Don't understand all the problems that keep getting blamed on
pump gas, gasohol (E-10), old gas and on and on.
I just got back from the first run of the season with my
stock '50, 3600. In fact I’d actually put about 60miles on her
by the end of the day. She hasn't run but twice since before
thanksgiving of last year other than to crank her up a couple
of times to make sure the battery wasn't dead. And then it
wasn't even long enough to warm her up properly.
Had a buddy stop by yesterday, who I’d meet last year because of
the Stovebolt. He was helpin' out with a car show/fund raiser
that took place today. Because of his prompting me, when I woke
up I decided to take the day off from my ground keeping chores
to see if I could get the old gal road worthy enough to take to
the show this morning. Since she’d been sitting for the last
seven or eight months I wouldn’t have been surprised if I ran
into some sort of problem. I’d only kept a gallon or so in the
tank over the winter, just enough to fire up the engine if I
needed to, because I knew I would have to drain it to fix a fuel
leak. I'd had a small leak from the shutoff where the stem
packing had deteriorated from my 2005 rebuild of it. The slow
drop by drop puddle of fuel had, over the winter left a brown
sticky snake like trail up to the front of the truck. This
caused me to wonder about the condition inside the fuel system.
So I drained out the fuel, got the new packing installed, added
a new see-thru throw away NAPA fuel filter, replaced the
exhaust packing that had blown out last year, checked the earl
and water and dumped the gallon of old fuel that I’d drained
out earlier back in. Then from the barn, I found a couple of
gallons more of fuel that was left over for the mowers from
last fall.
Time to see how she was gonna react to all this old bad fuel.
After ten seconds or so of cranking, with my 6v system, which
had sat also all winter without a charger, some fuel made it up
to the carb and she popped right off.
I let it warm up till I got a needle movement on the temp gauge
and off I went to town to get a load of fresh fuel. I drove
around for a while first just to see how she was gonna run on
this ‘old’ fuel. Ran just fine, in fact, by now it was about
9:30 am and I hadn’t had my coffee yet so I ran up to McDonalds
and got some breakfast. No problem starting back up and I put
another 10 mile on her while I finish my Egg McMuffin before
turning into the Shell station.
My conclusion: Blaming fresh gas, gasohol (E-10), old gas and on
and on for a poor running engine doesn’t wash in my experience.
I suspect that the blame lies elsewhere.
Just like to add a couple more bits of fuel to the fire. My two
large generators 5k & 7k, mowers and trimmers, saws and such all
start and run just fine with old E-10, which in some cases have
had the fuel in them literally for years. And I’ve been driving
my own vehicles since 1956 and have never in all this time run
into a problem that could be traced to the pump gas that I was
using.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
