Fuel Additives To Combat This Horrid Ethanol Issue?

[dthayerppr]

My '89 Larson has started to run rough and idles like crap. Talked to my mechanic and he tells me he is seeing all kinds of fuel system problems because of the ethanol now mandated in our gas. I don't think my Mercruiser has gunked up too much yet and I'm considering trying one of these additives that I've been reading about before I have the card rebuilt. Any opinions or experiences, bad or good, anyone want to share about Star Tron or Seafoam. I've see pros and cons to both. Going to pull and clean the fuel filter tomorrow and then put some fresh gas and a treatment of whatever majority tells me to use. Thanks guys.

 

[jeff_smith_0423]

Re: Fuel Additives To Combat This Horrid Ethanol Issue?

You'll probably get better responses in the I/O forum - a mod will probably move this over there soon enough.

The "ethanol excuse" is what a mechanic who doesn't want to bother tracking down the real problem uses. The only issue that ethanol is your gas is going to cause is the potential breakdown of non-ethanol safe components. Modern carb kits and fuel line is ethanol tolerant.

You're probably seeing the result of ethanol cleaning out your fuel system and gunking up your carb jets further down the line.

In a clean and maintained fuel system, you'll see no operating effect with 10% ethanol whatsoever.

Any additives you put in are probably going to be alcohol based and will only increase the concentration in your fuel. Might try running a can of seafoam through it just to see if you can clean it out with out disassembly, but it's not a mechanic in a can.

 

[shaunknee]

Re: Fuel Additives To Combat This Horrid Ethanol Issue?

Jeff ? your points make good sense. Do you think ethanol speeds up carb varnishing because faster evaporation - more reason to use stabilizer. I was told as well that the ethanol is very hard on steel fuel tanks because of the ethanol content.