Very strange gas.....

Setup = Last Saturday started up the bike and it was running very bad, backfire, spit, sputter, couldn't get it off choke....just would not run. Started up instantly but was running like very dirty carbs. Drained the 4 carbs to check for crud, a little bit of very fine sediment but not much. Checked plugs and #1 wet fouled, other 3 good. All four have good strong spark.

Didn't have time to mess with it again until today. Cleaned #1 plug and seemed to be running a little better. Had to turn the idle speed knob in to get it to idle at 1,000 - it was wanting to idle around 5-600. Haven't had to adjust that knob since the last carb cleaning probably over a year ago.

Went for a ride and bike is running very poor except for WOT which feels strong. At a steady 80 mph it feels like its running out of gas, surging, sputtering and such but is still ride able, just not right.

So I get home and decide to drain a fuel sample from #1 carb again to see if there is more crud in it. No crud but what looks like tiny water droplets are collecting at the bottom. So I sit it on the work bench and go clean the bugs off my helmet. When I come back I lift the container up on a corner to let the droplets collect. When I do this the fuel instantly clouds up! It looks like clouds of steam rolling around in the gas! Very angry looking, rolling around! WTF? Then I notice its getting cold...ice cold! The outside of the container starts to sweat, its beer can cold now! Remember I drained it right after a ride so it was warm. Now its cold....I've NEVER seen plain gas do that before! From hot to ice cold in maybe 10 minutes.

Right now its 71 deg and 80% humidity outside.

I drained another container from #1 carb, identical container, but put a lid on it right away. It looks fine, clear, no cloudiness and it feels room temp. Containers are those little plastic ones that lunch meat comes in now. They were both clean, right out of the dish washer and I wiped them out with paper towels to be sure. I wanted them clean because I was checking for crud in the gas.

Before last week it had been 1 month and 2 days since I had ran it. I got gas at a station I had never been to before on that run. It was almost empty when I fueled it up. Bike ran GREAT that last time! I remember thinking that it was running the best it ever had.

So what's with this gas? There is only about a gallon left in the tank now, its going to get drained, no way I'm running any more of it. Hopefully this is all that's wrong with the bike but I won't know until I get some fresh gas in it.

My guess would be that I somehow got a hold of gas with too much ethanol in it? Supposed to be 10% here and ALL gas here has ethanol, no choice. My guess is either too much ethanol or phase separation, or just plain old water in it???

Has anyone here seen gas act like that? Get cloudy and cold when exposed to air? I usually put marine stabil in my gas but I didn't add any to this tank. So it should be almost all straight up gas that I got at that station.

Ive used the 89 with ethonal in it for years without problems,but anytime I get stuck running the 87 with ethonal I have nothing but problems with it.

PLUMMEN wrote: Ive used the 89 with ethonal in it for years without problems,but anytime I get stuck running the 87 with ethonal I have nothing but problems with it.

+1


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It's regular 87, I've never had anything like this happen before while I've had the bike. (3 yrs) I've always run 87 in it.

I looked at the gas again after posting this thread, maybe an hour after draining it from the bike. I would guess about 1/8th of the volume fell out and had settled to the bottom. The top layer was still very cloudy and had droplets swirling around in it. Still very cold, container still sweating on the outside. Very strange. I can understand it having water and separating out, but why is it so cold?

I'll post again what it looks like in the morning.

The container with the lid still looked fine, clear and no separating that I can see.

Your carbs are still clogged and dirty, check the pilot circuit. I have had modern gas start breaking down into sludge in as little as 2 weeks. If you let it sit for a month without fuel stabilizer the gas could have evaporated and left your carbs clogged up.

ethanol sucks let our government know your unhappy .......it's only going to get worse for us :S

turboking wrote: ethanol sucks let our government know your unhappy .......it's only going to get worse for us :S

You really think they give a crap about the small segment of the population that ethanol effects? Most people don't care. New vehicles don't appear to have any problems with it and by the time they do the owners will have traded them in for a new one again.

It mostly only affects us classic vehicle guys and boat owners.

baldy110 wrote: Your carbs are still clogged and dirty, check the pilot circuit. I have had modern gas start breaking down into sludge in as little as 2 weeks. If you let it sit for a month without fuel stabilizer the gas could have evaporated and left your carbs clogged up.

That was my guess after riding it, pilots. Because it's idling mostly decent, but has problems accelerating unless WOT and doesn't seem to want to hold a steady speed at small throttle openings. Like cruising at 50-80 mph, no good. But opening the choke didn't seem to help it and that sometimes will if it's pilot circuit problems.

That's why I drained the gas from carb #1 when I got home, to see if there was obvious crud in the gas. Then it would be a for sure thing.

If it's just sludge left from the gas evaporating, my guess now, I'm going to try putting fresh gas in it with a healthy amount of seafoam added in. See if that improves things, hoping the seafoam will dissolve the crud. If not I'll pull the carbs and go through them......again. It's really not that bad to pull the carbs now that I have new carb holders and airbox tubes. Plus I've been wanting to try 1 size larger pilots in it. Its all stock setup now but I still get some popping on decel even when the carbs were absolutely pristine spotless inside. This will give me an excuse to throw the next size up in there just to see what happens.

So this morning the open container, the angry swirling cloudy cold one, had mostly evaporated. What was left was very dark yellow and about 50% of the volume was a clear glob of what I would guess is water in the bottom.

So it went from 10 ounces to maybe 2 overnight. I may be wrong but I don't think gas usually evaporates that fast?

The sealed up container still looks fine, no separation, still clear and it's all there. I'm going to pull the lid off of it and see what it does.

I'm guessing it's very possible that in the month the gas sat in the tank it separated and that's what I was running through the bike last Saturday and yesterday, the stuff that fell to the bottom. That's why it evaporated so quickly and got ice cold in the container, it's almost all ethanol with some water mixed in.

Maybe when I drained some through the carb yesterday I got the last of the bad stuff out and what's left in the tank now is stripped out gas.

I'll empty the rest of it into a big pickle jar and see what it does. If it stays clear maybe I can add some good stuff to it and run it through the lawn mower. How the heck else do you get rid of a gallon of gas?

Seafoam has oil in it, Berryman's B-12 is all solvent.


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Nebr_Rex wrote: Seafoam has oil in it, Berryman's B-12 is all solvent.


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So you think the Berryman will have a better chance of dissolving/cleaning out the crud?

After reading a little bit about phase separation and looking at photos I'm sure that's what I have going on. The carbs may well be fine, it was just the crap running through them...the separated gas causing the bike to run like poo.

My guess at this point is that when I drained that first 10 ounces I got the last of the lower ethanol/water layer and some of the gas sitting above. That's why it went crazy and started rolling around, trying to separate back out right after draining.

The second sample I drained out seems to be fine and the lids been off it for over an hour now. So I'm going to empty the tank, drain all 4 carbs, add new gas to the tank, let a bit of fresh gas drain through all 4 carbs and see what happens. If it runs good again, great, if not I'll go from there. Probably try a cleaner first and then pull the carbs if that doesn't do the trick.

I have NEVER had any luck with pouring a cleaner into the tank and getting to clean the carbs. I always end up tearing into the carbs.