This ones got me worried

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Ethanol is trouble in garden & forest machinery: it also buggered up my ex-wife's Bimota Supermono thing (couldn't really call it a motorbike, just a motorbike-shaped heap of stupid ideas and shoddy workmanship).
You can remove ethanol from petrol. Just add water, the combined water and ethanol settle out (as shown by Mr Fortnite), skim the petrol off the top and you are good to go (allegedly)!

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Ethanol is also well-known for buggering up plastic petrol tanks...it's 'adjusted the shape' of the tanks on my KTM 950 Adv, and Aprilia RSV 1000.

[Chalky723]

I've been thinking I'm doing my 25 year old Serow a favour by putting the "Decent" expensive petrol in it, instead of the standard stuff - the logic being it's a cleaner burn etc.

Should I just be bunging the bog standard stuff in instead??

D

[daveuprite]

I've been thinking I'm doing my 25 year old Serow a favour by putting the "Decent" expensive petrol in it, instead of the standard stuff - the logic being it's a cleaner burn etc.

Should I just be bunging the bog standard stuff in instead??

D

Hard to say Chalky. There is plenty of evidence that a hygroscopic organic fuel like ethanol will affect both plastic and some older metal tanks, and potentially gum up carbs after a lay-up. It's present in most common retail petrol, either as E5 (5% ethanol) or E10 (10%). Just because a petrol is marketed / branded as a high performance fuel at a higher price does not mean it has no ethanol added. Look for E5 or E10 in the spec. There are a few fuels sold as ethanol free, but not many.

However most people do not have issues. It is more common than not for there to be no problems at all, even with 25 year old bikes. An old 60s bonnie that's stored all winter might be a different issue.

[catcitrus]

the best thing you can do is learn from the US and put a drop of Seafoam in the fuel and run as normal (and also if leaving fuel in over the winter)---neat Seafoam injected into a carb (pull the fuel line, drain the carb, and use a syringe)---and leave overnight ----works wonders to clear deposits--and remember to crank the engine briefly at idle to get the Seafoam into the idle fuel passages. Drain the carb and start as normal. Its the additive of choice of my friend in Colorado who is the local "fixer" after "winterising"( or not, which causes the problems)--available on fleabay.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Seafoam doesn't come out well in the Fortnite vid at the start of this thread...but I know the Yanks love it.

I'm using something called Ethanol Shield that I got from my local garden/forestry machine shop. The garden machines (2 & 4-stroke) seem to start better with it: I've stuck it in the bikes but not been using them enough to notice any difference.

[mechanic]

I put a 950 ktm adventure away for winter once. It stood for 5 months. Started it up and found it would only run on full choke. A lot of time later and carbs ultrasonically cleaned it ran perfectly. The carbs were badly gummed up. I learnt from that and now use Motul fuel preservative it’s cheap and lasts ages.