You can absolutely get high octane ethanol-free gas; there’s a place near me that sells it. I know that a lot of people with motorcycles use it, because inline four cylinder motorcycle engines tend to be high compression, and motorcycle people tend to be almost religious about not using ethanol. (Which is unnecessary; assuming your motorcycle is fuel injected, the only risk with ethanol is storage for several months at a time with a full tank of gas. If you do that, then you’re going to end up with water in your gas, because ethanol is hygroscopic. As long as you keep riding regularly, or empty your tank and run the motor dry before storing it for more than a month, you’ll be fine with ethanol in your gas.) I know of at least once place near-ish to me that sells 110 octane ethanol- and lead-free racing gas. Ethanol-free high octane fuels tend to be about 25-50% more expensive than fuels with ethanol.
Avgas is another story. The odds are pretty good from what I can tell that any prop airplane is going to need gas with tetraethyl lead. To me, that sounds like a good reason to remove them all from service in favor of jets, but I think that jets have a higher stall speed, which can be a problem, esp. in backwoods areas.
(Jet-a and jet-a1 are kerosene derivatives, and don’t have lead.)
Ethanol free gas doesn’t mean there aren’t any no knock additives. There’s several more things besides Ethanol that can be added to gasoline that will increase the octane. Strictly speaking, “gasoline” isn’t even one exact formulation.
Short of it is that ethanol free gas just means it’s using something else to boost the octane.
You can absolutely get high octane ethanol-free gas; there’s a place near me that sells it. I know that a lot of people with motorcycles use it, because inline four cylinder motorcycle engines tend to be high compression, and motorcycle people tend to be almost religious about not using ethanol. (Which is unnecessary; assuming your motorcycle is fuel injected, the only risk with ethanol is storage for several months at a time with a full tank of gas. If you do that, then you’re going to end up with water in your gas, because ethanol is hygroscopic. As long as you keep riding regularly, or empty your tank and run the motor dry before storing it for more than a month, you’ll be fine with ethanol in your gas.) I know of at least once place near-ish to me that sells 110 octane ethanol- and lead-free racing gas. Ethanol-free high octane fuels tend to be about 25-50% more expensive than fuels with ethanol.
Avgas is another story. The odds are pretty good from what I can tell that any prop airplane is going to need gas with tetraethyl lead. To me, that sounds like a good reason to remove them all from service in favor of jets, but I think that jets have a higher stall speed, which can be a problem, esp. in backwoods areas.
(Jet-a and jet-a1 are kerosene derivatives, and don’t have lead.)
Ethanol free gas doesn’t mean there aren’t any no knock additives. There’s several more things besides Ethanol that can be added to gasoline that will increase the octane. Strictly speaking, “gasoline” isn’t even one exact formulation.
Short of it is that ethanol free gas just means it’s using something else to boost the octane.