So todays gas wont do it? I have a friend with some old artic cat. His gas cap threads broke off of the tank. He found a rubber bung plug that fit perfectly. It was rated for gas. The rubber vanished over the summer storage. ( April to December) This is at the top of the tank. Any idea what can cause that?
I have a good friend who is a small engine mechanic and tells me the horror stories related to gas. How fast it goes bad. The damage it causes. You hear about it and read it in all over the internet. Are people just brain washed or some thing?
I'm not claiming to be an expert by any means. From what I have heard, it causes these issues.
Many rubber gaskets and gas lines were not approved with the use of alcohol which is a sort of natural solvent. There are far more solvents in STP fuel treatments which are designed to be run thru but not stored inside the gas tanks and fuel lines of machines for longer periods because the whole point of using them is to loosen and remove deposits and varnishes and carbon that has built up over time. They work well because this is exactly why they were made. But rubber gas lines were not common early on, as metal was used and pretty much safe from use of solvents...but it did eat some gaskets and did so often. Eventually the makers of mechanical equipment switched to gaskets that would not deteriorate and made them safe from use with alcohol.
Your gas tank in your truck/car is constantly bathed in alcohol even if you are using it or not, yet the lines and gaskets don't degrade. Simply because you use it more, doesn't mean there is no alcohol in there...you simply run it thru the machines more frequently....but if alcohol was the culprit your mechanic says it is, then stuff would be breaking down all over the place. We know that isn't the case. The equipment was designed for the use of alcohol and is impervious to the natural solvents that it contains.
It is popular to bash alcohol for this process but the truth is alcohol has been around and used in fuel delivery systems for decades (remember Standard Oil Company and their well advertised "de-icer" additive that you got in every gallon of their fuel?) Alcohol would mix the moisture that develops in all gas tanks and absorb it into the gas so it could be burned in the engine, rather than fuel without it that could form ice blocks in the metal fuel lines that could and did block the fuel and starve an engine during a cold snap.
The REAL issue today is supply of cheap products to be integrated into building machines that have fuel lines and gaskets that have not been improved over the alcohol and other additives that will eat the rubber up. When you do that, you will find that though the fuel line was cheaper to the supplier, such as Polaris and Cat and others, they won't stand up to the use of alcohol and other additives. If you replace this inferior product with good old American made but more expensive fuel line, you will find that this does not happen.
Alcohol does seem to degrade faster over time than 100% gasoline but both degrade and there are fuel additives that you can buy (such as STABIL) that does NOT eat the made for alcohol gaskets and fuel lines and keeps the fuel good for a long time. But remember that if you leave fuel in your snow blower over the summer, even before alcohol was present, it would varnish up and smell really badly and would require a carb over-haul to get working again. Draining the carb completely would avoid this problem.
I could go on about how every gallon of gasoline that has the 93% cleaner burning alcohol and higher octane in it is saving 10% of our importation of crude from countries that want us dead, and that American Farmers grow the corn that makes this fuel and then returns the profits from the alcohol production back into tractors, combines, and pole barns made and built by Americans....but I will leave that for another discussion.
