Feds actions may force you to use ethanol in your W engine.

[Greg Reimer]

In this lost cause of a state, one of my buds got fed up with life in general,bought a house and land in the mountains west of Longview, Washington, loaded up his truck with his tools and shop equipment,sent his stuff up to his new address, sold his Calif real estate holdings, and drove up. As soon as he got to Ashland,Oregon, he tanked up his truck. He noticed the Oregon gasoline smelled like gas used to, the truck pinged a little bit on hills, and the mileage went up by around 2 mpg. Stayed that way the rest of the trip.Seems that this gas down here is laced with similar elements,some for emission control reasons, but some things come to mind. Alcohol,methanol, and MTBE are synthetic fuels. They contain about half the energy per liquid gallon than gasoline does. That means, a blend of 10% ethanol or alcohol would effectively run 5% lean. That's not enough to drastically affect drivability, but it requires more fuel to make the same heat energy that 100% gasoline would. Combustion temperatures on gasoline would be higher than on the blend,but the higher compression ratios would seem to run without detonation on a lower octane fuel due to the cooling effect of the alcohol. A loss in engine efficiency would be inevitable,requiring more gallons of blended gasoline to do the same job. If you want to try something, go to the drag strip or a race fuel outlet, and get a five gallon pail of VP C-12.It is 108 octane racing gasoline, has lead in it, and if you added it to the ethanol laced 91 octane premium grades in about a ratio of 1 gallon c-12 to 3 or 4 gallons of blended fuel, it might really wake up the troops. These newer cars with the OBD-2 emissions controls probably wouldn't see much change because the entire engine operating system is calibrated to be maximized on it,also the lead would contaminate the oxygen sensors after much use, but a high compression carbureted '60's performance engine wouldn't mind it. The white powder residue you are seeing is residue from the corrosion of aluminum carburetor parts. Not what you want in a pristine pair of OEM AFB's. Also, in this corner of the world,80 cents per gallon of retail fuel prices are state and federal highway and gas taxes,plus 8-9% state sales tax. The more fuel you need to use to go about your business, the more tax they extort from the American people. What else do you expect from a state controlled by the not very jolly green giant?

 

[boxerdog]

Lost cause pretty well sums it up. The election map pretty well tells you where the problem resides...

 

[Greg Reimer]

When I was working for the City of Los Angeles vehicle fleet services, we bought scads of 1996 and newer GMC Jimmys, S-10-s, Astro vans, full sized pickups and larger with either 4.3L V-6's,305"s,350's and 454's. That was the Vortex engines, all of which ran very well. That was after the 2 barrel TBI set up, what I called an electronic carburetor, that also worked very well. The problem we wound up having with the 96 and newer set up was that they would develop engine misses, drivability issues, poor mileage, and yellow Check Engine light issues. A SCAN tool would reveal a P0300 series code, putting a new set of spark plugs in it didn't fix it very well. What was happening, the fuel additives distinctive to Calif-only fuels was causing a problem where the injector nozzle in whatever cylinder it affected would not close properly.This resulted in an overly rich condition, a
wet plug or two,raw fuel sitting in a cylinder, oxygen sensor lifespan issues, and it took some doing to find it. The dealers were having issues too, and the Calif fuel additives were the entire source of it all. Factory warranty fix was to determine which cylinder had the erratic or constant misfire, which OBD-II made easy to determine. whereby they would replace the one plug and the one injector nozzle under warranty. Problem was, other injectors were waiting to fail,they just hadn't yet. Later on, service replacement injectors hit the market that lessened the sticking problem that the factory original ones had. Chevron Techron injector cleaner seemed to help prevent it in the future, but it seems that the state mandated fuel shouldn't have been causing this rather costly problems in that many vehicles. It wasn't a GM defect, it was a Calif-caused defect. Just like any other governmental mental defects.

 

[Greg Reimer]

One thing I forgot to mention. Putting C-12 in a car and driving it on the street in this state can result in a huge fine. I'm not sure how they would determine this, but greed will find a way.

 

[scott hall]

I'd say the same way they check for farm diesel around here. They pull a sample from the tank to check color.

 

[409envy]

Likely be able to run analytical for lead content. I work for an environmental engineering firm and we test for lead in groundwater all the time. Im sure it would leave a residue on your tank that could be detected with a wipe sample similar to lead paint.