Testing for Alcohol in fuel?

[jeffersondodson561]

Just though I would check in with the people who are checking the fuel for alcohol content. Funny story (not so funny then, but have to laugh now), upon reading all of the service bulletins about alcohol from Mercury Marine I began testing the alcohol with their procedure. To those familiar this is the one where you go out and get a syringe and fill gas to this graduated mark and fill water to this mark shake vigorously turn upside down let sit and use the chart in the service bulletin to determine the alcohol content. Began to test regularly and did not see anything higher than 7% alcohol. Everything is fine in the world and then a few weeks later still testing alcohol begin to see 16% alcohol! Is this right? Test again 16% again, what the heck is going on! More customers bringing in boats which sounded like fuel problems, coincidence? Even later in the season now it is really hot outside and we're seeing 16% alcohol, still testing now I am seeing over 20% alcohol, dead of summer, are all of these boats vapor locking, was their sum mix up with the E85 tanker truck maybe not getting totally emptied what the frick is going on? After checking well murphy had it's way with me inside and out, it took someone to say that test is not accurate or you are doing it wrong, so paying close attention to the bulletin being as accurate as I could I kept at it. A coworker walked beside me and noticed that I was having trouble putting the stopper into the syringe and said "If you put some power tune on the end of that, it wil help slide it in" my response was "but won't that swell the sto......" "OHHHHHHHHHHHH"! The gas had been slowly swelling the stopper and throwing off my measurement and giving me false readings. Sometimes you can't let your learning interfere with your education. My point of this story is ever since I have been using the Briggs and Stratton gasohol kit to test and have not really found more than 7-8% alcohol since then. I am wondering if the gas companies are using Methenol alcohol in more than 5% by volume any thoughts comments?