Ethanol Conversion Story

[LowGear]

I've been converted this Summer.  Until this late July I was in the camp that believed that all the repudiation of ethanol spiked gasoline was at best "Whining" and drifting down to mechanical incompetence.

I spend a few hours a week on a Kawasaki twin powered mower.  The mower not only cuts and mulches the fields but also cleans up all kinds of dead vegetation and mixes it into the light mulch that the mower provides as it does it's primary mission - cut the grass.  An occasional chunk of lava becomes pieces of of land fill as well.  It works way beyond it's design and my expectations.

I've always bought the highest priced gasoline the pump had to offer.  When I purchased the cheap stuff the mower actually missed when under load like on step hills or extra heavy grass / mulching loads.  Almost as soon as the expensive stuff was put into the tank my most used tool would come back to life.  A great machine.  Therapy is tricky when your mower is missing and coughing.

I tried a gallon of ethanol free gas a couple of times over the years but simply was not impressed.  Then the station down the road started selling the good stuff and it met the most expensive stuff in the machine purchasing criteria. 

So in just a couple of gallons down the throat and my mower now starts in a couple of revolutions rather than the customary 2 to 4 seconds.  And it runs better.  I have even started using this "Less is More" stuff in all of my small engine powered equipment.

Does anyone here go the whole route and pour this 20% more stuff into their daily driver?

Casey

[mike90045]

I buy low lead Av Gas 100 octane for the small power engines.   no ethanol gummy gas for me.   And it's what I use for the winter mix in the diesel

[mobile_bob]

i don't want any water in my gasoline thanks, and when it comes to ethanol it seems water tags along
the result is havok on small engine carb's and fuel hoses

having said that, i will use it for the job at hand, then run the unit dry, refill with a bit of canned pure gasoline and run the thing dry on that,,, the carbs and hoses seem to get by just fine.

the problem is taking the time to run the units dry and taking the time to restart with pure gas to more/less flush this crap out of the system.

everyone around here that leaves the water laden ethanol gas over the off season is faced with expensive carb and fuel line investment.

maybe it is a local thing, i don't know, but it is a very real problem around here.

having said that, the injected gas car/pickup engines seem to tolerate the stuff just fine

bob g

[vdubnut62]

  My Toyota's just couldn't care less what you feed them. They run the same on anything that comes out of a pump, driving my Tundra home from Denver, 1200 or so miles,
it got the closest thing to the exit ramp, ran the same on everything got 17.3 mpg. At home it gets whatever Sam's Club sells exclusively,(they tell me its Shell) 17.5mpg,  the Camry
gets the same fuel, but much better mileage. The story was the same with my old Camry, home from Boston, closest to the exit ramp, Sam's Club at home.  That car now has 289,000
miles on it, last time I changed my Mom in laws oil. (I gave her the car when hers died)  Still looks new and everything works. As far as I know, the fuel filter has never been changed.
    EVERYTHING else gets no ethanol.  Garden tiller, pressure washer, weedwhacker, blower, mowers 3 of em, Honda ATV's, 3 more, Jet Ski's, 3 of them too, log splitter, chainsaws 4 I think, small generators can't remember, anyway, you get the picture.
I have never had anything survive E10 unscathed except for my vehicles. Even my old 68 Chevy C-50 log truck handles it quite well so far.
My experience only. Your mileage may vary.
Ron.

[glort]

I think the addition of Ethanol in fuel is an attempt to stimulate the Auto and small engine industrys by causing premature failure and subsequent replacement.

I haven't found a thing ethanol is good for yet except killing weeds. and then because it evaporates so fast it's not as good as regular fuel.

I tried blending it with Veg oil in my vehicles and had problems. It Boils 20oC lower than petrol so caused vapor lock when the car was switched off by boiling in the fuel lines.
The neighbour was always coming down with her mower getting me to start it and it ALWAYS had a load of water in the carb and tank. I thought she was washing the thing or something and getting water in that way.
I'd clean it out and put normal fuel in and it was fine till she refilled it.  I bought her fuel and it was fine till she went and got it. Then the penny dropped. It's this ethanol laced crap.
Put it in my Harley and couldn't start that. Discovered it ruined the diaphram thing in the fuel tap and the CV carb.
Mrs worked out years ago she was getting significantly LEE mileage when she put in E-10 than the regular fuel. Worked out the miles  per fuel $$ spent and the ethanol stuff was CLEARLY more expensive. Wasn't even close with the relatively inaccurate measurements. The regular fuel consistently got her over 80KM a tank more range. For the small saving on the lower priced ethanol, it worked out more expensive by KM driven.


My father has a wrecking yard and whenever someone comes in with a fairly late model vehicle and needs O2 sensors, You can bet your house they run their vehicles on E-10.  Soon as you pull the sensors out you can see them burned white which is the dead giveaway. Usually the owner is some old fart that owns property and has a Million dollars in the bank, literally, but tries to save . 56 Cents per tank by putting cheap fuel in their car. When you ask, yep they use E-10 and they will all tell you " It's good fuel". Yep, that good fuel just cost you $400 in O2 sensors over a year of driving and you don't do many Km anyway.  Next you'll be back for head gaskets and valves which it also seems to cause a much higher failure rate with than regular fuel. Fuel pumps seem to fall over a LOT faster as well although injectors don't seem to be affected.
Put it in your Turbo and the computer will sense it and pull a heap of power out the thing to save grenading the engine.

Can't even wash parts in it. The alcohol or whatever it is burns the crap out of my skin. I'm pretty insensitive even to acids but that stuff makes me feel like I'm on fire.

If I can't get any normal unlaced fuel ( some places here now only sell the ethanol stuff) and I want it for a small engine, I wash the fuel, Literally.
Get a drum and add 50% water than let it settle and drain off the fuel and leave the alcohol in the water.  Some people have said they would be scared of washing additives out of the fuel.  I'm not.
Any additive that got washed out would have to be water rather than spirt based so if it washes out, GOOD! The clen fuel I have run like this has never given me any trouble at all.

We use this as a test in the yard now.  Got a test tube type vessel which we put a certain amount of fuel in then a certain amount of water.  If the separation of the water goes up and the fuel level goes down, you know you have ethanol crap. If you put in 100Ml of fuel and 100 ml of water and the separation line stays at 100Ml, you know you have proper fuel.

[mike90045]

I have to disagree about the o2 sensor problem.  All the automotive fuel sold in California has been laced 10% ethanol last 10 years.  And there are bi-annual smog inspections. O2 sensors are NOT failing from ethanol.  I can't say what it is you are seeing, but we have 3 cars, running on 10% for the last 7 years, over 100,000 miles between them , and no O2 sensor failures.  Nothing reported from friends that drive either, and you can bet if they were having to get $300 sensors replaced, they would be screaming bloody murder.

[SteveU.]

Unfortunately this is not a clear-case of yeah/nay on ethanol-dosed gasoline.
In my living area of western Washington State we were EPA Federal mandate "blessed" to be required to winter season use an oxygenated Reformulated gasoline since the late 1980's.
The first oxygenate additive's could be methanol, ethanol, made-up like MTBE/MTBE and a few others. Some of these acted like whole system aggressive cleaners clogging systems with shed craps. Some actually corrosive to some of those systems components - again resulting in shed particulates crap.
Cogged flow systems still able to run, run lean and HOT, damaging from the hot/lean running.
That once a year cleaning/clogging became less of a problem after we were mandated to use oxygenated/reformulated gasoline year around. THEN small engine choking on some of these alcohols love for absorbing tank breathed in-out atmospheric moisture's.
Certified vehicles went to sealed tank charcoal canister vapor recovery systems. These mildly pressurize NOT constantly air breathing with warm-up cooling down cycles. Later our wonderfully expensive state Department of Ecology mandated all of the fuel dispensary tanks to be dug up retired out and have new double wall protection replacement types (not more ground water infiltration); leakage out active detection monitors; and have be sealed with vapor recovery systems. No more pavement pooling rain water seeping into venting caps!
Methanol -OUT! Later MTBE/MBTE - OUT! Clinton/Gore Renewable Fuels mandate then favors foods-price-jacking-up ethanol as the oxygenate additive dictate.

"Additive" is the operative circumstance to always keep in mind.
Over these decades of changes, I, friends, family members have all ran into miss-additive make-your-engine run like shit supplier Opp's.
The last time in the summer of 2016 on an adult nieces PT Cruiser. "I was on fumes getting to the gas station. I filled it up. Now it starts up. Idles terrible. And I cannot drive away. Help!" 10 days of deferred tuning-up, filter changing, injectors/rails/intake manufold cleaning, random misfire codes head-scratching until her "fill-up" 1/4 tank of fuel was mostly used-up, low enough for replenishing. New, different fuel and the problem cleared itself up. Open air flame test of the previous fuel showed distinctly different from the new/better stuff. Others were caught by that one station's tank fill Opps too. The other pump grades at that same station were just fine. Problem traced back to an additive dispensing pump problem at the fuel Distributor.

Yep. Any late model certified for sell into the USofA road vehicle will be safe on ethanol up to E-10 fuel. "Flex-Fuels" certified, designed good for up to E-85 ethanol fuels. We drove a 99 Plymoth minivan for 17 years that was an up to E-85 type. Of course I did try more than once over the years. Worked fine. But pay 20-30% MORE, here for 15-20% less mileage!? You see, s-t-u-p-i-d g-r-e-e-n tattooed on my forehead?
Grey-market imported vehicles? Maybe, E-10 yes. Maybe, not.
Small engines search out and pay the price for the non-oxygenated stuff to be safe. Most small engine outside of the latest CA/CARB spec area ones still have air breathing in&out fuel tanks!
Just in the last 10 years 21st Century the local prison burnt up a pallet load of Shindowa brand equipment out forestry road maintaining. Problem. Shindowa-Japan had the carburetors jetted for non-ethanol gasoline. The state prison had previously used more expensive Stihl-USA equipment for years with no problems. Stihl-USA had jetted richer for leaner running E10 entanol gasoline.
Now my 2015 Kawasaki V-twin rider lawnmower runs white-spark-plug-tip "popcorn fart" too lean on ethanol gasoline. Runs cooler, with more power on the non-ethanol "marine" ALL H's and C's gasoline.

Ha! Ha! If engine life/performance was credit-card easy to sort out, any dumb-ass could finger-it.
Be the smart-engine-ass. Direct observe each system as an induvidual.. Adapt. Adjust your usages. It will cost you long-run much, much less.
tree-farmer Steve Unruh

[glort]

All the automotive fuel sold in California

Perhaps that's the difference.
I'm not in California nor are any of the vehicles having the problem.  It's a well known one here along with other things.
I would strongly suspect the fuel sold in the US is NOT the same formulation as what is sold here and that is probably the difference.

[glort]

Stihl-USA had jetted richer for leaner running E10 entanol gasoline.

Here in the United States of Australia, we get a lot of US/ California Spec small engines. Or at least we did.
Being to those standards, Mixture screws were done away with so as to keep the things running lean. All good and well while the were new but pretty quick when they got some hours on them and things started to wear, there was no way to ajust the mixture on the things and they ran like ship.

At first they put a little cover over the mixture screw which you could drill and pull out and make your engine perform properly again but that got replaced with a fixed setup that could not be ajusted. Next the keen people got Kits that you could drill and tap and put an adjustable mixture screw in. Nope, can't have those engines running correctly, got to make them pop and fart and near impossible to start again, ban those.

I have been forced to buy some gear with petrol engines of late cause I can't get them in Diesel and I notice there is a mixture screw again on the carby. Maybe this is because they are Chinese knockoff engines and they have designed out the fault which is what it is on those sealed engines.
I wonder how many perfectly good engines were thrown out because people thought they had a problem and how much energy, resources and emissions were squandered in their replacement when that could have been saved had they been allowed to run their full working life?

Our gubbermint in it's wisdom has just passed what has been dubbed the " lawnmower tax" which will be an extra tax to pay for the environmental damage all those small lawnmower/ pump/ chainsaw/ brushcutter engines do to the environment.

I'm really looking forward to the Difference they are going to make and breathing air which is 10% Cleaner.
1%?
.1%
.000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% ?

Anyway, 'm quite certain it will make a significant difference to the planet and is not just another excuse to cash in and corrupt the agenda of a noble cause like some uneducated people may think. 

[LowGear]

Hi glort,

It's my understanding that a lot of mixing with subtly different formulas goes on all over the different regions here in the states.  I too am a resident of Washington state like SteveU.  There's a mountain range right through the center of the state.  The "coast side" gets one mix and the Republican (inside joke) get another.  It's far dryer in Eastern Washington and a few hundred feet higher in elevation. 

So I got back to Hawaii after a one month stay in Washington.  I must report Seattle in August just can't be beat for beauty and comfort.  The mower was slow to start and is running just a click rough.  Yup, SWMBO purchased straight premium.  Does no one read the memos?

Casey

[vdubnut62]

Hey Glort,
The aforementioned "old" Camry did have to have o2 sensors,but at 250,000 miles or 402,336 klicks,  and it ran on E10 its entire life so... I would say their life wasn't affected by
ethanol laced fuel. Must be something in your fuel there that we don't have.
Ron.

[SteveU.]

Here is a couple of more real, personal experienced Ethanol fuel dosing factors in addition to all that have already been mentioned:
Small engines like the topic originator started this topic with are from a storage can filled. That can throws in it's own set of variable problems. Way back in the late 1970's I bought an expensive Type II fire/explosion safety five gallon gasoline can to driving range extend trips in my Ist generation VW Rabbit. ONLY place to put the can was inside behind the all open interior rear seat. Tied down well in case of a roll-over accident. Can had an internal brass flash suppression screen deep-cone inside the fill/pour-out neck. Strong spring pressure loaded fill neck cap acting as a vent off under severe over pressure. Can was "tern" plated on the inside for corrosion resistance. Means hot zink coated. Well the brass screen got torn out dropping down into the can after few years after encountering an too long of old style dispensary nozzle. After a few more years the zink oxidizing sacrificing itself to save the steel can walls and had particle shed off all along the inside top.
Can was fine for automotive use with big, good particles catching fuel filters.
Terrible carb clogging on small engines with no fuel filter, or at best just a coarse screen.
Taught me to become happy with certified plastic storage cans.
Then later with those still having problems in/out air breathing building up internal water moisture . . . to learn to love SEALED plastic gasoline storage cans. Use the better can and they will balloon out and NOT fall over. NOT suck in flex and crack and leak.
And now in just the last ~19 months using a lot of super fuels-sipping inverter-genrators; even with my proven sealed plastic cans back to carburetors clogging sometimes.
Reason for the problems? Super tiny small carb orifices for these use only 1 gallon US for every 10-12 hours of running.
Painters cone particulates filtering then adding fuel from my cans to these engines was showing up in the white painters filter cones small black slivers and flecks; and/or, red plastic can slivers from the can necks. The black debris were from the fuel stations hoses and dispenser nozzles. These are past the on-pump fuel filter. You do have to screw on-off the plastic can neck-cap each and every time the can is re-filled. Wear and tear there.

Ethanol or any other oxygenate additive had nothing to do with a mechanical "can" makeing my small engine run bad situations.

My second experience point later, maybe. Fingers tired.
tree-farmer Steve unruh

[SteveU.]

Ahhh. There was the fingers problem. Forgot to take my morning meds. Meds? For memory loss. Amp up the brain nerves amps up all nerves.

My secvond exprenced ethanol fuels learning was about the late 1990's/early 200's switching to "returnless" fuel injection systems. Two lines to the engine compartment systems for EFI had been used since the 1960's early Rober Bocsh days. The mechanical diaphram/orcis pressure regulator located very near/on the engine.
The FI engineerrs always fighting injector tip oricice deposited building ups. The smaller the injector tip as the systems evoled out to just one tinny tiny squrt ever two revolutoin - the worse the problem got. The smaller the engines, the less fuel flows per hour the worse the problem got. Super big, super fine filters only sometimes seemed to help. Of course the simple answer was to blame the fuel. So fuel demanded to become better, cleaner.
Someone filnally figure out that recirculating all of the in-tank fule past the hot engine compartment fuekl pressure slit orricice was causing some of the fuel long chains to berak down. Then these were adversely recombining into deposits.
Move the fuel pressure regulator back into the always cool in tank fuel pump assembly. Get as much in-line fuel as possible out of the engine heat.
Ethanol and other added , mandate oxygenates WERE, and are, a factor in this problem situation.

And that 17 years in service 1998 spec'ed mini-van was sold off still running, compliment with it's original O2 sensors.
The even older, longer in-service 94 Ford pick-up I currently drive still has all of it's original O2 sensors.
In the circle of family and friends it is the post ~2003-05 vehicles that O2's code-out needing their sensors replaced for emissions compliment testing, re-licensing.. The OBDII compliance on-board self-testing algorithms have gotten super sensitive. Better air? Maybe a tiny-tiny diminishing results bit. For sure it pushes selling off, and into a new car finanessed contracts.
tree-farmer Steve Unruh

[LowGear]

Thanks for a great review SteveU.  Some of your information has wondered through my mind for years and I'm kind of amazed about the other.  I've always coveted those super duper steel cans.  It's nice to know my tightly folded pocket book has protected me again.  

I read the comments in this forum and others and occasionally fall back in my chair and wonder how I've gotten this far.  I must admit the wine corks I use for gas can stoppers have served me pretty well.  It's not easy getting them to fit properly what with the belt sander also serving as the nursery, garden and farm tool sharpener.  Ignorance is such a beautiful thing when used in moderation.

I'm going to convert my worst plastic gas can into a planter today.  Of course it can be nothing to eat and there's too much volume for another failed experiment in bonsai.  Something with flowers for sure.

The crap from the gas station hose still makes me wonder how filters last over five years. ;~)  Life is not always easy when raised by hill folk.  Of course you always want to put them back in the same direction as when you took them out for cleaning.  But that's another three chapter story.  I'm trying to introduce the pre-photo session before any project that actually requires tools and a YouTube review.

[SteveU.]

Well Mr Casey, I have hesitated responding in case it would be taken offensively.
But the life of a poor Bonsai tree is at stake.
Gas can plastic absorbs gasoline short chain components in the plastic.
Wine-corking you are on your own.
I have tried non-gasoline-origins plastic capping some can systems I had got used with missing spout caps. A working auto tech . . (a smart one) . . . save all of the air conditioning components system shipping caps for other uses.
Ha! Seemed to work . . . usually. Then I found caps sometimes missing, taken off, and thrown feet away out of machivious malice.
Nope says the wife.
Nope says the kids.
Nope says the brother-in-law.
Then one day I spied the culprit in the act! It was me!
Can left out where the moving sum could shine on it built-up internal vapor pressure - - - Pop! Goes the weasel.

Doing is learning. Al else is just talk-talk, speculations.
tree-farmer Steve Unruh