New gas on old parts

[rob love]

As part of the governments "green" initiative, the gas companies are required sell a certain percentage of ethanol fuel. This is achieved by adding a 10% ethanol to the regular fuel, a smaller amount to the pricier mid-grade fuel, and none to the pricey premium fuel.

There is a pretty good article about the downfalls of ethanol here: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/glob...ticle29103634/

I think one mistake in the article is that fuel stabilizers will help the shelf life of the ethanol blend....it does not. But the writer does admit he does not have scientific back-up to their effectiveness.

His last line sums it up:

The only people benefiting from ethanol are farmers and small engine repair shops.

Politicians ate it up as a no-cost method of appearing green, with a "renewable" source of fuel.

It in no way is better for the environment, and quite frankly we have more than enough oil producing capacity to outlive the amount of time that humans will be able to burn carbon as fuel. It gets sluggish performance, and poorer fuel economy by almost the same amount of ethanol that is in the fuel.

The article mentions how it damages zinc and aluminum parts in the fuel system. I can attest to that....in a year or two it stripped all the zinc coating off a new deuce electric fuel pump and the pump failed.

We regularly loan our museum vehicles to the various units to use in their bigger parades and displays. As much as I would like them to fill the tanks with fuel (museum money is especially tight these days), I have to caution them not to. Filling the diesel vehicles is fine though.