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Ethanol gas has spawned whole new industries that never existed before, like gas treatments to counteract the effects of ethanol. Very strange that we have to buy additives to fix the gasoline we pay good money for.
Marine technicians LOVE ethanol gas, it has brought them tons of new customers they would not have otherwise. When I worked at marinas, we would rebuild a customers fuel system and 3 months later they were back, accusing us of not doing a good job. Their boats were running like crap again, and it was because of ethanol, not something we had done wrong.
Yeah, I heard that California made it illegal to cut down trees and drove all of the lumber mills out of the state. It's one of the reasons they have such huge forest fires. "Log it, graze it, or watch it burn."
You heard wrong. They simply cut when it's profitable and stop when it isn't.. Lots of timber now is plantation timber anyway. We wouldn't have any forests if we just cut old growth.
Be careful with aircraft fuel. Last time I spoke with a mechanic at the airport, he said not to run aircraft fuel in auto or small engines.
I don't recall the exact details but as I recall:
Octane level is over 100. That could burn up an engine not built for that level.
Something about the detergents or additives or something that isn't good for regular cars or small engines.
"Normal" avgas is 100LL. 100 octane. Low lead. You can't run that in any automobile with a catalytic converter.
I haven't seen ethanol-free gasoline in marinas in Massachusetts. The gas dock in my harbor certainly doesn't have it. I buy ethanol-free for the inflatable dinghy and lawn mower out of state.
Yes, I have seen the extra mileage be as much as 25% higher with non-ethanol gas. The public has really been sold a bill of goods about ethanol (among many other things). One of my pet peeves.
It has an incredibly short 'shelf life' and not only fouls up engines but reduces gas mileage significantly - at the same time that vehicle manufacturers are scrambling to increase gas mileage by miniscule amounts by paring off milligrams of weight each year and producing awful looking cars/SUVs with (I think) poorer visibility out windows that are reduced in size, etc.. All it would take to fix that would be to take the ethanol out of gas again (as it used to be). And it has also been said that the environmental impact of ethanol gas is actually greater than that of pure gas. I don't doubt it.
It is annoying to get less mileage on a vehicle but if your small aircraft can and does use non-ethanol gas (as some still do to my knowledge) but you can only get ethanol gas .. it is highly dangerous! I can stop my car along the side of the road if something goes wrong but where does one go when the spark plugs foul at 10k feet or some other mechanical failure happens mid-air as a result of seals or something else being eaten through? And with private pilots who own a plane there are often long periods when they don't use their aircraft - so this is not a trivial thing to replace their usual gas which can sit for up to 2 years without additives with that which has a very short shelf life.
Ethanol is not there to boost gas mileage, it is there to oxygenate fuel and reduce hydrocarbon emissions. They started with a syntetic, MTBE, which turned out to be carcinogenic and showed up in water supplies, so they switched to ethanol. There are still areas of the US where ethanol is not mandated, but it's generally not worth the oil company's time to sell different mixes 500 miles apart. I live in a clean air area, and for a brief time last year, BP was bulking non-ethanol gas at their pumps because ethanol cost so much more than gasoline. As soon as crude prices went up, they went back to mixing. Yes, you take a mileage hit with ethanol. It's the price you pay for clean air.
You heard wrong. They simply cut when it's profitable and stop when it isn't.. Lots of timber now is plantation timber anyway. We wouldn't have any forests if we just cut old growth.
Is that what they tell you? The profitability of a tree depends on how close it is growing to a lawyer. California has had huge forest fires that raged unchecked because there wasn't a single logging road/firebreak in 100 miles, and most of them were growing in commercially viable second and third growth, except for the urban fantasy tree huggers who think forests are some kind of tree museum.
This is odd and makes no sense to me. Sounds like the mechanic is confused about what octane is. higher octane does not burn hotter than lower octane. Higher octane allows high compression engines to compress the fuel mix without pre-ignition. If the small enigne is not high compression, it will have no impact on the small engine. If it is high compression, then the premium high octane will be a helpful. WOrst case, you waste some money. How does it "burn out and engine"?
There was a common misconception that higher octane fuels burned hotter, or cleaner or were more explosive. I think this misconception was orchestrated by gasoline companies who wanted people to buy premium when they did not need it.
Higher octane fuels like Avgas tend to cause a leaner mixture in carburated engines, IIRC.
I buy 90 octane Conoco clear gas for $3.45, run it in every car and small engine I own. Several stations have it in town for $3.75 +/-. There is a station with clear 92 octane but I need to get around to getting the specific card to use the card-lock - does not take credit cards.
Ethanol is not there to boost gas mileage, it is there to oxygenate fuel and reduce hydrocarbon emissions. They started with a syntetic, MTBE, which turned out to be carcinogenic and showed up in water supplies, so they switched to ethanol. There are still areas of the US where ethanol is not mandated, but it's generally not worth the oil company's time to sell different mixes 500 miles apart. I live in a clean air area, and for a brief time last year, BP was bulking non-ethanol gas at their pumps because ethanol cost so much more than gasoline. As soon as crude prices went up, they went back to mixing. Yes, you take a mileage hit with ethanol. It's the price you pay for clean air.
Any overall emissions reduction is debatable. Diesel burnt to run the tractors, harvesters, to truck the corn, whatever is used to make the electricity for the "hooch" plant - I'm pretty sure the emissions are higher overall with ethanol. I have read that about a gallon of Diesel is burnt to make a gallon of ethanol - a poor trade.
Then there is the farming of marginal soil to make more and more corn. And anyone who even gardens knows that corn is a "heavy feeder" and needs a lot of nitrogen to make a good yield. And where does most of the commercial nitrogen fertilizer come from? Anyone? Buehler? - that's right, it's made from natural gas.
Mandates need to go out like the Soviet Union went out.
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