List of Ethanol-Free Gasoline States?

timwinters said:
Does anyone know what you're actually buying if/when you do this? Buying fuel before ethanol is added means you have fuel that is not "oxygenated" since it has neither ethanol, ETBE, or MTBE in it. How does this affect the fuel? What's the octane level? Does this fuel comply with ASTM specifications D-4814 as required by the MoGas STC?

I don't know the answers to the above, I'm not a chemist, I'm just asking.

But, my gut feeling is that, if you do this, you're experimenting in an area where you really don't want to be (or should be) going. But maybe not since oxygenates simply allow the fuel to burn cleaner...
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The base gas is still the same 91 octane that you've always got. 100% Ethanol is around 129 octane. Add 6% ethanol to the mogas and it's octane will go up slightly while energy will go down slightly. 1 gallon of mogas/ethanol mix has less energy than 1 gallon of straight mogas, causing your burn rate to go up.

That being said, even if the base mogas was less, say 87 or 88 octane and they used the ethanol to bring it back up to 91 octane, who cares? In my case, I don't. My engine is 7:1 compression and was designed for 80/87 avgas, not 100LL. Anyway you look at it, straight mogas will burn fine in it, and given that mogas contains slightly more energy per gallon than avgas I should get a little bit more endurance.

Joe
 
Doggtyred said:
Its not the fiberglass thats damaged, its the EPOXY/RESIN (that holds the fiberglass together) in some instances that is not durable against the ethanol. Some are, some arent. Its an expensive lesson to learn after the fact.

This is a known concern in the canard / fiberglass plane community, since the fuel tanks on fiberglass planes tend to be fiberglass as well. Cant remember which particular brand of Jeffco or epoxy the "family" has recommended. Some of the homebuilders have test coupons that have been sitting in jars of gasoline for years that they remove and weigh/examine for degradation periodically.
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Ok -you're right. But damage the resin holding the glass together, the tank is still damaged, so my statement isn't incorrect either. The term 'fiberglass', as I employed it, is a description of the type of tank damaged (as opposed to aluminum or steel).
 
Dr. O said:
Drive the purple grape to the local fuel distributor and buy 250 at a time.
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Two problems, Denny:

1. The Purple Grape (a '95 Nissan pickup) was retired several years ago after the frame rusted through and the damned thing nearly broke in half. It's been replaced by a MUCH heavier-duty '95 Toyota T100 4x4, lovingly called "The Green Grape".

2. My tank is only 55 gallons... :rolleyes:
 
Doggtyred said:
Iowa doesn't have hurricanes.
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Clearly you haven't been paying attention to our Iowa weather for the last 12 years.


In the last few years we've experienced:
  • Tornadoes that twice have torn off part of our roof.
  • Multiple ice storms that have brought trees down on vehicles and power lines, twice causing minor fires at the hotel.
  • Regular blizzards that paralyze us for days on end
  • Loooong stretches of life-threatening, below-zero weather (like we're in now)
  • a 500-year flood that did over a billion dollars damage and came within 12" (that's one foot) of destroying our hotel.
Does the Gulf have hurricanes? Yep. But compare that risk to what we must deal with as a matter of daily life in the Midwest, and IMHO the benefits far outweigh the risk. Mustang Island hasn't been seriously hit since the 1970s -- and when it's coming you've got up to a week of advance notice. Load the plane, load the motorhome, close the storm shutters, and take a vacation.

If it means never shoveling -- or even SEEING -- snow again, it's worth the risk. After 51 years of living in/with this crap (my first 39 years were in Wisconsin) I am more than ready to escape! :cheerswine:

Finally -- and most importantly -- Mary and I spent 8 years creating our aviation-themed hotel for the sole purpose of being able to hang out with pilots and planes 24/7. With the near-demise of GA in the Midwest -- flying here is just a tiny fraction of what it was just two years ago -- we see very few pilots anymore, and it's time to reassess our location.

To put it bluntly, in our three brief trips to Texas in 2009 we saw more GA flying than we saw here all year. As the economy has tanked, so has flying -- but GA appears to be alive and well along the Texas Gulf Coast -- so it makes a helluva lot more sense for us to build another aviator's dream hotel there.

Our plans are all up in the air right now (sorry for the pun!) -- obtaining financing since the economic collapse has been made exponentially harder -- but everything is on track and looks good right now.
 
Jay Honeck said:
Does the Gulf have hurricanes? Yep. But compare that risk to what we must deal with as a matter of daily life in the Midwest, and IMHO the benefits far outweigh the risk. Mustang Island hasn't been seriously hit since the 1970s -- and when it's coming you've got up to a week of advance notice. Load the plane, load the motorhome, close the storm shutters, and take a vacation.

If it means never shoveling -- or even SEEING -- snow again, it's worth the risk.
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Best of luck to ya.. if you are in Texas the chances increase exponentially of me coming up there to chew the fat with you in person occasionally.. by motorcycle or plane..

But understand a few things that weren't clear in your post.. not all storms form off of Africa.. Push a low out into the Gulf from the mainland US and you can spawn a storm right offshore. Storm surge starts up several days before eyefall/landfall, and on the barrier islands the Ferry's stop running when the tide gets too high. Depending on the island topography, low spots on the road go under and you can get stuck. During hurricane season, if you live on the beach, you need to be able to bug out within 24 hrs of notice.

But at least it doesn't snow... much... very often... (not enough to need a shovel anyways)

I live in a coastal county but not on the beach..
 
dmccormack said:
Couple all the Iowa disasters with the bone-numbing tedium and I can understand Jay's need to move.

:yesnod:
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Oh, life in Iowa City is rarely tedious. With the University of Iowa here (30K students, 15K support personnel) Iowa City is so unlike the rest of Iowa that it's hard to even consider it part of the same state.

And, ahem, the Orange Bowl (and our Iowa Hawkeyes) ROCKED last night! What a great football game!

Actually, now that I think of it, Mustang Island is completely unlike the rest of Texas, too, strangely enough... I seem to have a penchant for living in areas that haven't been assimilated into the dominant culture...
:D
 
Jay Honeck said:
Oh, life in Iowa City is rarely tedious. With the University of Iowa here (30K students, 15K support personnel) Iowa City is so unlike the rest of Iowa that it's hard to even consider it part of the same state.
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You mean it's not all endless, dull, straight, featureless, windswept flatness that extends for hundreds of miles with nary a tree in sight?

:eek:
 
dan you need to get off the interstate. and quit listening to Haywood Banks songs...:)
 
dmccormack said:
You mean it's not all endless, dull, straight, featureless, windswept flatness that extends for hundreds of miles with nary a tree in sight?

:eek:
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LOL, go on RAGBRAI some time, and your legs will tell you different!


Trapper John
 
dmccormack said:
So I've heard ---- though the level of cyclist determines what a "hill" is!
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When Chip and his gang of cyclists rolled into ames i remember all of them swearing to never make fun of Iowa again about being flat. they all ride in NW Arkansas, not exactly flatlands, and were sometimes riding 100 miles in a day for "fun"
 
jnmeade said:
One can often have farmer elevators or COOPs deliver a smaller amount than a semi tanker. Probably a couple of hundred gallons - they're used to small deliveries so smaller farms.
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That's the way that I do it. I get all of my MOGAS from a local CO-OP and only pay a few more cents/gal than I do for ethanol tainted crap at the pump.

MAKE SURE that you're not going to let the fuel set for too long because refineries have different blends for different seasons, (winter blend/summer blend).
 
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tonycondon said:
When Chip and his gang of cyclists rolled into ames i remember all of them swearing to never make fun of Iowa again about being flat. they all ride in NW Arkansas, not exactly flatlands, and were sometimes riding 100 miles in a day for "fun"
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I raced -- though only ever reached Cat 3. There's a huge difference between racing shape and touring cyclist shape -- and it has mostly to do with the requirement for a food stop every so many miles.

:rolleyes:

(I did lots of touring on the tandem too -- it's alot more fun and alot less stressful!)
 
slowjoe said:
That being said, even if the base mogas was less, say 87 or 88 octane and they used the ethanol to bring it back up to 91 octane, who cares? In my case, I don't. My engine is 7:1 compression and was designed for 80/87 avgas, not 100LL. Anyway you look at it, straight mogas will burn fine in it, and given that mogas contains slightly more energy per gallon than avgas I should get a little bit more endurance.

Joe
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Joe,

You may not be aware that the "scale" used for measuring aviation fuel octane and MoGas octane are not the same. This is from the Shell Oil Avgas webpage:

Octane rating is a measure of how resistant a fuel is to detonation or "pinking"; the higher the Octane rating, the more the fuel / air mixture can be compressed without detonation happening. To make this clear, octane rating is not a measure of the amount energy in the fuel, but is a measure of its resistance to detonation. The advantage or higher octane fuels is that a higher compression ratio or supercharging ratio can be used, which then leads to a higher engine cycle efficiency, which in turn means more power output for a given fuel burn. However, to confuse things further, there are four principal ways to measure Octane rating, RON, MON, Lean Mixture and Rich Mixture ratings.
Road fuels tend to be measured on a RON scale, for which unleaded fuels tend to be 95 - 98 RON but are only 85 - 87 MON. Avgas is measured on Lean Mixture (similar to MON) but also has a Rich Mixture Octane rating. The Lean Mixture rating is 100 octane (15 octane higher than the comparable 85 MON for unleaded Mogas) but Avgas also has a Rich Mixture rating of 130 which allows higher supercharger boost pressures to be used without detonation occurring. This is particularly a problem when using high power settings at low altitude, for example during take off.
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timwinters said:
Joe,

You may not be aware that the "scale" used for measuring aviation fuel octane and MoGas octane are not the same. This is from the Shell Oil Avgas webpage:
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I've seen signs on some pumps that say the octane is determined by (R+M)/2

I don't know if this is a widespread calculation (I saw the signs in NJ)...but it may confuse things a bit.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I've seen signs on some pumps that say the octane is determined by (R+M)/2

I don't know if this is a widespread calculation (I saw the signs in NJ)...but it may confuse things a bit.
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IIRC, the "R" is for Research Octane Number and the "M" is Motor Octane Number. One gives quite a bit higher number than the other, so the standard was set some years back to average the two methods.


Trapper John
 
timwinters said:
Joe,

You may not be aware that the "scale" used for measuring aviation fuel octane and MoGas octane are not the same. This is from the Shell Oil Avgas webpage:
Click to expand...

I'm aware, but no sense in adding in extra info that'll confuse people. My point here was that straight mogas, especially straight 91 mogas, will run just fine in a 7:1 engine. It is more than sufficient octane on ALL scales used.

Joe
 
slowjoe said:
I'm aware, but no sense in adding in extra info that'll confuse people. My point here was that straight mogas, especially straight 91 mogas, will run just fine in a 7:1 engine. It is more than sufficient octane on ALL scales used.
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Just a data point: I have run 87 octane regular mogas in my low-compression, normally aspirated (not fuel-injected) Lycoming O-540 (new engine in 2002) for 8 years, without a burp. Did the same with my O-320 for four years before that.

These old engines were designed for 80 octane avgas. 100LL is actually detrimental to their operation, since 100LL has four times the lead content. This results in fouled plugs on a biblical scale in my O-540.

Since it's not possible to get mogas everywhere, we have dealt with this problem by switching to (the incredibly expensive) fine-wire spark plugs. We still must lean aggressively on the ground to avoid spark plug fouling. It's an enormous pain in the butt, and certainly can't be much good for the engine.

Mogas -- not 100LL -- is a much better solution to the lack of 80 octane avgas.
 
By the way, Jay, I drove by your motel today. Not real pleasant in Iowa right now, eh?
 
jnmeade said:
By the way, Jay, I drove by your motel today. Not real pleasant in Iowa right now, eh?
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Let's see, Jim...here in Iowa we've got:
  • Massive snowfall? Check.
  • Extreme, life-threatening cold -- the coldest January in history? Check.
  • High winds causing extreme wind-chills? Check.
  • Vehicles that won't start? Check.
  • Rim leaks on cars with tires on aluminum wheels, due to extreme cold? Check.
  • No fly-in guests due to terrible weather? Check. (Well, we did have a crazy pipe-line helicopter pilot get stuck here for a couple of days this past week.)
  • A monochromatic landscape that rivals the moon for lack of definition or life? Check.
What's not to love about Iowa in January? :mad2:
 
dmccormack said:
Isn't the only change from all white to all green? :D
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At this time of year my eyes start to crave the color green. It's almost a physical thing, like hunger for food, or thirst. Humans weren't meant to live in solid ice and snow -- and we are absolutely encased in it here in Iowa.

(Although I see it got down to 28 on Mustang Island this morning. At that temperature their unprotected pipes are in jeopardy. They must literally be dying down there in the land of palm trees and sand.)

Up here, we haven't been able to clear our wheelchair ramp of snow at the hotel, because some idiot parked their car in front of it -- and hasn't moved it since our latest snowstorm. It's now buried in snow, the snow plows can't work around it, and I'm gonna have to have it towed. It's a rental car, probably one of our extended-stay guests (we're chock-full of 'em this winter, thankfully), and they are NOT going to be happy. Oh, well.

It's funny -- Mary and I usually do our "let's find the edge of the snow-line" flight in January. You know -- load the kids in Atlas, and point him South, landing at the first airport where there's no snow. It's fun, and -- until 2006, that line would've been somewhere in Northern Missouri. Kirksville was a common place to land.

We've now had three terrible winters in a row (this is now the coldest January in history), and that January snow line keeps moving farther and farther South. This year, we would have to fly South of Dallas, Texas to get out of the snow mass that now blankets most of the Northern Hemisphere.

I'm starting to think that National Geographic was correct, back in 1978, when they predicted that we were entering the next Ice Age... :frown2:
 
Jay Honeck said:
I'm starting to think that National Geographic was correct, back in 1978, when they predicted that we were entering the next Ice Age... :frown2:
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But, but, but...

The planet has a fever!

AlGoreTestifying.jpg
 
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