VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION General Discussions Ethanol and old cars

A special thank you to the EPA ! http://www.youtube.com/user/HVA8669229397

Interesting video. Sounds like it would be better to eat corn on the cob at the barbecue, rather than ferment it and add it to gasoline.

I think ethanol is getting a bad wrap. TRUE, it will soften old rubber parts, but, the only rubber part in a prewar Chevy engine is the fuel pump diaphram, the rest of the fuel system is metal(there are alcohol resistance diaphrams available). TRUE, it will loosen varnish in an old fuel system, but, varnish is a product of old gasolene, not ethanol. NOT TRUE, it will corrode metal, why would alcohol cause metal to corrode? I think most problems with ethanol is a dirty fuel system to start with, in other words, if the system is clean it will not be a problem, if the system is dirty , it will clean it up, resulting with varnish, rust, etc. getting caught in places you don't want it. My '37 and my '48 both run fine on ethanol, that being said, I don't use it in my '33 because the gas tank is "dirty" and it will break loose contanimates that clog the fuel pump filter. This is just my opinion and my experiance. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I can see more potential problems with cars of the '50s,'60s,and '70s because they had more rubber in their fuel systems.

Ethanol has less power, it has less miles per gallon, it tends to vapor lock at a lower temperature than gasoline, Ethanol absorbs water, Ethanol has an expiration of a few months, it eats rubber, Ethanol is extremely detrimental to small engines, Ethanol does not evaporate, Ethanol is more corrosive than gasoline and there are more negatives concerning Ethanol as well.

Some fellows like the stuff and others hate it. With the bad experiences I've had with the junk I'm one of the dudes that hates it.

The use of ethonol in gasoline is a political bandaid on the National Energy Policy's Broken back and severed leg. Nothing more, nothing less.
IMHO

Ed,
Ethanol attracts water and oxidizes to Formic Acid. It is the acid and water that "eats" metal. The only things good about adding ethanol to gasoline is it helps to reduce carbon monoxide in internal combustion engine exhaust and increases the octane rating a bit. The negatives far out weigh the positives but you will never convince the "greenies" that are increasingly controlling our lives.

Corn should be for drinking or eating. Leave it to goverment to fix things that didn't need fixing.

Well,I've used it in all modern vehicles since the 1990s and had no problems and I don't need gas line anti freeze which does the same thing as ethanol. I even had a 1991 Chrysler Lebaron that would start idling rough on regular and when I used ethanol in it, it would smooth out, that is when I started using it. I will agree it eats older rubber parts but newer stuff is built with ethanol resistant rubber parts. To each his own, but I would rather keep my money here in the US than give it to the Arabs. P.S. I am not a greenie" LOL
JMHO

I tried 10% ethanol fuel then 95octane regular. I travelled further on the same quantity and it cost me lesson the 95 than the e10.
My main driver (buik 3800 V6) uses LPG only (bbq gas to you lot) the only issue is it runs about 5 degree hotter but at half the cost I can put up with that. It is also more greenie friendly than e10 not that I agree with the greenies either.
Tony

Yep, Ethanol gives less miles per gallon than gasoline without Ethanol. Our moron ex-governor made Ethanol mandatory here in Oregon...no doubt for some kind of political concession in return. In my area many of the gas stations, small engine repair shops and a good number of the consumers want that stuff gone. However, my mechanic loves the junk because his business has increased since many of the repairs are directly related to Ethanol. Our 1984 Oldsmobile absolutely hates that garbage.

I have to agree with you JYD, it does get less mpg, but here in Iowa it is 10 cents per gallon cheaper than regular so it is about a wash cost wise. I have only had one vehicle that hated it, it was a 1978 minihome with a 350 Chevy engine. It vapor locked real bad on it. That is the only problem I have ever had with ethanol. I would not like it if my state mandated it either, that should be a consumers choice!

Yep, here we don't have a choice....even the regular has that garbage Ethanol. There are a couple of stations that do sell Premium gasoline without the Ethanol for use in the older cars, small engines and etc. However, they demand a big price for the Ethanol free gas.

Our '84 Oldsmobile vapor locks constantly during the summer and it has a very hard time starting when hot during the summer months as well. Never had this problem until the crappy Ethanol became mandatory.

Yes, that seems strange to me, Iowa is a big ethanol producing state but we have a choice. Do they produce ethanol in Oregon?

Are we gone? produces green blooded idiots. Most of them migrated from down south and have taken over the government.

I think our politicians came from the watermelon patch (green on the outside only).
Tony

You got that right !

This thread seems to me to be deja vu all over again

It should be noted that the only one supporting this "fuel" during this discussion is someone from a major corn-producing state.

Besides ethanol being a poor fuel, there are also some other interesting facts. First, we do not import much oil from "Arabs" as it is too sour and costs too much to refine into gasoline. Most of our imported oil is sweet crude from Canada, Mexico, Central America, and to a lesser degree Brent sweet crude from the North Sea. We also import a lot of gasoline from these countries because the government will not let us build refineries in this country.

In the future much more oil will come from Brazil since we just "loaned" them a few billion to develop their off-shore oil and then after we pretty much banned drilling in our gulf, sent them the idle rigs (and tens of thousands of jobs) to do their drilling so they can sell oil back to us.

It has been said many times on these pages,if you don't like importing oil than you must demand that we drill on our shores. We have a couple of hundred years of the stuff, and that is using today's technology. Probably more than that as technology improves. However, as we all know that is not going to happen until Jan 2013 at the earliest.

Oh, and should we mention that this corn-fuel has helped double the price of corn and that, in turn, has driven up our food costs; and even made it so people in other countries, who depend on our imported corn to survive, are having to skip meals because the price of corn is too high --- just so a small number of people can make more money growing and selling higher-priced corn; and some politicians can say they are saving the planet (which is doing just fine the last I heard and hardly needs saving). Our world was here before man and will be here after man.

Corn is for eating and drinking, and it's cobs can be used as a poor substitute for toilet paper; oil is for running things and keeping us warm.

Now you must excuse me, it is Saturday and I am going to take my flex-fuel F150 supercrew longbed and join some others in a little Prius tipping.

Now don't some of you get all out of shape, the Prius tipping comment is just a joke. We wouldn't really do that as it would scratch our bumpers.

Well Dr David , Did you know that the left over pulp from corn based ethanol is excellant live stock feed, so it is still producing food for you to eat? Yes, I am from a major ethanol producing state and I AM EVEN A FARMER getting "rich" from the high corn prices. I also think that there will be ethanol produced from a lot of things other than corn soon and that there will be better alternatives than ethanol in the future and I am all for that. I disagree that we aren't getting much oil from the arab countries. I do agree that we have plenty of oil here if we were allowed to get it. All I know about the bad effects of ethanol on engines is that I have used it exclusively in my more modern vehicles and have had no problems at all with it, including my '99 Jeep Grand Cherokee and my '08 Chevy Pickup as well as all that I have had since 1991. Oh BTW, I drive a '99 Jeep because I am so rich from the high priced corn. But, you use what you want and I will too!

Ed:

I will leave the evaluation of ethanol to others who study its affect on cars, motorhomes, and boats; but the research is pretty clear that it is not a good source of gasoline. Your experience with it is too small a sample to be a valid statistic.

Your last line says it all: if only we could use what we want. Right now the government forces people to use ethanol, and that is the rub!

David, We agree on something, the government should not mandate the use of ethanol, we should have a choice. Fortunately, we do here in Iowa.

Ed

I am pleased that we agree that states or the federal government should not mandate this fuel; and that we need to decrease our dependence on foreign oil, especially oil from unfriendly nations, by developing our own resources.

However, we will have to disagree on the macro value of this product and its unintended consequences. And, while we can have different opinions, we cannot have different facts.

First, I understand the challenges of being a small businessman. I currently own a website that is a small business that helps Amish farmers market their products (jams, jelly, granola) to an internet audience (their religion prevents them from using modern technology). And while I am doing this more as a mission than as a profit center, I have owned and run small businesses before I retired.

Also, my grandfather grew up on a pig farm in Michigan and they grew corn to feed the pigs much as they do in Iowa. The farm stayed in the family until a few years ago. I also spent three years in Canton, Mo which is a few miles from Iowa and currently spend part of the summer in a rural area of eastern Ohio --- so I understand the problems of being a farmer in an era of high government intervention. If I were a farmer I would probably be in favor of ethanol as it has increased the amount of money I could get for my corn and it would help my bottom line.

However, the fact that you are not making much money on corn does not change the fact that ethanol has greatly increased the price of corn and that has caused a lot of suffering because of its impact on food prices.

The fact that some of the left over product is used as silage does not change the fact that the price of corn and food has greatly increased due to corn's use in ethanol.

Also, the use of potatoes, wheat, or other food products to make ethanol will only increase their price and hurt people who are suffering during the current depression.

However, we can disagree with what is too much imported "Arab" oil. The facts from the US Energy Information Administration of US oil imports in July 2011 are as follows:

The top five sources were: Canada 28%, Saudi Arabia 14%; Mexico 13%; Venezuela 10%; and Nigeria 9%. Thus, of the top five sources only 14% comes from an "Arab" nation and 60% comes from non-Arab nations. The only other Arab nation in the top 10 that exports oil to us is Iraq at 3%. The last I heard Saudi Arabia is pro-American; and certainly Iraq owes us a lot more than 600 thousand barrels of oil a month given how much our young men and woman have given to that country.

However, you are certainly correct if it is your opinion that 17% from these two "Arab" nations is too much. I am sure many agree with you. But until we develop our own I can deal with that percentage from these two sources.

Another interesting fact. Our only real export of oil is to Canada and that is so they can refine it and sell it back to us as gasoline because our federal government will not let oil companies build refineries to meet our needs for gasoline.

The bottom line on this fuel is the research is clear: it does more damage to the vehicles it is used in than does oil-based gasoline.

So the bottom line for me is although my F150 is certified to use flex-fuel I would never put it into my truck; and only put ethanol in when when mandated to do so by the government. I also wish I did not have to put it in my 2 classic cars.

PS I drove across Iowa this summer and the two stations I stopped at had only 1 lane where they sold non-ethanol gas. The gas in these lanes was priced about 75 cents higher than ethanol gas, and were placed so that I could not get my motorhome and toad into them. Now this is too small a sample to make any generalization, and it was off I-80 and may be an exception, but the impact on me was that I could not buy real gasoline in Iowa.

David,
I'm curios to know where you get the research that ethanol does damage to any engine it is used in. I have used nothing else in my modern vehicles for years and have yet to put even a spark plug in one of them and they use no oil and start and run like new. I'm not even going in to the other stuff with you. I give up.
Best wishes,
Ed

Ed:

I was first alerted to the dangers when the manufacturer of my motor home sent us a warning notice to check all fuel lines, especially the rubber one to the generator, before starting to check for leaks cause by ethanol.

Try a simple internet search starting with "problems with ethanol".

Check the Congressional Record as there has been plenty of scientific evidence presented to various committees of Congress about the dangers of its use.

Ask your local mechanic or the the service manager at any auto dealer.

If that doesn't give you enough, try some basic research at your local university.

Look at previous posts on this thread.

If you are still not convinced, just keep on truckin' since there is nothing most of us can do to keep it out of our vehicles even if we believe in the dangers of using it.

David

Below are a few links to over 1.5 million sites on the Internet that discuss the damage done to automobile engines, small engines, boat engines and etc. I found a lot of the information that is supplied by engineers and engine experts to be very interesting. Even some of the "greenies" are against this crap.

In reading some of the information regarding Ethanol fuels, I learned a few things: like Ethanol is also dangerous to human health; that aviation facilities are exempt from using Ethanol; that Ethanol has a "shelf life" in gas station tanks, small engines, tractors, automobiles and etc. for only three months, and that gasoline in a vehicle's gas tank should be renewed every two or three weeks. However, it also appears that the newer engines designed in the last few years for flexible fuels don't have as many issues with Ethanol as the later engines that many of us have. Unfortunately, our "newest" vehicle is 27 years old and, like all older cars, it was not designed for Ethanol. In 2006 the U.S. became the world's largest Ethanol fuel producer. That alone is scary!

It is amazing as to how many areas of the country require that Ethanol crap in their gasoline, and, as I said previously, Oregon is one of them. The bad part (as we have already discussed and agreed on) is that the stupid politicians are cramming this stuff down our throats and in areas where Ethanol is mandatory we have no choice as to what kind a fuel we can use. One idiot politician even said that making Ethanol mandatory is "one way to get the older cars off the road"!

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/may2009/bw20090514_058678.htm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/2593678...nics-see-ethanol-damaging-small-engines/

http://www.fuel-testers.com/ethanol_engine_precautions.html

http://www.ewg.org/biofuels/report/Ethanol-Health-Risks-and-Engine-Damage

http://amlibpub.blogspot.com/2006/09/ethanol-damage.html

http://www.fuel-testers.com/ethanol_problems_damage.html