This is posted in the 48-56 truck forum. Not a whole lot of fuel hose in these old trucks. I'm pretty sure my local station sells gas with out ethanol. But it's quite a bit more then the E10. Running 10% or 15% ethanol is not going to kill your engine any way. I run it in , lawn mowers, 4 stroke weed trimmer, snow blower, gas powered air compressors and all my vehicles. Can't tell you about boat motors, never owned a boat. And I don't know much of anything about marine engines.

People whined and complained when they went to unleaded gasoline too. People complaining about ethanol reminds me of a little kid throwing a tantrum. It is what it is, I just wish everyone would quit whining and learn to live with it!!

My biggest issue is I wish they would get away from making it from a food product and move to some kind of waste product. That way they could produce more of it cheaper. And it would be one less thing for people to whine about!! Even though when the refineries are finished with the corn it goes back to the farms for animal feed.

Hey your preaching to the choir. More compression, timing or adding boost is a great way to take advantage of the ethanol. That's one of the reasons I'm going to run E85. Let's see you run 15+ pounds of boost with 87 octane!

As far as gm goes, Nothing they do makes any sense. I don't think it really matters warranty or no warranty. If you slap a warranty on a box of crap, you still have a box of crap!! There is a reason I own Fords!!

 

A friend of mine sent me this link to a Fox Business video on the higher percentage E fuels, mostly E15 and above. They say in the report that you should not use it in older vehicles and also that AAA is recommending to NOT use it in your newer vehicles. There are ten manufacturers who will not do warranty work on vehicles that have used the E15 and above fuels except for their Flex Fuel vehicles. Watch the whole thing as the car "expert" they talk to says the E15 and avbove fuels will separate in the tank with the ethanol on the bottom so your in-tank pump is picking up only ethanol. They also discuss the lower mileage you get using the higher ethanol fuels and the accordingly higher prices. Thus higher operating costs. I'll refrain from discussing ignorant politicians.
Warnings Not to Use

Phil

 

Ted, I'm curious what your dog is in this fight? "Not a lot of fuel hose in these old trucks..." leads me to believe you have little to no understanding of pre ECU/EFI or hobby vehicles and why we have concerns. We DEFINITELY have mission critical neoprene hoses in our fuel lines and other parts such as fuel pump diaphrams and carburator parts in our trucks, and no one makes E10 or E15 compatable replacement parts for 50 year old engines we can just run down to our local big box store and pick up or can we take it to our dealer and have them fix it under warantee. We can't just adjust our engine fuel maps, raise the compression or add boost to our trucks to compensate for crappy fuel!
We ARE trying to learn to live with it, that was the purpose of my starting this thread! We first must be aware of a problem before we can work to solve it or figure out how to live with it. But if the government is going to legislate our vehicles out of existence or turn them into static museum displays, I will fight.

You suddenly coming to our forum and preaching sounds like you work for or have a vested interest in the ethanol producers. If GM is seeing enough damage to engines designed for 100,000 mile warantees on E10 to cancel warantee coverage for using E15, then there must be a significant problem with it even in engines designed for E fuels, and it will be just a matter of time before the other manufacturers follow suit. Ford may be delaying their declaration to cow to their deeper gov bailout concerns.

 

The problem is that in some locals, NJ for example, you can't buy anything but E15.

 

"Ted, I'm curious what your dog is in this fight? "Not a lot of fuel hose in these old trucks..." leads me to believe you have little to no understanding of pre ECU/EFI or hobby vehicles and why we have concerns. We DEFINITELY have mission critical neoprene hoses in our fuel lines and other parts such as fuel pump diaphrams and carburator parts in our trucks, and no one makes E10 or E15 compatable replacement parts for 50 year old engines we can just run down to our local big box store and pick up or can we take it to our dealer and have them fix it under warantee. We can't just adjust our engine fuel maps, raise the compression or add boost to our trucks to compensate for crappy fuel!"

Ax, I don't know where you come up with some of this stuff sometimes. What I read he said is there are not many fuel hoses in our old trucks. I would have to agree, compared to a lot of other vehicles this is true and for safety reasons non-hard fuel lines should be kept to a minimum. Unless you are buying NOS (New Old Stock) parts somebody is making the replacement parts for our trucks and they can use updated materials. I don't know who builds your engines but raising compression is an easy thing while rebuilding or just by pulling the head(s). Changing jetting, air bleeds and etc.. is easy on a carb, unless you have to send your carb back to the manufacture for a rebuild. Turbos are by far the easiest way to add boost to most automotive engines.

My point is these things can be done, do I want to do them because of some dumba$$ politician, NO. But we can overcome minor set backs. Like someone said, people freaked out about unleaded fuel back in the 70's, but it did not cause near the damage the horror stories said it did. I base this on working at service stations in the 70's when unleaded first came out and then years later building engines as a machinist at a speed shop.

Are there concerns over this fuel in our trucks or any vehicle, Yes. And you bring up some very good points on things to watch and look out for, especially looking for fuel leaks in the hoses. Keep up the good informative post.

 

So, just change some fuel line and magically find fuel pump and carb parts that can't always be found. OK. Then rebuild my perfectly good, low-mileage y-block that pulls 23" of vacuum at idle and is bone stock. Just because, being presently unemployed, I have money to throw away. NOT.
Now, what to do about the formic acid that's formed when ethanol and water mixture is burned?
Mandates like this make me downright frustrated and wanting to shout "get off of my cloud!"

 

I build my own engines, but that doesn't mean it isn't costly to do an unneeded rebuild and raising compression typically requires milling of the heads or block (and possibly the intake manifold) or changing pistons. The former isn't something I or most others can do in their home shop, and the latter is pretty costly and requires complete disassembly, a major undertaking that I don't want to do to my perfectly running engine anytime soon. Then when you raise the compression you quite often need to increase the octane of the fuel you use, a catch 22 situation.
"Not many" rubber fuel hoses? Every vehicle has at least one, and that one developing a leak can disable the vehicle or potentially cause a fire that could burn the vehicle to the ground. I find those possibilities plenty of reason for concern. Where do I find a fuel pump diaphram that is made from a material other than rubber, and how do you suggest I inspect it for deterioration (many fuel pumps are sealed), or should I just periodically replace a functioning pump as "preventive maintenance", and at what interval?

 

Ax I sure am happy you understand most of us are in this hobby for fun and self pride at doing our own work. We don't have dollars to throw at problems like this but it is obvious some must or have the ability to tell someone to fix it and just pay for it. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and keep up the good fight

 

that + loss of warranty on $50,000 SUV equals lawsuit in short order. Not that I like lawsuits, but it will cause solutions for many of the issues. I'll bet E10 is coming back to NJ and other places soon.

And to whomever said we can buy alcohol tolerant replacement parts..... I have found that can be a challenge too as vendors often don't know for sure what materials the Chinese manufacturers are using. Pehaps they should but often they are guessing. Ahh, excessive outsourcing of manufacturing. What else can we drag into this .

Heading out to the garage to replace my bedwood with solar panels. I'll check back on you guys later.

 

My "dog" in this fight, I didn't even know there was a fight, is exactly what I said in my above post.

Your right I don't know anything about pre ECU/EFI vehicles. I actually prefer carbs over EFI. And I actually own a carbed vehicle too. I bought my first car when I was 13 ( 66 Mustang coupe ) . I've owned and worked on a lot of vehicles. I've been working on vehicles for 25 years ( more if you count helping my dad when I was a kid ) . I do all the work on my own vehicles. The only things I don't do are mount & balance my tires and machine work. And I know how to mount and balance tires, I just choose to let the local shop do it. Because I don't have the equipment to do it and it's easier and quicker to let the local shop do it.

Oh and my newest vehicle is a non flex fuel 96 E250 that has just under 250,000 miles ( original engine, never been rebuilt ) and I run it on E10. And the biggest fuel issue it's had is a broken gas tank mounting strap. I don't think ethanol had anything to do with that.

I've got over 2,000 post. How many more do I need before I'm no longer "suddenly" posting? And the only affiliation I have with ethanol producers is, I live in Minnesota ( not on a farm ) and I buy gas with ethanol in it. But I would rather see some of my cash going to US farmers then out of the country for imported oil.

 

AX

I'm not the forum referee, but you'll have to respect that part of the dissenting opinion. There are many of us that hold this view. I don't think you are whining, just over-reacting, because most everybody around here had a similar response to E10 about 25 years ago. Mostly it is a non-issue. We adapted, found the advantages of ethanol, and capititalized on it where we can. Folks down your way will do the same over time if the alcohol trend continues.

 

I'll add in my documented experience. Premium unleaded E10 = 10mpg. Mid-grade unleaded ethanol free = 12 mpg. And this is not one observation, I have documented this several times.

 

up till 2 years ago I could get shell premium with out ethanol. My 1973 bronco ran so much better and got almost a 1/4 tank better mileage so where is the oil being saved .The guy who owns the station said it is impossible to get anymore.

 

Frankly, I would rather decide where my cash goes and preferably keep as much of it as I can. Having to modify a perfectly good vehicle just to keep it running because of some poorly thought out mandate is stupid.

 

I only started this thread to report what I have been reading and make people aware of something to watch for. If that is whining, I'm not the one doing it. Don't shoot the messenger because you don't like the message! I'm outa here!