Re: anyone else suspect problems from useing marine stabil?
Ethanol hocus pocus...
There are a couple of things that are not rumours: The first is that the alchohol is an excellent solvent and it will clean your tank, fuel lines and carbs. This is why 99.999% of the fuel additives have a high percentage of alcohol in them. In the process, if you are not using the appropriate fuel filter systems it may clog your carbs. Otherwise the worse case scenario is that it will clog filters with the gunk it cleans out of the tank until the tank is clean.
Another is that it does tend to speed up the accumulation of water and that is not a good thing. Normally that water sits at the bottom of your tank and most tanks have some amount of water in them just from humidity and the need to vent. When you add ethanol it will pickup that water and carry it with it to the engine if you have not installed an appropriate fuel/water separating filter.
Small engines like leaf blowers, weed whackers, chain saws should not use Ethanol gas. This is correct but the reason is that they cannot be reasonably fitted with adequate fuel/water separating filter systems. Most of them don't have any type of fuel filter at all.
Fuel lines can be damaged by Ethanol if they were manufactured before circa 1992 or are not USCG approved. This was not stringetly enforced because there was still an abundance of the older materials in the system and they were allowed to be installed until the supply was exhausted. The same goes for fuel tanks. Fuel tanks today are made from materials like Aluminum or HDPE and are Ethanol safe. Farm supply centers are starting to sell ethanol free fuels in small (gal) quanties to satisfy that need.
Ethanol burns faster and hotter than gasoline.. True but the formulation is such that the octane rating of the fuel remains as posted so it doesn't make one bit of difference.
So what does Startron and Stabil Marine do? Got me but they seem to work well at keeping water absorbtion at bay and do seem to have some effect at extending the life of the fuel.
Ethanol hocus pocus...
There are a couple of things that are not rumours: The first is that the alchohol is an excellent solvent and it will clean your tank, fuel lines and carbs. This is why 99.999% of the fuel additives have a high percentage of alcohol in them. In the process, if you are not using the appropriate fuel filter systems it may clog your carbs. Otherwise the worse case scenario is that it will clog filters with the gunk it cleans out of the tank until the tank is clean.
Another is that it does tend to speed up the accumulation of water and that is not a good thing. Normally that water sits at the bottom of your tank and most tanks have some amount of water in them just from humidity and the need to vent. When you add ethanol it will pickup that water and carry it with it to the engine if you have not installed an appropriate fuel/water separating filter.
Small engines like leaf blowers, weed whackers, chain saws should not use Ethanol gas. This is correct but the reason is that they cannot be reasonably fitted with adequate fuel/water separating filter systems. Most of them don't have any type of fuel filter at all.
Fuel lines can be damaged by Ethanol if they were manufactured before circa 1992 or are not USCG approved. This was not stringetly enforced because there was still an abundance of the older materials in the system and they were allowed to be installed until the supply was exhausted. The same goes for fuel tanks. Fuel tanks today are made from materials like Aluminum or HDPE and are Ethanol safe. Farm supply centers are starting to sell ethanol free fuels in small (gal) quanties to satisfy that need.
Ethanol burns faster and hotter than gasoline.. True but the formulation is such that the octane rating of the fuel remains as posted so it doesn't make one bit of difference.
So what does Startron and Stabil Marine do? Got me but they seem to work well at keeping water absorbtion at bay and do seem to have some effect at extending the life of the fuel.
Believe me, if I could use non-ethanol, I certainly would.