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With all due respect to Phil and John, and just to set the record straight: First: Ethanol boils at 173F. This is almost in the middle of the distillation curve for virtually every gasoline made (gasolines boil between about 75-80F to a maximum of 437F by spec). Ethanol has its problems, but not as many as we're led to believe. Second: John's hot rodder friend was wrong: The addition of ethanol into gasoline has nothing to do with octane grade. It's added to gasoline to reduce CO emissions by chemically leaning the fuel-air mixture (more info if you want it). If you live in a CO Non Attainment area as defined by U.S. EPA (which I believe Denver and most other large cities are), you have ethanol (or another oxygenate) in every grade of gasoline because it must contain minimum 2.0 weight% oxygen. You can find out if gasoline contains ethanol (or other polar compounds) using a simple test the aviation guys use: Take a small vial and put some water in it. Mark the water level. Add some gasoliine and shake. If the water level increases, alcohol was extracted from the fuel. If not, there was no alcohol there.
