would any one be able to give me advise on weather or not harley make or sell a tank addetive for cleaning the fuell injectors would a car addetive do just as good such as wynns product that you can by in repco .
2ml per litre TCW3 two stroke oil
if you do your research you will find that additive cleaners are really a bit of a scam. they have not been proven to do anything.most injectors can only really be cleaned electronically.
'Injector cleaners' work by upping the burn temp of the fuel. We found on our VW engines ( carb cleaners are the same- look at the chemical lists on the side of the containers) our CHT went up by around 25 deg C when using such products. It didnt seem to matter which one was used, they all seemed to be about the same. A CHT rise of 25 deg is a major increase, and one that would worry almost any one running an air cooled engine.
From that it seemed that the idea of the 'injector cleaner' was to burn off carbon build up on the cylinder side of the injector by the use of higher burn temps. Most of us expected the cleaners to degunk the internals of the injector/carby jet itself, but on strip downs it was apparent that other than running the risk of overheating the engine, nothing was any cleaner than the same parts in engines that didnt have the cleaner added.
So called 'upper cylinder lubricant' didnt seem to do much either.Crank shaft drag tests between strip downs showed no difference if the test gauge tolerences were factored in ( which a lot of the so called test graphs never show!)
Additives to stop fuel 'going off' or gumming up may have some benefit for bikes that are not used for a month or two at a time, but nothing else seems to have much benefit to anyone but the companys making the snake oil.
Adding meths to the fuel tank to mix with any water in your fuel tank or carby float bowl did make a bit of sense, and does work. As long as there is only a bit of water - say a couple of teaspoons but no more. Ie, water from condensation , but not from dropping your bike in the river(or leaving the fuel cap off over night when it rains -yup , been there!)
But these days there is no need to put meths in the tank, just fill up with E10 once in a while. Ok, you get piss poor mileage from the crap fuel (thank Clover Moore for E10 being the only 91 octane fuel being available at most metro NSW servos these days), but if you only expect to do a hundred kays, drop 10 or so litres of E10 into your tank . The ethanol will do the same job as the meths did 'in the old days'.
But be aware that by scrubbing out the water, you will then bring the fine gunk and sediment in the bottom of the tank - which was trapped in the heavier water before - into your useable fuel. Your fuel filter will catch it all, so make sure it is in good nick or change it out if you suspect you have sediment in your fuel. You DO have a fuel filter fitted -right???
No need to read the rest of this, it is juat a bit of history of E10 fuel.
About 10 years ago there was whole lot of those garbage 6:30pm quasi news shows doing bits on cars that had problems with fuel that had been imported with ethanol in it. Normally it was reported the fuel had 10-15% ethanol in it, sometimes it also had paint thinners. Anyway, all the issues were caused by the water being sucked out of the tank and so the sediment then mixed into the fuel and got pulled into the filters, or often where there were no filters, into the carb and finally the jets or injectors, which of caourse caused the car the stop. The paint stripper often peeled the tank lining off , or stripped the red gunk from the fuel lines and pump housings and do the fuel blockage trick as well. The real culprit was poor servicing of the car fuel system, not the crappy fuel. Of course the local fuel companies then said E10 was bad for Australian vehicles - because that way people would insist on 'no ethanol' fuel, and they could gouge us for fuel and make importing fuel harder or not worth it for the independants. That is how E10 fuel got a bad name. 10-15 years later, the fuel companies start selling E10 and have to do a major ad campaign to undo the negative impression of the fuel they themselves created. Of course, we the mug consumers paid for both ad campaigns.
Inside this head there is a lot of blackness and dark thoughts about one self - being lost does not always mean you are geographically challenged.
The only issue is finding a Caltex servo. Not many out west in Sydney. I know the Shell stuff causes my car to run rough and the bike gets very lumpy. I dont like the way either of them run Vortex, so I dont use Shell. I have found an independant servo that still sells pure 91 octane for about 2 cents over E10, and I can cop that OK.
In the car the difference between E10 91 octane and pure 91 octane is far better range - I get 650kms on pure 91, and I barely get 480Kms on E10. Now how using more fuel is greener beats me as I am damn sure that the ethanol mix is not 20% lower in 'bad' emissions !
Kaboom, all that I wrote for our fuel tanks also applies for the servos, except the servos dump their crap into our tanks and charge us for it.
Those 10,000 litre trucks can have leaking fuel hatches which let water in , and then when the servo 'dips' their tanks the dopes open the covers ( which could also be leaking water!) after rain and let more crap and water in.
All up , the problem you suffered can happen to anyone and not symptomatic of E10 fuel. But I do agree that E10 is not the best fuel for bikes.
