Seeing some of the discussion here about the effects of ethanol on the bikes, I happened across a gas station today when I was about empty that had "ethanol free" gas prominently displayed. So i threw it in. As soon as I stayed it, there was a slight hesitation, it fired up and the rpms went way up as it occasionally does in the morning. Except in this case, it lasted for a good 4-5 seconds. Is this something normal?

 

Have you seen this before? How old is your battery? How much did you put in the tank? How hot was it outside?

 

What bike do you have, and how warm was the bike when you filled up? This is normal on the newer fuel injected bikes. It has to do with HD programming 'start up' fuel at all engine temps. After the start up fuel cycle is complete the idle will drop back down to normal. The start up fuel is like a computer controlled electronic choke if you will.

 

Just out of curiosity....does in the US ethanol free gas really contain zero ethanol? Here in Germany standard gas (considered ethanol free) may contain up to 5% ethanol according to fuel standards/specs.

 

A few possibilities:

It can take the ECM a little bit of time to "learn" a different gas. See if the problem gets better.

There's not much demand for ethanol free gas, so sales volume may be very low, resulting in older, deteriorated gas in the storage tank. We sometimes had problems with "race gas" purchased from gas stations too. Who knows how long it had been sitting around?

It may have nothing to do with the different gas. I'd expect initial startup to be using fuel already in the fuel lines.

 

Bike is a 15 breakout. The only time I see a similar start is the first start of the day (maybe once a week) and never that high or long. Engine shouldn't have been too warm and I had just ridden 20 miles to see family then 2 miles to get the gas (trip said I had 10 miles left on the tank). After it happened and settled down, I did shut her down, then restart and no issues the second time. Probably just a weird anomaly but thought I'd ask.

 

This station was native America owned, but I was told they keep one that's completely ethanol free for the snowmobilers and others who prefer it. I personally have never noticed it displayed so prominently before though and only tried it because I saw some people here complaining of ethanol causing engine issues in their Harleys.

 

Since I started riding again a few years ago, I've never seen any gas that was ethanol free.

 

Here in WI we can get ethanol free premium all the time. Almost all gas stations carry it for all the recreational vehicles. We prefer it to the ethanol and seek it out when in the other states.

I think it's very common here because of the snowmobiling, atving, motorcycles, boat motors, There is a big demand for it and always fresh gas.

 

if you live near water, marinas will also usually have ethanol-free due to all of the old marine engines still in service. you really shouldn't see any difference between fresh ethanol free and E10 other than a bit better gas mileage with ethanol-free.