How much is your local "Trump at the Pump Tax?"

First gasoline purchase in 2026:


The housekeeper forgot to plug-in the BMW i3-REx one evening. So she burned a little gas.

Bob Wilson

 

LoL; she's just trying to make sure your gas isn't going stale....

FWIW; I'm only a dollar more a gallon here in the Left coast. Two if your down in LA or SF.

 

A bit of a possibility if 4.5 months into the year is the first new gas and we don't know how long before that the last fill up was. Might or might not be a problem for the car, but given that the car is BMW and their repairs tend to be $$$ it might not be a terrible idea to be sure most of the gas is burned off at known intervals. How long that will be would depend in part on how much ethanol was in the gas. E10 supposedly starts going south in as little as a month. Also, that's only half a gallon for a 2.5 gallon tank. Not sure that changing 20% every 4 months is enough to keep the tank "good".

 

About six years ago, maybe more, I bought my 96 Toyota with a bad head gasket and it took me over three years to fix the cylinder head myself. The e10 in there was the same gas I got it with. The truck was sitting a long time when I got it. It started up, ran fine, and I immediately took it to be smogged with my non op travel permit from DMV. Passed smog easily. I was going to change the fuel filter but never did. Right now the gas must be over six months old. E10 having 10% alcohol is better than without. I haven’t had gas problems with E10, but did in the old days before it. At least until I voiced my opinion about it here.

 

96 was before cars were required to be able to run on E10. Was that model advertised as being able to do so? Because many older cars had major problems after they ran on E10. Also, over 3 years the water/EtOH phase should have largely dropped to the bottom of the tank with the gasoline floating over it. That gas should have been almost unusable, even with stabilizer added. See this video:

 

Older cars likely had problems because ethanol is a good fuel system cleaner, and it loosened up the build up of gunk from straight gasoline the cars had, leading to clogs and other issues. It could corrode aluminum parts in the fuel system. The fix for that is adding a little water to the ethanol.

Outside a humid environment, a properly sealed fuel tank shouldn't be letting in enough air for water content to reach phase separation conditions. Without high humidity, the water content of ethanol stabilizes @95%. Most of the water in fuel ethanol was from being picked up along the way in the various tanks and lines it went through before getting to the car's tank. If there is too much water in the tank, the solution is to add more alcohol to get the phases to recombine.

 

E10 was used earlier than 96, if it hadn’t been E10 in the tank it probably would have needed draining. Gas wasn’t unusable with no stabilizer and the truck sat undisturbed as the head was off. Anyway, I was happy at less work. Still no gas issues and it runs the same which is very well.

 

AI summary is interesting, Googling:

how do ethanol and methanol compare, as gas additives

 

Yikes. Is blindness common for people there who handle large quantities of gasoline? Methanol is easily absorbed by being inhaled, and it is quite volatile. Once inside the body it often ends up converted to formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is great for preserving a dead frog, and even better for killing cells in the eyes. Although that is most often seen after people drink the stuff when it has been passed off as ethanol.

 

How many race drivers and crew have gone blind from fuel? Some types and classes use pure methanol.

Gasoline is volatile and the fumes are toxic. The procedures in place to protect against that will work with methanol.

 

I sound like a guy who has worked with both ethanol and methanol and knows that the latter is much more dangerous than the former.

Methanol fumes from gasoline are probably not going to be concentrated enough to lead to blindness, even over a lifetime. Cancer though, that is a definite possibility. Not from methanol directly, but from the formaldehyde which the body's alcohol dehydrogenase will make from it.

Fuel additive fumes are a rounding error on all the mortality risks NASCAR drivers face. Beyond the race time crash and fire risks, I would \estimate that even all the traveling between races is more likely to kill them than the fumes. The guys at the track who handle all the fuel though - not a good job if you want to live a long healthy life.

 

Toyota in 1996 said E10 with ethanol ok, and methanol under 5% ok with additives. Methanol absorbs through the skin also. I guess a can of Heet in a tank of gas was not enough to harm anything except yourself.

 

Yup, one of the things that make it dangerous. Spilling ethanol on your skin is pretty much a nothing burger, but methanol should be washed off immediately if that happens.

 

Nobody is claiming methanol is safer than ethanol, but for car fuel they are both just a minority fraction with gasoline. Which is a hazardous hydrocarbon mixture of toxins and carcinogens. There is still tiny amounts of benzene in it for example So unless you're calling for E100, hydrogen, and B100, worrying about worker toxic exposure for an additive to gasoline is a bit misplaced.