[Ogre]

This is an interesting conversation. I never considered the effects of "corn oil" in gasoline before. Some of the comments ... lower gas mileage, for instance, make sense. But until I watched a couple of Youtube vids on how to get the ethanol out of the gas/corn mixture I never really thought about it.

I agree with George that going from 10% to 15% is probably not that big a deal, but I also think that ANY is a BIG deal.

Watching how water can interact with the ethanol, and basically remove it, is interesting. Where it is removed to is what bothers me. The water corn oil mixture falls to the bottom (heavier than Gas). This is right where the fuel pickup for ALL engines is located ... our classics, lawnmowers, weed eaters, boats, etc. Why would we want a pickup to be higher and not be able to use all of the fuel available? DUH. Also any "low point", where the fuel can accumulate (puddle) will be more conducive to a collection of water/ethanol mix.

So any moisture in the fuel tank with a little bit of sloshing around can cause this "phase separation." Obviously any engine that has been sitting for a length of time (say over Winter with a partially full fuel tank), when started first thing in the spring, will inevitably suck up the water ethanol mixture for the first few piston cycles ... THAT CAN"T BE GOOD. I try to remember to add some "Sta-bil" to all of my engines, but the correct method may be to make sure the tank is full, and less air (and associated humidity) is available, to decrease the effects of the "phase separation."

Any way that's my thoughts () ... comments?

BTW, when I used to fly light airplanes we drained the fuel from the low point in the wings to get the heavier than avgas water out before we started the engine(s). Do we need to now put a drain point in our classic fueltanks to save our engines?

Ogre