[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by bird72

My HO with forged pistons is appx. 10 to 1. I have been running 91 octane no ethanol here in NW Montana, runs fine. So I am scheming on relocate and bought property in remote SW New Mexico. So was just down there and scoped out the gas pumps in the little village in the area. I was sure the premium would be ethanol. Was kind of surprised to find no premium at either of two pump locations in town. Regular and Diesel only at both. So asked and found out premium was 32 miles away down the road (with ethanol). So to further depress myself, I just checked online of closest no ethanol. That is only 115 miles away in Show Low AZ! So I guess if my bird ever makes it down there, I will get to transport gas, if I want no ethanol. Or burn 5 or 6 gallons to drive it to the ethanol (premium) place. Really hate to run ethanol, it has never seen it in use.

If it makes you feel any better, I've run nothing but ethanol blended fuel at the pumps for a couple decades now in all the classic cars here, which are also daily drivers for us, and most of them are fairly high compression, with no ill affects at all.

You may want to adjust to that idea living out here in the desert South West. I say that because enjoying your car and driving it is going to require some long distance travel between towns with a lot of wide open spaces in between.
It's pretty much a regular occurrence for us to put a minimum of 200 miles on the car over the weekend if we want to attend something. We just did 340 miles this past Saturday. So mixing fuel, or trying to bring it with you, or keep a stash at home, really isn't an option anymore.

[dataway]

If you have a modern car and want to check the ethanol content of a particular brand, or station etc. a decent scan tool should report what ethanol content the fuel has, or at least what the ECU thinks it has. That's the way it works on my flex fuel 2011 GMC ... not sure if all modern cars measure ethanol content.

[Formulajones]

There are cheap little test kits all over the internet. At least there used to be, I used them years ago. I would imagine they are still available.

[Sirrotica]

Ethanol content isn't the only thing you need to know if you're home brew blending, the high aromatics content isn't something you can test with a kit. After the concentration reaches 30%, adding more does nothing.

If you remove ethanol to get pure gas, then try doctoring it with xylene, or tolulene, you have no idea where the octane is of the base petroleum, or how much it's already been doctored. You could end up with 84 base octane and already be at the the threshold where adding more aromatics does nothing, or little, to raise octane.

Just saying, that brewing at home could get you into trouble fairly easily not knowing what the ingredients, or percentages, of the base fuel are, and assuming adding more aromatics are going to raise the octane. The formulation of gasoline is pretty complex, just adding so much of something, has no guarantee that you'll end up with something you can burn in a 11 to 1 engine. I wouldn't want to chance a $10,000 engine on dumping a concoction I thought was high octane into it, and pounding the innards out of it because I didn't know for sure. Been there done that, myself.

I got stung back in the 70s of trying to doctor gas in a race engine with octane booster, and it cost me dearly. I had over $3000 in that engine in 1970 dollars and ended up with 6 pistons collapsed, and one with a hole in it. The engine had molten aluminum completely through it. That was a hard learned lesson, I won't forget. In a race car running 20 laps on a dirt track with 20 other cars, you can't hear detonation, and I reaped the rewards.

A 4 bolt main 428 with 12 to 1 pistons in it, because when I started building the engine in 1971 you could buy Sunoco 260 everywhere. When I finally finished the engine, and building the car in 1977, 89 octane was as good as it got as far as pump fuels. Premium pump fuel was no longer available so I tried the home brew, one race took a brand new build out completely.

After talking to Nunzi via telephone, I ditched the 428 HO heads in favor of low compression 1972 400 heads, rebuilt the destroyed engine, and problem solved, ran it for 3 years without any further problems. I've never used doctored gas since then, and have built street and race engines that would run on available fuels right out of the pump. The lower compression on the 428 still had plenty of power to run with the competition. I found out that being safe from detonation was worth more than the gain from a 12 to 1 engine.

That engine was in the 69 GP race car in my signature pictures.

[jerry455]

Just filled up my 1976 Firebird with 90 octane non ethanol for the winter. It is $4.57 a gallon at a Circle K station in the metro Detroit area. I usually put it in for the winter and use 93 octane E 10 the times I drive it. My 455 has about 9.5:1 compression.

[Carousel72TRed]

Originally Posted by dataway

Did you check: https://www.pure-gas.org/ for a station near you?

If you use the Torco stuff ... let us know how it works.

I will but for now I think my best bet is to mix 91 octane premium E-10 with the 100 octane $10 a gallon gas at the one station in my area I can get it. After getting a college graduate lesson from Formulabruce and the rest of you guys it has really helped . I did not know that today’s formula used for calculating octane is different from the old formula of yesteryear and I probably need only to boost my octane to 94-95 total to get me in the comfort zone.
Carousel72TRed

[grandam1979]

Just filled up price has not gone up in the last 2 weeks $3.69 for EO90 it went up a bunch before that glad to see it leveled off for now.

[sluggo]

Originally Posted by tigergto

Plenty of it in my area of Upstate NY. Always premium and going for approximately 3.89 a gallon.

Where did you get it upstate NY? anywhere close to the tappan zee bridge?

[dataway]

Check it out here: https://www.pure-gas.org

Should be a place close enough to get some 91 non-ethanol

[grandam1979]

Filled up again today EO90 went up $3.89 up .20¢ In 5 days best part was I was listening to the news as I was pulling in to fuel up and they said how the price had come down .04¢ in the last week.