Skydive, great post! I'd love to read your paper...

So I guess the summary is that if you run E10 in an aircraft, a bunch of stuff changes. I'm not real interested in being a test pilot these days...

-Bill

Well, I just got off the phone with the Sinclair Marketing in Salt Lake, Cardwell Distributing and Rhinehart Oil. Sinclair sends out both ethanol free and E10 fuel. Sinclair sells to distributors and right now it is their choice if they use it or not. Sounds like almost all the stations are going to have ethanol by the end of the year but right now there are still some that don't.

The woman from Sinclair told me that areas like Yellowstone will probably not use it because of the snowmobiles and some other mountainous areas won't either. She said by the end of the year they should know who will have it and they will probably put it on their site. She said that straight gas will always be available it is just a question of who will have it.

Rhinhart Oil (Harts Stations) have ethanol in Salt Lake but the ones in Utah Valley don't use it yet. Cardwell Oil hasn't started using it, so all their stations should be good right now. I guess you just need to call your distributor and find out which stations have it and keep checking the fuel.

I know there are tests showing cars getting the same or better mileage using ethanol, but the cars they use in the tests are designed to run on it.

Jaerl, Not sure that statement is right. Three of the four cars were regular and one flex.

As for the carburetor corrosion, I had a Marvel MA4-5 that had 10% going though it for 2 years. There were a couple of times that it might not have been used for 3 weeks and when the carb was taken apart in Omaha, the shop said it looked great inside. I guess no matter what the subject different people have different results.

Marty, I was thinking of the older cars when I said that. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure all the cars used in the mileage test were new cars. All cars made today are made to use an ethanol blend whether they are called Flex Fuel or not. If you drive a new car I agree you probably won't notice much difference but that's not the case in older cars.

When Utah had the "Oxygenated" fuel a few years ago, I bought a Ford work truck from the dealer. It had a 460. The first time I filled it up it started running really bad and I took it back to the dealer. They checked it out and couldn't find anything wrong with it. We figured it had to be the oxygenated fuel. As soon as they switched to the regular fuel in the spring the truck ran smooth again and picked up 3 mpg. Seems like everyone here hated it and after two years Utah got a waiver so we didn't have to use it anymore.

A guy I know told me his dad was a pesticide Salesman during WWll. He said his dad would run bug spray in their car and no one could figure out why he was able to drive so much during gas rationing. He said the car ran like crap but his dad drove it like that for years. My point is, cars (old cars) will run on just about anything flammable. Problem with doing that is, unless it is designed to use that fuel, it probably won't be too efficient doing it.

Auto E10 and the AGE85 have plenty of lube in them but the auto E85 is a little light. If you also use a tank of E85 and then run a fuel that has more lube after that will reduce the corrosion.

Pulled the carb off my Harley yesterday and found a bunch of deposits or gunk in the bowl. Small, individual pieces of soft, varnish colored material.
That crap plugged the jets to the point that it would not run beyond an idle.
Is it ethanol? Or?
I didn't ride much last winter and the gas could have been 6 months old.

my experience is that it runs ok as long as you run it every day an never let it sit. screwed up carb on mower twice before i switched to avgas and that was on my honda mower . also lost 2 miles a gallon in pickup, dont even mention bio diesel what a screwed up world we live in

Stopped at Lebanon, Oregon to fill the plane with Mogas (eth free) at $3.35 per gallon. I had to wait in line behind a guy filling up his boat. He said he drives 25 miles to get mogas for his boat. He left 10% E in the thing last winter and it cost him 700 Bucks to fix it.

I realize that this is not a scientific study and I have no impressive graphs like Marty does but I thought I would pass it along.

The Lebanon FBO sells 6000 gal mogas a month. Only 2000 of it for aircraft. There is a demand.

Tim

Y'all have probably already seen this, but it looks like the ethanol mandate has wiped out the availability of a reliable fuel source at another location:

http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/airportlow-on-fuel_2010-08-22.html

We are very close to having an operational mogas pump on our local field, but I wonder how much longer we'll be able to get it.

This stuff is so stupid!!

qmdv wrote:..........The Lebanon FBO sells 6000 gal mogas a month. Only 2000 of it for aircraft. There is a demand.

I wonder where his source is, and if it's still available. Apparently Aug 1 was some sort fo drop dead date for washington-- all our E-zero sources are drying up. Got one left, and I'm afraid it's days are numbered. Like Oregon (I think), washington has an mandated-ethanol exclusion for aircraft, but nothing in the legislation sez they have to make it available. Hope there continues to be a source.

hotrod150 wrote:

qmdv wrote:..........The Lebanon FBO sells 6000 gal mogas a month. Only 2000 of it for aircraft. There is a demand.

I wonder where his source is, and if it's still available. Apparently Aug 1 was some sort fo drop dead date for washington-- all our E-zero sources are drying up. Got one left, and I'm afraid it's days are numbered. Like Oregon (I think), washington has an mandated-ethanol exclusion for aircraft, but nothing in the legislation sez they have to make it available. Hope there continues to be a source.

Just got off the phone with them ( http://www.airnav.com/airport/S30 ) and they said that their source of mogas will have a temporary shutdown in a month. Not sure how long. They said that they should have enough storage to get by tell the supply comes back up. Check out their prices for 100 LL.

Anybody with a tank at home better fill up while they can.

Tim

Oak Harbor Airport in western Washington has been selling E-zero premium mogas on-field for a year or two now-- hopefully they will continue to have a source for it. More of an inconvenience fueling there instead of filling my cans locally & gassing at my hangar, but it's nearby so not a total PITA.

From what I've been reading, even our legislators are starting to realize that this mandatory ethanol thing isn't really doing much of anything for us (unless you're invested in the corn/ethanol industry). I'd heard that there was some talk about not renewing tax breaks (aka subsidies) for ethanol production & blending at the end of this year-- but I just read that part of Obama's sweetheart tax-break deal included renewing corn & ethanol subsidies. I decided to email all three of my federal legislators & tell them I was against that, & also suggested that they repeal the earlier legislation (EISA 2007) that mandated ethanol use & is one of the main reasons (along with the subsidies) that clear car gas is becoming widely unavailable, at least in the western states.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of weeks. I used my cousin's semi to deliver corn to the eth plant a few days ago and told cousin I had never seen so many local trucks loading dried distillers grain(DDGS) before. Cousin informed me that 50% of the feed ration in their hog finishing buildings is DDGS and because of that they still have lots of phosphate in the manure for fertilizer. That is pretty closed loop since the corn doesn't go far to be processed and the need for importing phosphate from Florida(transportation cost) is greatly reduced. When corn is exported to China(transportation cost), the nutrients are gone from the USA forever. Another cousin is feeding pigs for a different outfit and said they have very little P in the manure(not much DDGS in feed) so they will have to buy more imported commercial fertilizer.

And that relates to back country flying how?

Tim

180Marty wrote: ..... I had never seen so many local trucks loading dried distillers grain(DDGS) before.....

So does that mean the price of corn likker is gonna go up? Do you think that people are burrying to get their corn to market because they're worried that tax credits or whatever (I know subsidies is a dirty word to you) are gonna go away, & negatively impact the price?

So does that mean the price of corn likker is gonna go up? Do you think that people are burrying to get their corn to market because they're worried that tax credits or whatever (I know subsidies is a dirty word to you) are gonna go away, & negatively impact the price?

I think it means the hog industry has learned to adapt----just like ethanol has hit a blend wall in this country and needs to be exported now, DDGS is plentiful and cheap. As far as racing to sell corn now, a farmer can lock prices in into the future with the CBOT, so don't think that is the case. Speculation, value of the dollar, etc seems to be a big reason corn prices fluctuate so much. CFTC is looking into whether or not people(speculators) that don't hardly know what corn is, should be able to buy and sell corn on the CBOT. Like one commodity broker says, farmers shouldn't want to see speculators locked out---they're our friend. Sorry Tim, but this is something the politicians have to think about when they decide to kill or let ethanol live. There are other ways that we could still have E0(backcountry fuel) and ethanol blends, but politics is hampering that also.