Is 10% ethanol in gas bad for my engine? I have a '89 305 TPI. I was coming home from this girls house and I needed gas badly. It was about 3:00-3:30am so the only close station that was open was a Speedway. Their gas is 10% ethanol. Is that bad?

Thanks,
Matt

 

In a lower concentration such as what is sold commonly (10%) it's not all that bad. Almost every station around here contains 10%! I would prefer not to run it that way, but I really don't have much of a choice!

 

no, its not bad, we sold it at my work too.
the 10%ethanol will actualy have a *cleaning* properties for your injector, and have also a higher octane that plain regular. also better gas mileage, proven fact.

i know for a fact that using ethanol makes it cleaner on the valves and piston, we hard a car with a blown head gasket (external leak) and he used ethanol for years, the piston and valve were brown and by using just a rag and brake cleaner everything came off, no carbon deposit... (pontiac 6000 with v6).

i dont use it in my car because i use "Super", make best mileage and super smell good too ya you read that right, it smells better

 

It can allow better mileage if you tune for it. Since it tends to detonate a little less, you can usually advance the timing a bit more and enjoy the benefits. If you don't tune a little for it, you can actually get about the same mileage or slightly less at low RPM cruising.

It generally does a very good job of cleaning system components, and lowering emissions of NOx and CO.

 

I think the magic statement is that you tune for it. I have run "gasohol" in my 68 350/holley 4spd/4.56 car before and it ran like crap. For one reason the alcohol tries to clean up everything in the fuel system and it ends up in the fuel filter. I would not recomend it for a car more than a year old because of that.

 

thank you vader

I just know on that stuff my gas milage drops even when using the cheapo stuff I normally do.... man I love 87 octane


but then again nothing does damage like the 92-93 does
go from 280-340 miles per tank down to
160-200miles per tank