help us if everywhere goes E10
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just been out to have a look and given the E5 a slight shake and the globs of water started to join into mahoosive pear shapes. i then poured in the E5 with tetraboost in it and all the globs separated into very small globs. i tried to get these to join like they did in the E5 and they mostly stayed separated only a few joined to make a 4ish mm glob while others stayed at about 1mm. back yard experiment complete *beer* thankyou for listening.
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Thankyou Ted Flash and Swarcut for taking the time to explain about cyclic variation I now understand a lot better and will not worry about it.
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tetraboost
You are a braver man than me. I bought some but never used it. The label put me off with the skull and cross bones and all the other warnings about handling *sad2*
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having spent years at a chemical plant and most of the stuff i worked with has now been banned!!modern day lables don't put me off. COSHH regulations require a green lable on a bar of soap to tell you it's safe to use
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Berger,
Are you saying that in your experiment it already had water in the E10? Or was it after a period of standing?
We have suffered with E10 for a while here, and the push now is to go to E15! I won't get into the politics of it, as I will get on a rant!
I have found that keeping my carbs empty, the tanks full and treated with Stabil, the fuel will stay good for a period of years. It is VERY hard to find "regular" fuel here in the midwest (corn country).
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i have been to the pub *yeah* not been in ages *countdown*seabee the petrol was E5 fresh in a container poured into two vessels [ i like that word at the moment] and the stuff added to one of the vessels. --- have i spelt that wright? and it did what has been reported. my conclusion is i have proved to myself that E is no good to man or beast, it sucks moisture in very easily.
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I'm a belt and braces person, so I add Redex Lead Replacement, Carb Cleaner and Sta-Bil 360 Marine Ethanol Treatment to a 20 ltr fuel can and fill that up at petrol station with premium petrol. I fill my bike up from that and I make sure I keep the tank full both summer and winter to try and prevent condensation. I've been doing that for a few years now. It only takes a small amount of each additive to add to 20 ltrs, so it doesn't cost a lot, it's no trouble, and it makes me feel I'm giving my A10 the best chance I can to stay reliable and trouble free.
I did hear that when they bring in E10, here in the UK, for 95 octane, 97+ octane premium petrol will stay as E5.
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having spent years at a chemical plant and most of the stuff i worked with has now been banned!!modern day lables don't put me off. COSHH regulations require a green lable on a bar of soap to tell you it's safe to use
I had a delivery contract for an engineering supply company
The storeman refused to load a 20 litre drum into an enclosed van , so I put it on the roof
The drum contained liquid hand wash .
In a similar vein I get mower blades from the USA
There is a sticker across the bolt hole noting that the blade contains nickle a substance that can cause cancer & / or birth defects
One would have thought the removal of pieces of ones anatomy by the spinning blade might pose a slightly greater risk
And no mention of the boron in the steel a far greater castenogen than nickle ever will be .