non Laverda, ethanol removal
- Thread starter CLEMTOG
- Start date
sport53
Junior member
- Location
- NE Scotland
http://www.ethanil.co.uk
I have contacted alcoholics anonymous who told me that this was akin to bootlegging.
Line your tank with resin.
Put lead additive in it.
Put octane booster in it.
Put fuel stabilisers in it.
Only use 100 octane or over. Always have a van following you with jerrycans if you ride further than around the block.
Put the bike away in the living room.
Paul
Line your tank with resin.
Put lead additive in it.
Put octane booster in it.
Put fuel stabilisers in it.
Only use 100 octane or over. Always have a van following you with jerrycans if you ride further than around the block.
Put the bike away in the living room.
Paul
Hi Clem, interesting video. I beieve that it will work but it is not as simple as it sounds because there is likely to be a residual amount of both ethanol and water left in the petrol, simply because the miscibility of the 3 fluids is not a purely linear relationship. The removal of the alcohol and the water will obey an exponential decay law, i.e. it will reach zero after an infinite number of processes but in practice this is usually considered to be 5x or in the case of ultra high purity measurements, 7x but there is always going to be a small amount of water in the petrol. That all said, the video method works in principle and will probably remove c.65% or more of the ethanol. So E10 will end up as E3 or similar after the first treatment. It will also depend on the ditution ratio e.g 100 volumes of water will extract more ethanol from a single volume of petrol than 1 volume of water from the same volume of petrol but then there will be much more water to remove from the petrol, albeit only a small amount in practice - in time it will separate a settle out and the longer you leave it the greater the separation. Hope that this makes sense.
Adios,
Charles
Adios,
Charles
Dellortoman
Hero member
- Location
- Tasmania, Australia
Blimey, who could be bothered with all that faffing around? And what do you do when you need to fill up at a service station?
Much simpler to make your bike ethanol tolerant.
Much simpler to make your bike ethanol tolerant.
Exmoor beast
Hero member
- Location
- Minehead,Somerset, ENGLAND OF COURSE
The real problem is if you have a plastic tank made by Acerbis ( Guzzi, Ducati, Triumph and my bloody Cagiva) then the ethanol drags water in which makes the tank swell, my Elefant tank grew so much the rear tank bolt was half inch out from fixing. For metal tanks the problem is if the bike is laid up for any length of time, attracts water , rust, gets in carbs etc. There is ethanol free fuel available From Aspen fuels that you could put in before laying up a bike and it should fire up a year later no problem, but we?ve all left bikes to stand without draining tank etc. I don?t think I would bother trying to remove ?some? of the ethanol with a kit , then you?ve got to dispose of some yucky water.
Patrick
Full member
- Location
- Carmarthenshire
Also Aprilia and KTM tanks although I never had any problems with my Tuono.
GregT
Hero member
- Location
- Christchurch NZ
I read seagreen's reply with interest - and the beast's too. I have a fair amount of experience with Methanol blends, some of which is applicable to Ethanol.
Firstly you're not dealing with Ethanol and petrol. There's a blending agent which is also a binder. I'd have thought that trying to reverse the blending would literally require a cracking plant. The petrol isn't quite petrol and the Eth isn't quite either.
We never found a blending agent which would keep Meth and petrol together for any period. They were short-life blends. Which got around the water absorbtion rate. The best Meth blend we used was Meth/Toluene. Stable and kept well.
I think if I had to store a tank which was used for high Ethanol content fuel, it would either be full - and sealed. Airtight. Or empty and sprayed with a storage coating.
Think about putting a good manual tap on your tank breather.
Firstly you're not dealing with Ethanol and petrol. There's a blending agent which is also a binder. I'd have thought that trying to reverse the blending would literally require a cracking plant. The petrol isn't quite petrol and the Eth isn't quite either.
We never found a blending agent which would keep Meth and petrol together for any period. They were short-life blends. Which got around the water absorbtion rate. The best Meth blend we used was Meth/Toluene. Stable and kept well.
I think if I had to store a tank which was used for high Ethanol content fuel, it would either be full - and sealed. Airtight. Or empty and sprayed with a storage coating.
Think about putting a good manual tap on your tank breather.
BobSol
Full member
- Location
- Coventry UK
Hi Patrick
My Tuono tank suffered badly. A 2007 Factory, owned for twelve years from new, the tank slowly but surely "grew" around 10mm in length over a period of four years. No clue why at the time. The "party trick" was when all the fuel in the tank leaked out caused by warpage of the fuel pump sealing face. Apart from eye watering cost of replacement, two thousand quid with the decals, leaking petrol is a recipe for disaster. Used tanks were non existent and likely to be also inflicted. I managed to repair by taping emery sheet to a flat plate and "lapping" the sealing face, a long and laborious process but ultimately successful. The bike had been stored for winter with fuel sourced in Spain in the tank which I believe was E10 as opposed to the E5 we have presently. There's going to be a lot of bikes with a lot of problems in the near future, I fear.
Kind Regards Bob
My Tuono tank suffered badly. A 2007 Factory, owned for twelve years from new, the tank slowly but surely "grew" around 10mm in length over a period of four years. No clue why at the time. The "party trick" was when all the fuel in the tank leaked out caused by warpage of the fuel pump sealing face. Apart from eye watering cost of replacement, two thousand quid with the decals, leaking petrol is a recipe for disaster. Used tanks were non existent and likely to be also inflicted. I managed to repair by taping emery sheet to a flat plate and "lapping" the sealing face, a long and laborious process but ultimately successful. The bike had been stored for winter with fuel sourced in Spain in the tank which I believe was E10 as opposed to the E5 we have presently. There's going to be a lot of bikes with a lot of problems in the near future, I fear.
Kind Regards Bob
Bigfeesh
Full member
- Location
- Geordieland UK
Triumph Hinkley models have nylon tanks which permeate the ethanol which causes blisters in decal and paint. No swelling as such, I've seen bad swelling on a Ducati plastic tank. I empty my fuel tanks every winter an store in warmest place possible, normally my loft!
Some very good points to consider folks, thanks for the info.
It's a pain in the ass for sure. For example I have a lovely old fibreglass Sammy Miller tank on my Bultaco Sherpa which I really don't want to bugger up so its effectively now useless. So, the old alu one is being pressed back into service and is going for welding and dent pulling.
It's a pain in the ass for sure. For example I have a lovely old fibreglass Sammy Miller tank on my Bultaco Sherpa which I really don't want to bugger up so its effectively now useless. So, the old alu one is being pressed back into service and is going for welding and dent pulling.
Exmoor beast
Hero member
- Location
- Minehead,Somerset, ENGLAND OF COURSE
Paul Marx said:
I had an old BSA scrambler tank go soft, effectively start melting with ethanol fuel. The boat world is also suffering same fate. Lining with a suitable resin seems a good idea but finding one that work is another thing. I know of two products that claimed to be ethanol proof that are now failing.
Patrick
Full member
- Location
- Carmarthenshire
Hey bob, I had my 2007 tuono until 2016, never had an issue, maybe because I always used super unleaded, last time I looked into it, only petrol stations in Cornwall and Scotland had "super unleaded".. or "high octane " with added ethanol. It varied from refineries, at least back then. Although both my 1200 petcocks are weeping so maybe its arrived in south west Wales too. 
Jo
Hero member
- Location
- Cologne, NRW Germany
My Aprilia (since 2006 in my possession) doesn't show abnormalities so far. But that's a reason to look it carefully this winter.
Replacement of all fuel lines before spring was in the plan anyways ...
Cheers
Jo
Replacement of all fuel lines before spring was in the plan anyways ...
Cheers
Jo
BobSol
Full member
- Location
- Coventry UK
Hi Guys
No issues at all for five or six years, started on the button after months of lay up over winter. Used far more in Europe than the UK, covering around three thousand miles a year. Then it became a pain to fire up come spring until the pump face warped. This is a 100mm square hole in the bottom of the tank with about a dozen M5 bolts holding the pump in, like a bulkhead. When I first removed the pump with what I thought was very little fuel left in the tank it turned out to be mostly water and the pump was covered in a gelatinous sludge. Not bloody acceptable. Manufacturers cannot be expected to predict what crap their bikes will have to run on in the future BUT it cannot be beyond the wit of man for the petro-chemists to do a little more research into the effects their product has on relatively new vehicles before forcing us to use it. Rant over, I'll go for a nap now.
Bob
No issues at all for five or six years, started on the button after months of lay up over winter. Used far more in Europe than the UK, covering around three thousand miles a year. Then it became a pain to fire up come spring until the pump face warped. This is a 100mm square hole in the bottom of the tank with about a dozen M5 bolts holding the pump in, like a bulkhead. When I first removed the pump with what I thought was very little fuel left in the tank it turned out to be mostly water and the pump was covered in a gelatinous sludge. Not bloody acceptable. Manufacturers cannot be expected to predict what crap their bikes will have to run on in the future BUT it cannot be beyond the wit of man for the petro-chemists to do a little more research into the effects their product has on relatively new vehicles before forcing us to use it. Rant over, I'll go for a nap now.
Bob
Haggis said:
Paul,
I sealed the fibreglass tank/seat unit on my TLR with a resin I bought at an autojumble in the Netherlands a few years ago. Has worked perfectly, only thing leaking is the petcock... tank should be empty by now. Sorry, don't know the brand of resin, threw away the empty tin.
Bloke that built the tank for the 750 racer said his resin is ethanol-proof, so far, so good, no extra internal sealing applied.
Only downside to fuels with ethanol content imho, is that they do not have any sort of "shelf life". Best to drain the bike tank if it isn't used regularly. If the fuels were as crappy as described, roadsides would be lined with stranded vehicles, but they're not. My 14 year old Mazda has had a diet of E10 super (10% ethanol content) from the day I picked it from the showroom floor and hasn't missed a beat in 220000km. OTOH, my lawnmower starts 2nd. pull latest, after standing dormant over winter, no fancy fuel pumps or injection, just a primitive carb. No build-up of water in there over the past 10 years. The mower runs on Euro 95, with at least 5% ethanol content. No damage to any rubber or plastic bits in the fuel line either. It's a Honda, from around 1990, most probably conceived without ethanol in mind.
piet
Yes Piet.
We went through all this more than 20 years ago with the advent of lead free.
Some people made a lot of money selling miracles, or breathalysers on cross Channel ferries.
Recipes for storage are always the same, best fill tank to the brim, with a bit of diesel in it, or drain it completely.
And best of all, unless there's snow drifts in front of the garage door, ride.
Paul
We went through all this more than 20 years ago with the advent of lead free.
Some people made a lot of money selling miracles, or breathalysers on cross Channel ferries.
Recipes for storage are always the same, best fill tank to the brim, with a bit of diesel in it, or drain it completely.
And best of all, unless there's snow drifts in front of the garage door, ride.
Paul