Ethanol Gas?

[pachanga90]

Ive seen the effects of ethanol,like the people who constantly fill their tank well above 1/4.They end up calling with a no-start,you drain a fuel sample,and its orangy-brown,a nice mix of concentrated ethanol and water.The ethanol is bad news,period,especially in carbureted vehichles.

[93yellowclubcar]

Originally Posted by pachanga90

Ive seen the effects of ethanol,like the people who constantly fill their tank well above 1/4.They end up calling with a no-start,you drain a fuel sample,and its orangy-brown,a nice mix of concentrated ethanol and water.The ethanol is bad news,period,especially in carbureted vehichles.

FWIW, throttle body injection doesn't like it either. My 93 S10 runs like pure garbage on ethanol "E10" fuel, bad mileage and hardly will idle without shuddering and dying. I now run it only on 90 octane with no ethanol (only non-corn fuel available around here) and my 18-19 mpg has come back along with the ability to idle.

[Hunting Cart Rookie]

Pachanga, is it bad to fill past 1/4 tank? Even with non ethanol gas?

[pachanga90]

You should run it low,even if its every few tanks,just to keep the water and ethanol to a minimum.Everyone i know that has come across this found that it was the people who keep their vehichles full,never letting them get low.My own plow trk sat all summer with 5-6gal in it,wouldnt start,i looked in the TBI,and it was all chalky in the throttle-bores,and the fuel looked like apple-cider.My boss tried E20 in his Flex-Fuel Yukon,it ran like crap,was misfiring,rattling,you name it.He changed the fuel,its fine now.The other issue is that the octane and BTU level of the fuel are effectively lowered by ethanol,so performance and mileage suffer as well.

[cart around]

Pachanga, I'm going to slightly disagree with you. Ethanol reduces BTUs, but is used to raise the octane level. Octane does nothing more than prevent pre-ignition.

That's why it's a waste to use a high octane fuel in a low compression engine. It doesn't provide any more energy, performance, or cleaning abilities than 87 octane. There are more than a few people out there that would be surprised to hear that.

Other than that, I will completely agree that ethanol being forced on us is a terrible thing.

[ianroberts69]

Ethanol can mess up the fuel pump if there is to much in the gas

[nobuckbuild]

http://pure-gas.org/ find ethanol free gas near you , golf carts dont use enough gas to even bother with using anything other than stabil or startron with ethanol free gas i have multiple carts and only use about 5 gallons total a year in them so its worth it for me to buy either avgas or ethanol free gas just to be sure im not getting water buildup