Is Bio Ethanol Gas bad for your vehicle?

[dsaundry]

If I remember correctly Chevron has a 94 octane rated fuel, If you use Save On Foods etc you can get points on it as well. I have also read the great debates on the different fuels, Best rule of thumb is if BMW does not recommend it for their vehicle-don't use it. They have the engineer's that design them, not always perfectly. But they usually know what works best in their vehicles. Have you talked to BMW regarding this?

[VFX]

BMW say anything at the recommended octane is fine, including Husky 10% ethanol fuels. Anything below 92 will be fine once in a while when premium is unavailable.

The consensus on the BMW forums is that anything detrimental will be in the long term & wont show up until after the car is out of warranty. Therefore BMW may say it's fine because nothing will show up in the warranty period & they won't upset any of their oil partners/suppliers by telling customers not to use some of their fuels.

Porsche say the same thing but advise that performance & economy will be reduced by roughly 5% on ethanol fuels.

I just want to know the long term effects of ethanol fuels on engines that need to 'compensate' for ethanol rather than engines designed to run it.

Which Chevron has the 94? The one by Wendy's/Walmart didn't seem to have it.

[mike31154]

I foolishly forgot to fuel up my BMW R1200C motorcycle in Kelowna a few years back before heading south on Hwy 33 (Rock Creek). None of the towns on that stretch of road have anything close to the octane rating BMW recommends for this bike. I'm sure I was running on fumes when I finally stopped and had to put regular into it. Didn't miss a beat on the rest of the trip, but I've never put regular into it since, so, no great help to you, but I was quite glad it ran ok. You tend to be more in touch with what your engine is doing on a bike, it's right there under you growling away, so if anything's not right, you usually notice straight away.