Traveling in CA recently, I picked up a brochure at a Shell station. It touts the fine qualities of ethanol as an oxygenating fuel additive. Evidently MTBE is being phased out and ethanol phased in in CA. The brochure says, "It's save to use in your car, or any other engine. . . nor will it harm any seals or valves."
The following may be valuable information for you from someone who has been using and also now carefully avoiding using gasoline with ethanol added. Minnesota, where I live, produces a lot of ethanol and seems to actively cooperate in what seems like a conspiracy of silence regarding its (ethanol's) irksome characteristics. Even here we have to find out about these characteristics on our own. No one seems to want to express them very publicly (if I disappear now, you will know what happened to me!).
Ethanol is fine in cars that get used fairly regularly. It soaks up any water in the fuel system and contributes to fewer vapor locks and frozen gas lines. Just don't let it sit in your tow plane's or your gas-powered generator's fuel system for more than a couple of weeks, certainly not over several months. (I saw a little generator at one contest purring away and supplying power to the computers and PA system used by the CD and his minions.) Not in your car either if that same fuel will sit in the tank and the rest of the fuel system for more than a month or so max and the car not used during this time.
When gasoline with ethanol sits for a while it starts to get gummy. A few years ago I bought a new outboard motor. Ignorant about ethanol's potentially evil ways I allowed the fuel to sit in the tank and carburetor over the winter. Who hasn't done this before? The next spring the motor wouldn't start. I took it to an outboard motor repair shop and they immediately asked if I had left ethanol-added fuel in it over the winter. It will require the replacement of the rubber parts in the carburetor, I was told. When I picked it up I paid a bill of $95, half for the parts, half for the labor. This for a new motor with only a couple of hours on it. The week before the outboard motor revelation I threw out an old lawn motor that I couldn't start, thinking it was done for. Now I'm pretty sure it was the ethanol in the fuel system. That mower had run okay the previous fall.
Since those experiences a few years ago I no longer use ethanol fuel in anything but cars. I also add Sta-bil to all the gasoline I think might sit for more than a couple of months. The Sta-bil can says it will prevent the formation of gum and varnish in fuel systems or gas cans, but Sta-bil predated ethanol-added fuel and I doubt that it will prevent the ethanol from doing its dirty work. At least I won't chance it.
Where to get ethanol-free fuel? In Minnesota there are gas stations here and there that sell super-premium fuel without added ethanol. The pumps are labeled "Non-oxygenated gasoline" and the smaller print says, "for lawnmowers, snowmobiles, chain saws and other small engines, as well as classic cars for which ethanol-added fuel would be damaging." Evidently from the existence of these special pumps we are to infer the dangers of ethanol. I think there are about 6 stations with such pumps in Duluth, a city of 90,000.
I have asked numerous gas station attendants and convenience store counterpersons about the negative characteristics of ethanol in fuel, including people at the stations with the special pumps. Only one of many dozens had ever heard of such a thing, and some thought it inappropriate to harbor such ideas.
I have consulted an instructor of small engine operation and repair at one of the local community colleges about ethanol in fuel for small engines. He gets livid about it. He thinks the state and the oil companies, as well as all manufacturers of engines, especially small engines, ought to clearly inform consumers and users about it. They don't.
The Shell brochure not only doesn't do this but it seems to lie. Maybe someone more expert than a layman such as I, will want to address this topic.
I'd be disappointed to see that little Honda generator not start the morning of the contest.
Al Nephew, Duluth, MN,
looking out at a Lake Superior nearly 100% frozen over, virtually all 31,700 square miles (81,703 sq. km.) of it, clear blue sky, and hat-sucking thermals popping everywhere at 10 degrees above zero F (-16 degrees C). That contest won't be here today.
