Great ethanol warning

[Tiger Small Engine]

I have 5 chainsaws, 2 string trimmers, hedge trimmer, pole saw, lawn boy 2 stroke mower, tiller, z turn, lawn tractor, IH LoBoy tractor, 3 generators, chipper shredder, mantis tiller, pressure washer, blower, 36" walk behind that all run on E10 with no issues. The FS80 stihl string trimmer is 24 years old and has had at least a hundred tanks of fuel through it all E10. Still has original fuel lines and never had the carb off yet. All 2 strokes get drained and run completely dry at the end of the season and the 4 strokes get filled up with no stabilizer. Everything runs fine.
Customers leave things too long and not stored properly and that makes me money.

I agree with Hammermechsnic man-
I run a small engine repair shop and personally run 10% ethanol with no problems. Keep the fuel moving, keep it fresh. For 2-stroke handheld equipment, especially chainsaws, no older than 30-60 days. It seems most of my customers claim to run no ethanol fuel. I constantly see old fuel (turn yellow, dark yellow, etc.), and water in fuel. Use the fuel shut off valve after running equipment on occasional use basis.
This topic has been beaten to death, and been overblown. I clean lots of carburetors and very few of them are ever to far gone to bring back into service.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

Things customers do:
Dump the fuel out if a 2 stroke but not start it and really run the fuel out.
Dump stabilizer in the gas tank and not run engine to get stabilized fuel uo to the carb.
Store equipment half full if gas.
Use premium for off season storage.
Mix motor oil with the fuel to stop rust.
Remove spark plug for safe storage. (Probably some internet BS).
Never ever drain all the fuel from a generator or tiller.
Dump fresh fuel on top of fuel years old fuel and the carb is trashed and tell you it ran last week.
Bring in a piece of equipment saying they think it needs a spark plug and you notice the float bowl is rusted off.

 

[bullet bob]

"Dump fresh fuel on top of fuel years old fuel and the carb is trashed and tell you it ran last week."

 

[Tbone0106]

Good stuff here. The word is "hydrophilic." Ethanol is hydrophilic, meaning that it really likes water, even to the point of attracting the moisture out of the air.

In fact, you can actually make your own ethanol-free gas from the E10 stuff by mixing it with regular tap water and letting the mix separate. There are plenty of articles about this online. It is exactly the same process government inspectors use to check the ethanol content of pump gas. That will give you some idea of just how much ethanol and water love one another.

I used to get my corn-free gas at a marina 25 miles or so up the road. I had to pay a premium for it, and I had to lug my fuel can out on the fuel dock to the pump -- and back -- but it was worth it. These days, I run regular pump gas (E10) in my summertime equipment until about the first of September. After that, I fill them with the Super Fuel stuff you can find at Rural King or Lowe's. By the time the snow flies, everything is in good shape. I NEVER use SeaFoam or any other fuel additive. Ethanol is a problem in the first place because it is a gasoline additive. You're not going to counteract the bad effects of one additive by tossing in another one.

Some of the chainsaws I use regularly are 60 years old. (My blue-and-white XL-12, for instance, was made in 1962. No, it is not for sale.) Back then, ethanol was the stuff that came from Pappy's still that you drank on wild weekends. We hadn't yet grown stupid enough to put it in our fuel tanks. No part of the fuel system on that saw was designed to withstand ethanol, and no tuning can make it happy with the stuff.

Trust me, with a belly full of pure gas, Ol' Blue ROCKS.

 

[Dan Deleon]

I can only say this. The FAA does not allow ethanol in Avgas (airplane fuel) because of the damage it causes wuth water in lines and dependability. It one thing when your 2 stroke acts up, another when your prop stops spinning.

 

[smallenginesuppliers]

A comprehensive list of gas stations, by state, that sell ethanol free gasoline

Pure-gas.org - ethanol-free gasoline in the U.S. and Canada

Pure-gas.org is the definitive web site listing stations that sell pure gasoline in the U.S. and Canada.

www.pure-gas.org

 

[Dreaded]

I live in Mississippi. I think there is more to this than just ethanol causing the problems. I work on small engines all the time. I have customers that use only nonethanol fuel and if the engine sets up for say 4 or 5 months they have problems with the carburetors so not so sure the problem is just ethanol. I think part of the problem started when they started using oil from crack deposites or from when the wells started getting low. I am not saying ethonal does not cause problems. But when you have nonethanol being used and still have problems then there is something else going on.

I use ethanol gas in my stuff and really have some problems if it sits more that a month without running.
The reason I run ethanol is it costs about 50 cents a gallon less (I would love it to be just 10 cents a gallon more). But I advice my customers to run non ethanol. See I can clean my carbs at very little cost also use additives but I would use additives even using non ethanol. But it cost them for me to clean/replace theirs. I use non ethanol in customers engines when I have to refill their tanks during testing.
I think it depends on where you live as to just how much effect ethanol has. In colder climates it is worse then in hotter climates and in wetter climates it is worse than dryer climates. Missississippi is during the winter cold and wet so we have issues during the winter but in summer not so much.
I hate ethanol and think it is the worst thing the government ever came up with.
I have had to replace several fuel tanks due to rust/other type build up from them using ethanol fuel after they allowed the tank to set low on fuel for 6 months or longer. But I am not sure about this due to this is what a customer tells you about the time it sat. It could have set for several times like this over the years and build up/ rusted because of the many different times it sat.
So to really know you would have to test out this theory and I don't have the money or time to do this.

 

[Richard Martin]

Non-ethanol fuel will leave the same gum behind in the carb that E-10 will. The gum that is left behind is the non-volatile additives that are put into the gas, such as cleaners and antiknock compounds. When you have a lawnmower with a tank full of gas, and no shutoff valve, as the gas evaporates from the carb, it is replenished with more fuel from the tank until all of the gas is gone, and you have a carb full of gum. Old timers, such as myself, have been having this problem forever, long before they put ethanol in gas. If a mower comes into my shop without a fuel shutoff, I install one and then instruct the customer on its use.

 

[troverman]

I think buying ethanol free gas is a giant waste of money. I've never done it, ever. My equipment sits all winter (nearly 6 months) in an unheated shop. I don't use fuel stabilizer. I don't user battery tenders. I've honestly only cleaned one carb. My oldest piece of equipment is 15 years old, but most of it is around 5 years old. If you buy high-quality, professional grade equipment, you'll find the carburetors are better made. Replacing an OEM, commercial grade carb with an eBay $20 chinese special is a huge downgrade. Just clean and repair the OEM carb. I have a ton of small engine equipment, including some two stroke stuff. In addition, I have a couple of snowmobiles that sit all but about 3 months of the year, a motorcycle that sits probably 7 months, an ATV that sits a lot, etc, etc. Same treatment for those items - they just sit with regular E10 in the tank in cold storage and never have an issue. If you guys want to swear by buying expensive gas or dumping a lot of additives in, feel free, but I don't see the need.

 

[loco-diablo]

Here in taxachusetts you can't get non ethanol fuel... but it doesn't bother me.. In the decades of using e10, Ive never had an ethanol related problem.. If I'm not going to use a peice of equipment for an extended period, I dump the tank, then run a bit of true fuel through the machine...