Of pressing concern to all owners of classic cars is the latest emergency waiver allowing for year round sales of E15 fuels that went into effect on April 12, 2022. For those who do now know, E15 was approved for use in 2001 and later vehicles by the EPA in June 2011, however Porsche only approves the use of E10 for watercooled engines starting with the Boxster in 1997 and the 911 (996) in 1999 and all subsequent models. Older Porsche models are approved to use only up to 5% ethanol. Under no circumstances should you ever use E15 fuel in any of your Porsche vehicles (or any car not designed to run E15), otherwise you may damage fuel system components or cause engine damage.

Don’t believe us, check out the After Sales document below or Porsche’s press release on the Compatibility of E10 fuel with Porsche vintage cars and recent classics.

Most owners do not have access to ethanol free fuels such as Rec90, so if you are using E10 in your older Porsche (or most any car built before 2000) which is not approved to use E10, the use of a ethanol fuel additive such as Carb Defender or Injector Defender is a must to protect your fuel system and engine from the damaging effects of ethanol enriched fuels. Alternatively, Porsche offers a fuel system additive, part number 00004420602, for use with Ethanol enriched fuels. Although ideally these products should be used at every fill up, we recommend using Driven’s or Porsche’s fuel system additives at least every other fill up.

As always, if ethanol free fuel is not available to you, be sure to use Top Tier fuels. Other tips include avoiding fill-ups at gas stations that don’t have a lot of turnover (ethanol fuels are hygroscopic and can hold 10% water by volume) and stay away from filling up at gas stations while they are being delivered fuel. Be sure to keep your receipt, and if possible, note your odometer mileage on the receipt in case you do get bad gas so you can track down where the bad gas was purchased, as most gas stations have a fuel quality guarantee in case your engine is damaged by the gas they sold you.

Driven Carb Defender and Injector Defender are back in stock after being backordered several months, so now is the time to stock up before Driven’s price increase goes into effect June 1^st. Prices are going up a minimum of 7% across the board for all Driven products.