Gasohol beware!

**harrythefinn** · 2nd August 2010, 11:05 AM

Tony it is a original fuel hose on a 2005 model. Unless I got a bad batch of fuel before I parked it, I would say the gasohol made it "soggy", it turned it into a licorice twist basically.

AJS 500cc Model 20 twin.1957. The tank badge is on my avatar. Might just have been made before either of us were born. Try British motorcycles in google.

**David Learmonth** · 2nd August 2010, 11:22 AM

I must be getting old! Had an AJS 350 single in 1971. Fired every lampost & never needed an oil change - total loss lubrication system!! Typical of most British bikes in those days. Think it was a late 1950's model. Cost me UK25. A strange beast indeed - sometimes it would start second kick & other times you could kick it from here to eternity & it wouldn't even fire - but just push it a few yards & let clutch out & away it went!

I would be suprised if such a beast could be adapted for gasahol.

**LeoViotti** · 16th November 2010, 09:51 AM

Originally Posted by David Learmonth

I must be getting old! Had an AJS 350 single in 1971. Fired every lampost & never needed an oil change - total loss lubrication system!! Typical of most British bikes in those days. Think it was a late 1950's model. Cost me UK25. A strange beast indeed - sometimes it would start second kick & other times you could kick it from here to eternity & it wouldn't even fire - but just push it a few yards & let clutch out & away it went!

I would be suprised if such a beast could be adapted for gasahol.

Any bike/car can use gasohol, no issues. Problem is, you might have to adjust the fuel mix, make it richer (not sure if that's the word), as ethanol has less "power per unit".

The main problem in older systems is that they don't have a layer of protection against corrosion - not really corrosion, more like "strange dust deposits" that over time, "eat" some materials. The engine itself, being forget aluminum and drop iron, suffers nothing, but older carburetors might need a more thorough clean-up, as well as more frequent replacement of spare parts. Hoses as well, should be not a problem, as long as they are new.

Back in Brazil, where "we" (not me, as I'm only 2

use gasohol since late '70s/early '80s, my last car still had a carburetor, and with me driving between 2 and 3k km every month, I was doing the proper maintenance on my own, every month or so, dissembling it completely and replacing the small gaskets, rubber parts, as well as cleaning the fuel-air mix parts (not sure how they are called in English... in Portuguese we say "caneta" (pen) and "flauta" (flute)).

But no worries... gasohol is also great. Even though it gives you less km/L in comparison with pure gasoline, it enables you to "tune up" your engine, extracting more power out of it - be that by advancing the spark timing, or more deep, increasing the compression ratio of the engine. Down there, we have regular small cars using 12:1 compression ratio on gasohol 25% (mandatory, only one we have, in different octane-specs, from 91 to 9

, and we had 100% alcohol engines back in the 80s and 90s with up to 14:1 compression ratio, stock, daily drivers, small and "cheap" ones.

(I was a 15-day motorcycle driver in Thailand, didn't end well... back to cars now, but driving and traveling is "my life", I just love it)