The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Denny

I was wondering if you ever got your hesitation problem completely solved.

I think some time ago I suggested alcohol blend might be your problem and you said all IL gas has alcohol. Why not run over to Iowa and buy a few 5 gallons cans of gas without alcohol. It costs more than blended because there is a tax break in Iowa, but it might be worth your while.

I had no idea you couldn't buy regular gas in certain states. I have only used the blended gas a few times since it never delivered the mileage of regular gas when I tried it.

The stupidity of our government is amazing, and it is only going to get worse, in my opinion.

Here in central Texas there is no one that sells ethanol that I know of, and I have been a gasoline distributor all my life. However, in Houston all of the higher octanes contain ethanol because mtbe does not meet Houston emissions standards so they oxigenate the gas with ethanol and they can get it by barge down the Mississippi and then across the intercoastal canal. It makes no sense whatsoever. Whenever I go to Illinois, I fly either into Chicago MDW or St. Louis and rent a car, and I put the cheapest stuff I can find in the rent car.

I have seen gas stations in the northeast with signs out front that state "No Ethanol". It would be a little bit of a drive to come to the NE, Denny, but if alcohol is mandated, it must be by state or by locality.

I thought oxygenated fuel absorbs water. ARTICLE Would it hurt anything to drop a can of HEET in your tank?
Just a question - I don't know, but would like to find out about problems with ethanol in fuel.

Could water absorbed by the fuel cause problems like you are having?It runs fine until it warms up) Does anyone know if the 'wet' fuel changes properties in a hot carb.?(I would assume that the water could turn to steam in a hot carb/manifold) Another thought along the same line - If the engine was tuned to being cold, could it be re-tuned to run poorly cold, and run well when hot?

I believe it is a problem isolated in your truck, or many people would be experiencing the same problems.

http://www.thecarburetorshop.com/Ethanoluse.htm

Jon.

Denny, why not find a local airport that will sell you a few gallons of avgas? There's a small general aviation field in Nashville that will sell aviation gasoline for your "seaplane" that parked on the river a couple of miles away, since it can't land and taxi up to the pumps! They just won't pump it into your car or truck's gasd tank because they don't hav any way to collect the road taxes. I think they have 80-something octane, and 100+ for the high-compression rigs. The high-octane stuff runs really well in round track race cars!
Jerry

Jon - thank you for that information. Have you ever experienced trouble with the fuel absorbing ' too much' water?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

I agree - if water absorbed by fuel was a problem, we would have the same problem on high humidity/rainy days.(more moisture being sucked into the intake) I enjoy troubleshooting, and I also enjoy learning more info. to back up/refute my theories...Thanks to all.

54TOW - I don't think the amount of water absorbed by the deathanol is detrimental to the burning of fuel in the engine. If anything, it probably helps (more oxygen).

I have read articles that the absorbed water is an issue in increasing the corrosiveness of the deathanol, but no first-hand testing, so take it for what it is worth.

Jon.

Thanks

I can shed a little light on the effects of water in the fuel, since it was one of the components ot the methanol/peroxide mix my family used in the dirt tracker for a lot of years. We ran a mix of 75% straight Methanol and 20% technical-grade peroxide, with 5% amyl acetate as a wetting agent. Medicinal-use peroxide is 2% by volume, with the remaining 98% being plain old water. Hair-bleaching peroxide is strong stuff, a 4% concentration. Ours was 20% strength. Depending on humidity, we would add 1,2, or 3 6-ounce Coke bottles of straight water to an 8-gallon fuel tank and jump up and down on the back bumper to mix it. Dry day, more water! Alcohol and water will mix in any proportion, so the water would distribute itself equally throughout the fuel tank. In the combustion chamber, the water would flash to steam, keeping the combustion cool enough not to melt the pistons. Running without the water resulted in erosion of the piston crown above the top compression ring.

Peroxide is CORROSIVE! Our fuel tank was an 8-gallon stainless steel beer keg, with all-stainless fuel lines to the carburetor. Every time we stopped the engine, it was necessary to turn off the fuel and run the carburetor dry, to keep the fuel mix from eating holes in the aluminum float bowl. A carb rebuild lasted exactly one night of racing, so we had to build a fresh carb every week. In a matter of a few minutes, fuel left in the float bowl would turn a chocolate brown color from chemical reaction with the aluminum.

The old 34 Ford 3-window coupe ran like a turpentined cat, with a compression ratio of around 11:1, and approached 6,000 RPM with a 4 1/8" stroke, but the engines were very short-life affairs, maybe half a racing season!
Jerry

There is no federal tax incentive for ethanol. It varies by state. Illinois is a corn producing state, so their legislators want to please the corn producers. Iowa does the same thing, only they provide a choice. Buy ethanol blend or pay more for non ethanol blend. Although ethanol and mtbe both absorb water, this is not their purpose. It is to add octane numbers. This was done with tetraethyl lead back when these 50's vehicles were built, and that is what they were designed for.

so would putting some of that lead additive from a parts store help?

The lead additive lubricates your valve seats like the old lead did and I highly recommend it for that purpose unless you have put hard seats in your head. The lead additive does no more than that.

Was recently reading an article which stated that there is a federal deathanol incentive. The refiners receive 61 cents per gallon if they include deathanol at a 1 part deathanol to 9 part gasoline ratio. This would be E-10.

Jon.

I have a question. My little Ford 2N tractor was built to run leaded gas. I had the engine overhauled 15 years ago when I bought it and the mechanic suggested I add a few ounces of a lead additive to help coat the cylinders. So Denny, I wonder if that might have a positive effect neutralizing the ethanol in the blended gas.

First of all unleaded gas is a lot more volatile than leaded. When unleaded was mandated in 1975, we had to put in submerged pumps because our suction dispensers would not pump the unleaded gas. Leaded finally became totally unavailable around 1990 and the few suction dispensers left are used for diesel. Alcohol makes it even more volatile. I haven't heard any additive that helps overcome this problem. I have 7 GMC's, some of which had Rochester carbs that were put on by previous owners. I have replaced all of them with Zenith carbs, which of course, originally came on the GMCs. Performance is noticeably better. I especially like the ones that were known as a service replacement carb. They had an adjustable needle valve in the main metering jet. They are getting really hard to find now.
As for the lead additive, it is not noticeable on on engines that do not see heavy service. Back when there were still a lot of 455 olds engines in boats and motor homes, it made a big difference in valve seat life. Most of these engines are now out of service or had the seats replaced with hard seats. As for the tax incentive on alcohol, it is for the producer of the alcohol as an incentive to build more alcohol plants. There is an 18.4 cent Federal gas/Lust tax on gasoline sold in any state.

Back in the early '80's I did a fair amount of dirt late model racing. At the time alcohol was just starting to be used in the top cars so we made the switch. The learning curve was high, we got things sorted out, mostly bigger accelerator pumps, and much fatter jets, higher volume fuel pumps. We would use 25% more alcohol that racing gas / aviation gas. One thing we didn't learn till the end of the season was how corrosive the alcohol was to the fuel system. The throttle shafts we worn out big time, the fuel bowls in the carbs showed that they were being eaten. And yes, we did make things work with the alcohol and won lots of races.
This brings be up 25 years to today. I was driving my '53 6400 to a show on saturday and I experienced what Denny has been with his '50. Blubber stumble, mash the load pedal down and she'd pick up and run again. Got to the show and parked it. Could we be having residual affects of the alcohol in the fuel systems of our trucks actually doing mechanical damage? Maybe galling up the throttle shafts? Not sure, cause when I drove the truck home it ran like it should. I know that this truck has had unleaded thru it for years. I'm going do a little more looking.

Thanks