If you're worried about ethanol damage in your fuel system, don't use ethanol fuels. Ethanol fuels do more damage to old bikes in the summer than they do in the winter. Ethanol evaporates off fairly quickly, so over the winter it will be all but gone by spring. While that might be desirable for your plastic parts and seals, it's not helpful as the fuel becomes stale (less volatile) without the ethanol, making it hard to start small engines. Stale fuel makes for hard starting on any bike - so non-ethanol is always the best for winter storage.
Holy thread revival batman.
But I'm not sure you understand the real issue about ethanol. On a modern bike that's ridden regularly ethanol gas is no issue whatsoever in the summer - modern fuel systems and engines are designed for it.
In the winter it's an issue because of a phenomenon called
phase separation. In short, the tank "breathing" all winter long with warm/cold cycles causes moisture to be drawn into the tank and the ethanol based fuels attracts and separates it..and you end up with a layer of water sitting in places you don't want it, with all the accompanying issues.
Non ethanol fuels are better for storage because there's no ethanol to attract (and therefore separate) the water out of the air, so the issue simply doesn't happen - the tank will still breathe, but the moisture leaves during the heating (outward breath) portion of the cycle instead of separating and staying in your tank.
Long story short...it's the WATER (as a result of the phase separation) that causes the issues in small engines now, and only those left sitting for long periods of time - phase separation can take weeks or months to occur to a noticeable/problematic level. This is the reason seasonal items like weedeaters, snowblowers, and lawn mowers suffer from the problem the most - it's not inherently the ethanol fuel (they will run on it just fine), it's the results of it when the fuel is left sitting.
On a motorcycle that's ridden enough to consume a full tank at least once every few weeks, ethanol fuel is perfectly fine. At the end of the season however, add stabilizer, then fill it to the brim (to minimize the expansion and contraction breathing) with non ethanol to eliminate the phase separation issue...then ride it for 5-10 minutes to make sure the fuel is mixed and distributed through the entire fuel system. Put on battery tender, and...done.
Now, on older motorcycles that were not designed for ethanol fuels it can be a bigger issue as it can weaken seals that were not designed for it, but that's a different ball of wax..but most motorcycles made in the last 15-20 years are designed for ethanol.
