Thread: Ethanol fuel

Been useing E-10 for years in my outboards right now a Suzuki DF 200, I just use a fuel conditioner the last fill of the season, boat sits from Nov-April in unheated storage,haven't had any problems yet.

Originally Posted by crappiemax

Honestly I just don't get all the hype over ethanol fuel. The fuel itself is the same fuel we put in out vehicles everyday and it never lets you down and no one thinks anything about it, no one adds additives to it like they do on their outboards. I guess I can see adding an maybe an injector cleaner now and then.
The problem with the ethanol fuel isn't so much with the fuel and it combustibility but more with its compatibility with gaskets and fuel lines and the like.

I will say I do agree with using Stabil for long term storage (that's what it's designed for) and can see an annual can of Seafoam for it's cleaning capabilities.
I've seen where some mechanics have advised where you can do damage from over use of additives.

The manufactures took care of the component issue years ago during the manufacturing process. Us as boat owners should have taken care of all those fuel line issues on our older boats by changing to the newer style fuel lines designed for use with ethanol gas.

On the several websites I visit I see the same threads appear about ethanol fuel over and over again and just like this one, I just don't get it.

I, for one. Just didn't like being mandated by our gov't, in the early days of switching to 10% ethanol added to gas when no small motors of any kind was built to burn it. Now they are going to force E-15 on us and the issues are larger when using it. Also, you don't have as much power burning ethanol as well as gas mileage in your vehicles vs burning pure unleaded gas so where is the gain other than propping up the corn market and the modest if any controls on climate change issues as we have cleaned up the exhaust issues in the mechanics of how we make our motors run more efficiently. The carbon foot print in just manufacturing, transporting, and not being able to store ethanol to add to gas defeats using it. Just fill your gas tank with pure unleaded gas one time and drive it a couple hundred miles and see how your vehicle runs and what your gas mileage is. Call me old school if you want but then again, I question why we have buried and not advanced the technology on our development of the hydrogen engines when other countrys are using it. 45 yrs ago, I set a private secret meeting by the big 3 auto manufacturers for engineers to view 4 cars that were set up with carberation on the engines that got more than 80 mpg on gas engines that burned nothing more that reg. unleaded. That technology was buried by the big 3 and the major oil companies then. Take a trip and fill up with E 15 and then tell me why you like it. What's the pluses? And other minuses? We have not built combustible engines to burn and use ethanol for the public. All we are doing is modifying what we build to use it and is that efficient?