Ethanol Free Fuel

All Sunoco stations in this area have been offering 91 octane ethanol-free fuel for over a year.

 

Ethanol-free fuel contains …. Well no ethanol, AKA alcohol. Alcohol is Hygroscopic in nature and absorbs moisture from the air, as in water. This water then ends up in your fuel tank whitch are VERY BAD. As fuel is lighter then water the water ends up at the bottom of your tank. If your fuel is drawn from the bottom of your tank, then it gets sucked up first and then it is VERY VERY BAD for your engine.


This all takes time mind you, so if you park your car for more then a couple of months at a time, the Ethanol Free fuel is HIGHLY recommended.

 

I wish I could get ethanol-free fuel! I'd pay a premium for it.

 

Alcohol actually makes water miscible with gasoline, so the water does not separate out as mentioned above. In the olden days before evaporative controls on fuel tanks, we used to get water that would condense into the fuel tank and collect at the bottom. The solution was to add gas dryer, which was essentially ethanol, to allow the water to form a solution with the gasoline and burn properly. Otherwise, the water was heavier than the gasoline and the water would pool around the pick-up for the fuel pump, making the engine run very rough.

 

Affirmative

 

That is a function of octane and ethanol actually boosts octane. Given the same octane, no difference in performance between ethanol free and 10-15% ethanol except for fuel consumption. Ethanol has less energy than the same volume of gasoline, so fuel consumption goes up.

 

Most motorcycle and small engine manufacturers void warrantees over 10% ethanol. Many cars are being "allowed" up to 15%. All driven by federal law to push corn juice by the billions of gallons into the delivery system each year going up. I have a race bike that was rated at 10% max but the fuel rubber became prematurely rigid in some area and melting in others. Get real gas in any vehicle if you can is my recommendation. That junk is better suited on a grill with lots of butter IMO and should be no where near a vehicle you care about. There's a web site that pops up time to time showing real gas pumps by state but has some stale data.

 

Pure-gas.org is the 'real gas' website

 

New to this chat forum as I've only recently acquired (over the Christmas & NY holidays) an '07 599 (#150556, Sept '06 build) ) from Ferrari South Bay.

Almost two yrs ago, I retired as an Engineering Manager with Materials & Processes background for an aerospace/space outfit that also supplied premier F1 teams with fluid conveyance products, especially to my fave team Ferrari Gestione Sportiva engineers in Maranello with whom I collaborated closely from '97 to '15.

FYI back in the early 90's, we also supplied similar products to Penske, PacWest, etc., for Champ Car racing which had used 100% ethanol as racing fuel. Needless to say, that fuel caused severe corrosion in some engine parts and rendered rubber seals ineffective after extensive soak in alcohol. It became a policy of theirs to literally run their engines in pure unleaded fuel after each race to eliminate any alcohol in their fuel systems.

There are exotic metals and synthetic elastomer seals that can withstand any negative effects from 100% ethanol soak but are also compatible with pump lead fuel, but they are a bit more expensive to use at that time. Likewise science hadn't caught up just yet, so the synthetic elastomer seals were relatively too soft to withstand the rigors of hard core racing.

It's quite interesting to compare the material content of racing engines from the 90's as compared to materials used on engines over 25 years later today. For example, I designed on scratch paper an innovative fuel connector for then Lead Chassis Engineer Simone Resta (now Chief Designer) during a visit in June '06. They had encountered many problems with a competitor's product, eg, Rubens Barrichello's car stopped mid race due to lack of fuel delivery while leading a race! It took us over 3 years of R&D to improve the design and materials and tens of thousands of kms of race testing before they approved its installation in their F1 cars for the 2010 season. In most cases IMHO, Ferrari's quest for extreme quality is equal only to space launch products for NASA with whom I also had to deal with.

Sorry for the long post, but it's a bit difficult to share such stories without further explanation of extenuating circumstances. Thanks folks. Happy to join this forum to share expertise and also learn from other experts. Glad to be a Ferrari owner after a 51 year wait (another long story).

 

Too bad the quest for quality does not translate to sticky buttons and dash leather shrinkage. Welcome to the fold. The 599 is a great car . Enjoy the ride. Mike

 

Thanks for the welcome thoughts, Mike.

It is interesting to note that there is a complete separation of quality departments between the F1 Maranello and the Modena road car operations, at least as I had observed during my visits there and as stated by my friends in the F1 quality department when I inquired. They're two separate entities each run by their own leaders who report to Marchionne.

Now as for the "sticky" buttons, Ferrari road cars are not alone in this nagging issue because my '06 Cayenne Turbo S also suffers from the exact same malady. The rubberized radio buttons that control navigation, etc., has gotten quite tacky. Re the dash leather shrinkage, some high end Mercedes-Benz models also had the same annoying problem. I owned an '87 560SEC wherein the dash leather covering not only shrank but also cracked.

What the common denominator for those two issues I believe could be frequent exposure to high heat in a fully enclosed car during summer and most possibly UV rays. Both are notorious for causing the 'outgassing' of some elements within the composition of rubber, leather and plastics, at least the elements that allow those materials to remain pliable and consistent. Another factor could be the application of or exposure to a silicone-based "conditioner" which can actually do more harm than good.

 

Adding my two cents......
Driving from New York to Alaska and back in TEN DAYS!
In my 2004 Aston Martin Vanquish , the change was HUGE!
We went from 13.4 mpg to 19.9 , once returning to the north east the mileage tumbled.
The Ethanol as many of us have know is a FILLER gas.....its junk.
My exhaust tips went from black to silver white from such a clean burn.
Old cars like Model A's , 1950 and all the rest have been eaten up alive with respect to fuel bowls , gaskets and floats.
I WISH we could get it in New York, yes shell can mail you 5 gallon cans and well worth it but a pain to put in.......
GTJOEY1314

 

Well what do we know, there's an article on autospies.com yesterday regarding a proposed bill in Congress to repeal the law passed in 2005 that mandated the addition of ethanol to gasoline. Even the EPA agrees and one of the original bill's authors has said that it's high time to stop adulterating gas with ethanol distilled from corn due to the additional burdens it has imposed on our economy (corn subsidies, other restrictions) and its domino effect that resulted in higher costs for other daily staples. Costs vs benefits turned out to be a negative now since we're almost self sufficient in oil production. Likewise, MPG of cars using 10% ethanol mixture was actually lower and the infrastructure for delivering ethanol was costlier since it cannot be piped to storage facilities due to its highly corrosive nature.

Hey for once the US Congress is thinking correctly, except perhaps for the senators and reps for the state of Iowa who get tremendous funding from the 'corn lobby'.

So maybe, just maybe, premium unleaded gasoline prices will now come down; NOT!