What's the general procedure for dealing with the ole crappy 10% ethanol mixture? After a couple years of the car drinking it, i'm pretty sure the filter needs to go. I'm thinking, add some dry gas, run the tank down, change out the filter and then start all over again.

 

i posted something similar at the exact same minute. lol. here is the URL to the link i posted. mine is more directed to the loss in gas milage though.


https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tech...-has-your.html

 

I couldn't tell you if it's caused a drop or not. I dont know what the amount of ethanol is in any given station i fill up at. I just assume it's all 10% and crappy proof.

 

where do you live? aparently my buddy did a bit of research on this, and argued with the environmental ministry about it. According to his reasearch, it slowly destroyes your engine. Not just the gaskets, but some of the metal as well. Most prone are the valves. Ill ask him for links to this stuff (as im not sure about the credibility).

BUT the important part is, the ministry told us, its OUR responsibility to know what we put into our tanks (even though they decide the majority of stations that get the gas) AND there are some stations that dont have ethanol in it.

The only one ive found, is SHELL. (Confirmed by a Shell station owner, who also has opened three other stations, plus the one i filled up at). Aparently no shell station has ethanol, and there is some pressure to rethink ethanol.

It makes your car lose power, lose mileage, wears out the engine, and is having adverse effects in production, because of the amount of crop having to be diverted from food to fuel. Not nice in a time of rising food prices.

To top it all off, there is no significant gain in the "green" part of the bio-fuel. It seems to not effect the emissions significantly at all.

 

Ethanol from corn isn't that great. Soy is better, but still not a fix.

Most people don't keep cars long enough to see the problems associated with the breakdown of the aluminum in their engines, so to most, no big deal, it gets traded off in 3 years anyway. As you brought up, though, it IS causing an issue with the rubber seals. Just like when you switch to synthetic oil, you have the "gunk seals" cleaned out. That's most of what's happened here. To my knowledge, cars manufactured afer 1985 had to be capable of running up to 15% ethanol.

I posted in the other similar thead the following info:


"NGK has a TSB out on this exact problem.







I need to go a heat range colder in the Camaro, just haven't had the time. I did the same in both my Nissan truck and my Honda Accord and I went back up to my old fuel econ. The upside was turning the timing up on both vehicles even more."

 

I'm not worried about drying by the alcohol. I'm more concerned with the water that the alcohol brings with it. Both collecting in the tank and in the filter.


I'd inspect my plugs before changing temps just because a TSB said so. Every engine is different (even more so when they're over 15 years old), only by reading the plugs can you tell if you are running too hot, too lean, or causing detonation, and if it's low end or high end.

 

Agreed on changing without reading. Both of my other vehicles showed signs of being too high of heat range.