Posted on 09/02/2006 12:24:22 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
I always wanted to own a Bertram - they are probably the best boats ever built, and since they don't make anything under 39' (and half a million dollars) nowadays, old models are prized. So this article actually is very sad news for the likes of me.
Well, depending on how much ethanol fuel had been run though the tank and engine before he bought it.
Note- manufactured before the mid-80s. 20+ year old gas tanks that have already had long-term exposure to gasoline which damages fiberglass. I can see how ethanol might react with old, already.
Except these fuels that people are talking about aren't exotic blends like E85 - these are just the fuels that *used* to come with MTBE that now have to use Ethanol instead, because MTBE is *nasty*.
The same fuels that used to come without any expensive and efficiency-robbing oxygenates at all?
Yeah, but MTBE was also included as an anti-knock additive, much like lead used to be. That's the other function of ethanol - it's also an anti-knock additive. MTBE can, therefore, be considered a successor to lead.
Also, the gasoline refineries didn't have a choice - the EPA mandated that they use it. Thank the greenies for that one.
That's basically because it was cheaper to use than octane and nonane, right? If I understand correctly, octane has a higher energy capacity than heptane, but burns slower; typical 89-octane gas burns at the rate of a mix of 11% heptane and 89% octane, but the energy capacity is less than that of such a mixture.
If one were to shift to simply using more octane, I wonder how the cost would relate to the increased number of miles per gallon it would yield?
It doesn't work out, alas. You *would* be looking at $3/gal gasoline (race gas contains no ethanol, costs a *lot* more than what you buy at the pump, and even allowing for economies of scale to reduce the price, you're still looking at a significant increase in cost to produce.)
It should also be noted that straight octane has little to no detergent properties, and, in fact, doesn't burn nearly as cleanly.
Oh, FYI, many countries never went to MTBE and went from lead straight to ethanol (and never switched) for their antiknock additives. I have owner's manuals that date back as far as 1978 that say that in many parts of the world, a driver might encounter fuel with ethanol in it, and that a concentration of up to 10% was acceptable and would not harm the vehicle.
Oh, I forgot - because people are cheap, they almost never change their fuel hoses. Some of this "gunking" that people are reporting are on vehicles that are still using original hoses (from the 60's on imports and up to the 80's on domestics) that are *totally* incompatible with any significant alcohol (i.e., ethanol) content. The ethanol dissolves the interior of these old hoses, and what you get is black gunk in the carb and engine.
In addition, old Holley and Edelbrock carbs were known to have floats and parts that were not alcohol compatible - again, another source of gunk.
On the plus side, people with decent fuel injection systems or alcohol-tolerant carbs with EFI-class hoses will end up having a cleaner fuel system.
This is what you will eventually get if you don't change your fuel hoses (ethanol or no ethanol):
It seems to me that if you want to have an expensive hobby, you should be able to pay for it. Just like building a house below sea-level in New Orleans, or building a house on a mud-slide waiting to happen in California, or...<P<
The list goes on and on.
Ethanol tends to evaporate from a carburetor when it sits for an extended time.
You can see a lot of those beautiful old mahogany boats on Lake Tahoe.
Ethanol is a highly polar molecule and is indeed corrosive to aluminum. Think of a weak sodium carbonate solution. This is more of a problem at high temperatures as one would suspect. Ethanol fueled racing engines often use cast iron cylinder heads for this reason. (Methanol is worse.)
Possibly aluminum head automotive engines (the vast majority of car engines) will show ethanol damage with time. The alloys used, as I recall, are somewhat resistant to such damage. They need to be to tolerate antifreeze.
Dang, that sounds not impossible. My physics and math stinks. Pulling my leg? Higher end of the Boltzmann distribution? Lagrange multipliers and the calculus of variations? Woof.
Anyway, dang witty!
I know, I know, it sounds a bit wild : fusion of Lithium 7 and hydrogen nuclei in your diesel combustion chamber, and using(basically)common lithium grease as an additive! If you look back in prior issues of Infinite Energy magazine you'll find the article on this process and its testing. They used it in natural gas boiler jets for some 10 years and got increased efficiency. What NAILS it is the alpha particle detector : No Li additive = no alpha particles detected above background levels. Add Li additive = KA-WHAM - there they are, a BIG jump in He4 nuclei(from Be8 decay)being given off by the jet burner.....No, it isn't a massive nuclear explosion leveling cities, it's just a tiny million deg F "burning" regime in the overall 1500 deg F CxHx burning regime within the combustion chamber. It gives diesel truck engines some 5% to 15% increased power and cleans out the gunk therein....Big oil/governments addicted to fuel taxes don't want you to know about this lithium fusion process of course, but the article says where you can buy lithium diluent oil by the gallon. Go buy a gallon of it and spoon-feed it into your gas tank, minimal cost to discover something new, even though it's been around for some 20 years now.
Gasoline will not eat or damage fibergalss. For years a number of builders, including Bertram built their boats with fiberglass tanks. Ethanol is damaging fiberglass tanks (along with fule lines and various fuel system components) in older boats.
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