So there I am filling up the gas tank and I notice a sign on the pump which states to the effect :

regular gas (87 octane) may contain up to 10% ethanol

midlevel gas (89 octane) may contain up to 5% ethanol

premium gas (91 octane) contains 0% ethanol

I check the Patriot owners manual and I read the warning against using methanol or E85 ethanol mixed gas. Hmmm, what gives?

I wanted to know the same thing but you beat me to it!! Good question.. So going off the topic I have heard that is you use ethanol gas in you mower that it wont run as good.

You mean the manual recommends not using 85% Ethonal... The Patroit is not a flex fuel vehicle

All gas sold in the USA has some ethonal blended in, but not enough to cause any problems.

10% ethonal should not be a problem. If you ran a higher perctnage you risk doing damage to the engine compnents particulary seals that detriorate with the use of Enthol. So no don't use E-85.

not to mention that the higher the ethanol, the lower the mileage

Ethanol is added to gas in the great lakes region of the US and Canada (some sort of US-CAN gov / EPA agreement) because it adds oxygen to the combustion process thus lessening nitros-oxide emmisions. I only have to go west of Milwaukee about 60 miles to get 100% gas in the Madison area. I am from the east coast of Canada(NB) originally and they do not use enthanol there at all.

There is about 20% less energy in enthanol for the equivalent volumn of gasoline.

We can also get E85 in Wisconsin but you need to have a special vehicle for that indicated by a yellow gas cap and an E85 decal somewhere on the vehicle usually. Milage sucks but E85 reatils lately here for about $0.75 less than regular(87)

Some gas stations here have up too 15% ethanol but most are 10%. I've never really noticed a difference and at that small of a percentage it's not going to hurt anything. One thing I wish the Patriot was E85 capable. Why design an entirely new engine family(the world engines) and not make them E85 capable? Oh well, its still a great little engine.