ORIGINAL: BkChallenger09R/T
I put some gas in my Challenger 6 speed about a month ago . Then noticed a sticker that said it had ethanol . I about had a heart attack . Had not seen that at any other Shell station I been to . Asked the clerk inside . She didn't know anything. I had a very bad experence with ethanol back in the 80's . Had a new Dodge 15 passenger Van I hauled workers to work . A station owner talked me into buying his gas with a big discount. Had no problem till months later when I was on vacation for two weeks. The Van sat . And I drove my cars. The first day back to work the Van didn't run right . Then the engine caught on fire . Did alot of damage to the engine. Melted the Thermoquad carb. Had to pull the engine heads off . My insurance investagated . And found the gas and ethanol had seperated . And the ethanol had setteled in the bottom of the tank . And that was where the fuel pick up was. Since it was the gas that caused the damage . They only paid for the inspection . I don't want that stuff in my R/T
More realistically, the ethanol probably degraded the seals in the fuel pick-up, the fuel pump or some other rubber or plastic lines in the fuel system an caused a leak.
Not sure where I stand on 10% ethanol nowadays (I can't avoid it anyway here in Illinois) but back in the 80s and 90s, I agree, ethanol in the gas was not a good thing. Cars were just starting to be produced with the proper materials to handle ethanol. The soft parts (hoses, gaskets, seals, diaphragms) used in earlier cars would degrade in the presance of ethanol then leak prematurely. Some of the hard parts would corrode in the presance of ethanol resulting in clogged parts. Combine that with poor quality concrete fuel tanks at filling stations that would leak ground water into the fuel tanks. With regular petrol, any water would seperate, but with ethanol, the water and any other water soluble contaminants would combine with the ethanol (remember high school chemistry??ethanol absorbs water-the reason you use concentrated (and clean) ethanol in the form of Dry Gas) and you could end up with more water and dirt in your car's tank.
Nowadays, cars fuel systems are manufactured to handle - up to 10% - ethanol as described by manufacturers. Filling station underground tanks have also been upgraded to include a proper liner to prevent ingress of moisture and dirt. Also, the amount of fuel we consume today prevents gas from sitting around for extended periods in the underground tanks.
So, don't worry about using todays gas with up to 10% ethanol.
It is presumed that we could even run on 15 to 20 % or higher without any problems but manufacturers have not completed or published results to confirm it. With the inreased availability of flex-fuel cars and E-85 fuel (85% ethanol), often within the same model (only computer programming differences between a flex-fuel and a non-flex-fuel car). The big oil companies don't like E-85 (obviously) so they keep lobbiests busy on hand to highlight any real or imagined problems with ethanol usage in automobiles. Ethanol can run cleaner (less deposits inside your engine), burn cooler (heat hurts performance) and be more fuel efficient if the motor is set up properly (high compression as in 12 or 13:1). But in most of todays cars, including the flex fueled variety, operate in the 9 or 10:1 (or even lower) compression ratio in order to run good on the standard gasoline grades available today (86, 87,89,91,93 octane with or without up to 10% ethanol).