Ceramic Coating

I wonder if a ceramic coating would help protect against the paint damaging effect of ethanol?

My sprayer switched from the House of Kolor K2 laquer I gave him to a different one. It's resistant to petrol but it is not resistant to ethanol. If I use petrol with ethanol and even a splash goes on the paintwork things get a bit sticky. Luckily most of the local Esso garages in this area of the UK sell petrol without ethanol in it. 

Is this why you are considering ceramic coatings Gary?  I have used ceramic/nano coating systems a lot in a marine environment and they definately do work. Degradation of the paint by the sea water and salty air is massively reduced even long term and the difference in the ease of removal of soot from diesel fumes from the paint is increadible. Not of much interest to you for your bike tank I know  but definitely proof that they work as a product. It just depends why you want to try it on your bike tank.

so how does the novice assess which are the good products please?

Graham,

See Esso website (FAQs), they are phasing out ethanol-free E5 from September 2023.

If you pour a bottle of vodka on your tank (other spirits are available) the paint is unaffected. It must be something else in the petrol which is such an effective paint stripper. But what?

Thanks for the heads up with that Richard. That's quite bad news for my bike and my car. I wonder if BP are going to continue with ethanol free. 

Maybe I'll try running on Vodka then. Looks like the ethanol stocks have been replenished, or the price has gone down if Esso are going to start using it accross the country now. I haven't really done any destructive testing because I don't have any test panels with the laquer my sprayer used. If the prices continue to escalate annually as they are it will be cheaper to use Vodka. Pure petrol (if there is such a thing) definately doesn't affect it. 

In one of Irving's books he discusses the 'dope' fuels available at the time.  They included methanol, methanol + petrol, and also various ethanol mixes.  He does write about stability, and other things were added to prevent separation of the alcohol from petrol.  They included acetone, which is commonly used in nail varnish remover.  I wonder if that is the real culprit?