ethanol in gas bad for our cars?

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66Dartdriver

66Dartdriver

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Whats the deal with 10% ethanol in the gas, This guy was chewing my ear off at the last car show saying I need to put an additive in my fuel now because ethanol is eating the rubber in my fuel pump and the fuel lines. I did a search and am getting mixed info but it doesnt sound too good. Any thoughts?
 
I live in New York, down state on the sand bar called Long Island, LOL

It has been in our gas for as long as I have been driving. 10% is the content amount.
Not to much off the E-85........ LOL!

I have nmot yet had a problem with the 10% on any rubber line. The rubber lasts years.
 
hand the guy a beer next time...

methanol is very corrosive which is wood based alcohol..

ethanol is not corrosive which is corn based alcohol...

ethanol has been in your gas for years....
 
The funny thing is that ethanol was actually created before tetraethyl lead. A group headed by a man named Charles Kettering came up with tetraethyl lead in the 20s. He had originally proposed using ethanol, but the lead additive was much cheaper to produce, and therefore much more lucrative. Strangely enough, it was this same man who headed the group that originally came up with chloroflurocarbons. I think it is safe to say that this one man has had the greatest negative impact on the environment than anybody else combined.
 
The rubber doesn't last years in small engines. I do small engine repair to help relieve some boredom and I see it all the time. It hardens and cracks fuel line and boogers up carburetors. If you're worried about it, there's a new STA-BIL on the market that says ETHANOL on the label real big. It works well.
 
its terrible for small engines. Anything that doesn't run very often...chainsaw, lawn mower, weed whacker. The ethanol will seperate from the gas if it sits for extended periods of time. Also, it is tough on rubber as mentioned, and not the greatest for bare aluminum as i understand.
 
It also does your fuel mileage (and power) no good.
My 72 Kaw 500 hates it...and it would run on cow pee back in the day.
 
demon700 said:
its terrible for small engines. Anything that doesn't run very often...chainsaw, lawn mower, weed whacker. The ethanol will seperate from the gas if it sits for extended periods of time. Also, it is tough on rubber as mentioned, and not the greatest for bare aluminum as i understand.
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IDK about aluminum, but I agree on the small engine mention. The rubber lines on my cars have been there for a few years.
It's been 9 years on my Magnum. The hard line from the tank to the fuel pump. I never checked the rubber line from the tank to the hard line running foward. The 2 short lines that hold the fuel filter on are a few years old. They do get changed every now and again. They do see more heat via the intake manifold though.
 
Is there a additive we can add to the gas tank of our cars to help counter act it and boost the octane that really works?
 
You should avoid jokenol at all costs. The congress critters passed legeslation last year increasing it to 15% and probably let the gas stations keep the 10% stickers. Jokenol has less heat content per volume than gas so you get less power and worse mileage. Jokenol attracts water and makes jokenol/water - highly corrosive. It will dissolve the copper in carb jets leaving a green residue in the float bowl that is darn near impossible to remove. It will make chainsaws die because the jokenol/water will not hold the oil so the engines burn up.

Find a station without it in your local area here: http://pure-gas.org/

Help keep that website up and thank gas station owners who do not sell jokenol as they are under tremendous political and ewconomic pressure to sell the stuff. It gets blended in to the gas at the truck terminals and there a choice, but the gas with jokenol is about 12 cents lower per gallon than pure gas.

The way to test for jokenol is to get a 100cc graduated cylinder with a stopper on top and put 20cc's of water and the rest (80cc's) of the gas to be tested. Shake up the container well (put the cap on and hold it with your thumb) and watch the water settle out. 10% jokenol in the 80cc's of gas will be 8cc's of the devil's juice. If the "water" is now 28cc you had 10% jokenol.

The stuff is bad juju.
 
No arguements here. I've never liked it.
 
Don't like ethanol and won't run it. I have an ethanol plant right behind my house and I won't use a drop. Doesn't work well in small engines, takes your MPG down in your cars and trucks. Now just to piss off all the good taxpayers out there did you know that the farmer gets about a half buck subsidy for raising that bushel of corn (and right now corn is at an all time high price) and the ethanol plant gets 45 cents a gallon subsidy for making the ethanol. They get about 3 gallons of ethanol out of a bushel of corn so every bushel of corn made into ethanol costs the American taxpayer almost $2 in subsidies. Meanwhile our food prices go higher and higher because we're using our corn to make fuel instead of food. The ethanol board doesn't agree with that but look at your food prices and you decide. There is plenty of crude out there and all we have to do is go get it. Instead of building all these ethanol plants we should be building new refineries.
 
demon700 said:
its terrible for small engines. Anything that doesn't run very often...chainsaw, lawn mower, weed whacker. The ethanol will seperate from the gas if it sits for extended periods of time. Also, it is tough on rubber as mentioned, and not the greatest for bare aluminum as i understand.
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Outboard boat motors...
 
Many (and ever more) of us don't have a choice to run straight gasoline; in more and more areas you can only buy gasoline that contains ethanol (or as many carburetor men call it, "deathanol"). It's not corrosive like methanol, but it does create problems by dint of carrying water through the system so parts that never saw much of any water on straight gasoline now are exposed to water fairly constantly. As others have mentioned, the big aggravator is sitting; this steeps the carburetor and other fuel system components in a brew that contains water, and corrosion is the result. This is why you see white "metal mould" corrosion when you open up a carburetor that's been running (and sitting) on gasoline that contains ethanol. There are plenty of additives marketed as preventing the damage. Does any of them work? Don't know. Sta-Bil makes one such additive and I use it when I have to leave my carbureted cars sitting for extended periods of time. There is no additive that is worth using on a continuous basis in an attempt to counteract the ethanol.

Ethanol is also deleterious to various soft parts -- various plastic and rubber materials. This is a pretty easy to manage issue: replace the fuel hose with fuel injection hose marked "30R9", which is proof against whatever flows through it and has much less permeability and much higher burst strength. It's expensive by the foot, but most cars don't need much of it -- a few short lengths in the engine compartment and one short length back at the fuel tank. Be sure and use the correct Fuel Injection hose clamps, which have rounded-off edges that won't dig or cut the hose. And use a fuel filter with a metal can, not plastic.

Gasoline with ethanol causes and aggravates issues with cold starting, hot starting, and driveability. Slant-6ers can do the Fuel line mod; everyone can add a carburetor heat shield, and beyond that you pretty much just have to live with it.

Ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, so a gallon (or litre) of gasoline with ethanol contains less energy than the same amount of gasoline without. That means you get less work out of any given amount of fuel, which means reduced fuel economy and reduced maximum power.

Time was, ethanol was considered a contaminant in gasoline. Now that the ethanol industry has bought the best government money can buy, we're all supposed to learn to say "ethanol enhanced" gasoline instead. :roll:
 
I've been adding a quart of 2-stroke oil per tank to the old Mopars + Lead Substitute at the recommended dose, because I'm not sure about the exhaust valve seats. The 440hp in my Chrysler (with a new NOS AVS tuned perfectly) developed some serious issues that I can absolutely attribute to ethanol. It would surge at low cruise, lean out during hot idle and actually boil the fuel in the carb on a hot enough day to where it would starve at WOT.

Hate that shyt.
 
slantsixdan said:
That's a terrific way to do nothing but lower the octane of your fuel and cost you unnecessary money.
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Since it cured the problems and the car sits around not being driven much it is the perfect way to address this problem for me, and save me money from the potential damage caused by running lean at high altitude.

Don't you think it would detonate if octane was an issue? Esp. in a 10.1-1 engine?

How much you think valve jobs and rebuilds are running these days?

That's definitely something if you ask me. :finga:
 
I've been using an additive for about a month now.Tried it first in a weed eater.No longer have to even choke the engine.Made by Starbrite,the additive name is STARTRON enzyme fuel treatment for 2 & 4 cycle gas engines.Use it in Dodge ram with 5.7 did make a difference.
 
340-4spd said:
How much you think valve jobs and rebuilds are running these days?
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Good work and quality parts have always been more costly than cheap parts and shoddy work; why do you ask? Regardless of what a rebuild costs, adding oil to the gasoline is not beneficial.
 
slantsixdan said:
Regardless of what a rebuild costs, adding oil to the gasoline is not beneficial.
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So you think running hot with an engine that won't re-start because the fuel boils out of the bowls after a few minutes on a hot day is beneficial?
 
I have thought about removing the jokenol by adding water to gas, shaking it and then draining off the resulting jokenol/water, but I prefer buying my gas without it in the first place.

Jokenol is 1/3 of the corn "demand".

http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Corn-growing-into-major-commodity-player-41582-3-1.html

The corn market by itself has been as big a trade as almost anything else out there, including crude oil. A lot of it has to do with the ethanol. It’s one third of demand right now. Five years ago, it was next to nothing. I can remember years when 8 or 9 billion bushels was a huge crop and we didn't know how we could get rid of all that. Now we're going to produce 13 billion bushels or more and we're not sure that's enough, which shows you how it has increased.

Everybody should write their congresscritters and senators and demand the end of jokenol and corn subsidies.
 
It's really the two stroke motors that this gives a fit too. Up here Snowmobiles were blowing up left and right when they first introduced it. Needed to put in an additive.. We still do in the two strokes and in the 4 strokes when we put them away. When it sits it starts to separate.
 
340-4spd said:
So you think running hot with an engine that won't re-start because the fuel boils out of the bowls after a few minutes on a hot day is beneficial?
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Nope. But adding oil to the fuel does nothing to combat that -- except perhaps in the mind of he who does it.
 
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