DG, you got me thinking about the possibility of regional formulation differences of 10% ethanol fuel. You haven't had any problems in the arctic zone where you live, yet many of us are having nightmares with it in the balmy, humid mid-Atlantic area, especially with small 2-cycle engines.
Personally, I can't get more than 2 years out of an accelerator pump diaphragm in a YF 2100 in my '50. They turn mushy and begin to leak, causing an extremely rich situation, requiring pulling out the throttle knob to rev it up to burn the excess fuel in order to limp it home.
Another problem that I noticed was the gasket under the fuel sending unit deformed badly on my new build after less than 200 miles of operation.
I had a 216 in my '52 with a Rochester B (leather accelerator pump) which sat for ten years without running and when I started it up the first time in ten years, as soon as it got gas to the carb, it fired right up and purred just as smooth as it did 10 years prior. I ran nothing but 10% ethanol in it form the day I bought it.
I suspect that it is not the ethanol causing the issues, but rather, the volatile additives which makes the ethanol usable in some gasoline engines. Maybe these additives are monkeyed with in different regions for some reason and the unintended consequence is soft parts deterioration.
It is so bad here that most folks buy the cans of premixed real gasoline/2-cycle oil product for their weed eaters and such to get more than a summer of use out of them.
Carl
