Fuel sold today is terrible

The fuel (gas) being sold is terrible it can not sit over winter or even a few months and be any good why is the fuel (gas ) from Canada so much more stable we receive machines from Canada from time to time and there fuel does not have the same problems as the fuel ( gas ) from the U.S. Diesel is not bad. Makes me want to own all diesel powered machines.

Ok, rants over, it's just that it's a never ending battle drain and fill, rebuild carb.
Even with all the stabilizers out there it still not like the fuel of Yester year.

Corn

boggie said:

The fuel (gas) being sold is terrible it can not sit over winter or even a few months and be any good why is the fuel (gas ) from Canada so much more stable we receive machines from Canada from time to time and there fuel does not have the same problems as the fuel ( gas ) from the U.S. Diesel is not bad. Makes me want to own all diesel powered machines.

Ok, rants over, it's just that it's a never ending battle drain and fill, rebuild carb.
Even with all the stabilizers out there it still not like the fuel of Yester year.

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Gee I haven't noticed this here anyway. Could it be there is a difference between Iowa gas and Minnesota's gas?

I keep stuff around her al the time, a couple of old cars and snowmobiles, chain saws ect. and never run into this. It's all filled with E10 and stored for nearly a year, with out any issues. I have a straight truck (427 BB Chevy enigine) with steel tanks we had not used in 3 years and this summer it fired right up with not an issue....

Just saying..

Regards, Kirk

300 H and H said:

Gee I haven't noticed this here anyway. Could it be there is a difference between Iowa gas and Minnesota's gas?

I keep stuff around her al the time, a couple of old cars and snowmobiles, chain saws ect. and never run into this. It's all filled with E10 and stored for nearly a year, with out any issues. I have a straight truck (427 BB Chevy enigine) with steel tanks we had not used in 3 years and this summer it fired right up with not an issue....

Just saying..

Regards, Kirk

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Now that's coming from a farmer if your running newer engines maybe with fuel injection your better off. Us pour plain folk can't afford the new stuff we keep rebuilding the old worn out stuff

I can't speak for your fuel most major brands are including a fuel stabilizer in their additive packages now. this comes from some one in the supply chain, here we have store our fuel for 9 months for a whole community it's as good to day as it will be next summer. now our fuel comes from refineries over seas and the tests we have done on it shows to be some pretty good fuel.

I've been adding quarter turn fuel shut offs on a lot of them shut it off and run it dry. That's been helping some

boggie said:

Now that's coming from a farmer if your running newer engines maybe with fuel injection your better off. Us pour plain folk can't afford the new stuff we keep rebuilding the old worn out stuff

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That 427 BB Chevy has a monster Holley four barrel and is a 1980 model.

Maybe the difference is that we have had E10 since the late 70's . When first introduced, it cleaned the fuel systems and bulk tanks and tank trucks of petroleum sludge that was present before the introduction of E10. We had to change fuel filters for a time after that.

Eventually the problems went away.. I am pissed that for all these years we bought 91 octane regular, that was 87 plus the 10% ethanol.. Now the pipelines are pumping 84 octane (unsaleable by law here) and adding the ethanol to get it up to 87 so it can be sold. We got a lower octain fuel for the same money...

Other than that we have little to no problems with the gas we buy here. If you asked anyone here about this, you would get a collective yawn.. And I am not talking about farmers here either..

This is my experience in the last 30 years.

Regards, Kirk

I was having trouble with a lot of my small engines, generator, snowblower, mowers, ect. My small engine mechanic recommended I run nothing but premium gas. He also suggested I only pump it from stations that have a separate hose for each grade. Also when leaving the machine for any length of time, shut off the gas and let the fuel in the carb run out. This has made a huge difference for me.

boggie said:

Diesel is not bad. Makes me want to own all diesel powered machines. .

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And the rest of the bad news..
With the diesel supply (here at least) seeing up to 15% biodiesel, there are issues as well. Aside from the cleaning out the sludge issue, genset users are reporting that the fuel is degrading in the tanks over time. We used to just top off once a year on the standby systems and all was good, now the recommendation is pump it out and start fresh each year.

time will tell.
TEW

Cidertom said:

And the rest of the bad news..
With the diesel supply (here at least) seeing up to 15% biodiesel, there are issues as well. Aside from the cleaning out the sludge issue, genset users are reporting that the fuel is degrading in the tanks over time. We used to just top off once a year on the standby systems and all was good, now the recommendation is pump it out and start fresh each year.

time will tell.
TEW

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The bio diesel we get is more like 5%. It has been shown to give back the lubricity lacking in low or no Sulphur fuels we are being forced to use. I have seen the tests, and I tend to agree with that. Nowadays we add an anti bacteria package to bulk tanks to stop algee from forming.


Worth the trade off for older engines with mechanical injection. Those old pumps don't like the no Sulphur fuels mandated today.

Regards, Kirk

Two rules I live by in maintaining and storing my gasoline powered equipment.

Rule #1:

Add Seafoam 1 fluid oz per gallon and your fuel storage issues will go away. I store all my gasoline powered equipment, both 2 & 4 cycle this way and have not had any issues in years.

Rule #2

Never, ever run Ethanol gas in your 2 stroke engines if you can help it. My chainsaws get 100% gasoline with 1 oz of Seafoam per gallon of gas and they run like a top and store well over the winter, starting right up in the spring with no issues ever.

YMMV

One rule I always tell my customers, never add an additive that has alchol (sea foam, b52, gasez,, ect) to ethanol fuel. All you are doing is multiplying problems. Alcohol + alcohol = more alcohol....... I think the reason we see areas with more problems and areas with less problems, is the amount of ethanol in the fuel. Depending on the station/supplier/brand/pipeline. In my local town we vary ethanol concentration from 5% to a one time high of a certain repeat offender of 30%. Does 10% or less hurt small engines? I do not like it but what do you do. Does 20-30% hurt small engines YES. It is very easy to check the ethanol % in fuel. You tube shows alot of ways. Briggs and stratton makes a nice cheap test kit. Yes even the high grade/ non ethanol has it in it nowdays. It all gets transported In the same trucks/ pipelines.

But yes I agree fuel sold in the US sucks.

Snowtrac Nome said:

I can't speak for your fuel most major brands are including a fuel stabilizer in their additive packages now. this comes from some one in the supply chain, here we have store our fuel for 9 months for a whole community it's as good to day as it will be next summer. now our fuel comes from refineries over seas and the tests we have done on it shows to be some pretty good fuel.

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you buy gas from overseas and the us bailed you out that one winter??

The smaller the engine, the worse the problem with new gas is. A local small engine repair shop only guarantees their work if the gas used is less than 30 days old.

The alcohol-laden gas seems to destroy rubber parts, hoses, diaphragms, etc. For anything but my daily driver, I only buy the premium gas at Kwik Trip (a regional chain), because they guarantee it's alcohol-free. I also add the Marine Stabil additive to the tank. So far, it's pretty much kept me from having problems.

I think part of my problem is buy fuel bulk each spring normally about 500 gallons then it sits half empty all through the winter in a above ground tank
And it's in the sun so I'm thinking condensation could be a factor

boggie said:

I think part of my problem is buy fuel bulk each spring normally about 500 gallons then it sits half empty all through the winter in a above ground tank
And it's in the sun so I'm thinking condensation could be a factor

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Use the water block fuel filter on your bulk tank discharge. Seems to help on my bulk gas tanks. I do not have to many problems on my small engines. Fuel often sits for months and everything seems to start pretty good even with a kick, punch or a few choice words as requred and instructed in my operators manual.

JimVT said:

you buy gas from overseas and the us bailed you out that one winter??

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the us did not bail us out our company absorbed all the expense's and did not pass I t on to the end user. the federal involvement came because of the fact the environmental Nazis believed it couldn't be done with out spilling fuel and becoming a disaster . once we started pumping and nothing was going to happen the cameras slowly disappeared.

Yeah - a bulk water fuel filter will help. But if the gas you put into your bulk tank has ethanol in it, you have to make sure you always have enough ethanol or other water absorber in the gas to deal with all the water you have/get in your gas. If too much free water gets into the gas, the ethanol and water will separate from the gas and drop to the bottom of your tank. Your filter will remove this crap, but your gas octane will drop as you are filtering out all the high octane ethanol. Once separation occurs, it cannot be reversed. Worse thing is that the amount of water ethanol can absorb goes down as the temperature goes down.

Gas absorbs water from air very very very slowly. So unless a gas tank is in a very high humidity area and lots of air flows through the tank, odds are any water getting into the gas is either leaking into the tank or from condensation. Keeping your tank always full reduces condensation. I suspect that doing anything else that reduces condensation would help reduce the amount of water that gets into a fuel tank. Water, whether or not you gas has ethanol in it, is never a good gas additive.

Boggie I find it funny you say you want to own all diesel due to the grade and I'm also concerned at how bad your gas must be if your saying the diesel is good. the company I used to turn wrenches for bought a sterling boom truck that tipped over with a C7 CAT engine from the states on auction 4 years ago and of course it showed up with American fuel, it was october and when the truck slept outdoors we had a hell of a time to start it in the morning to get it into the shop. we all noticed the exhaust smelled very different from what we were used to, we ended up siphoning out all the fuel and filling it with our stuff, truck started like a champ afterwards. 100+ liters of fuel went into the waste oil drum afterwards, maybe it was old fuel I'm not sure honestly. but me and 2 other mechanics that own diesel trucks and/or equipment wouldn't even take the fuel for free.

last spring I took my vw 1.9 diesel in for a minor smoking problem. one of the first question at the vw shop was how old the diesel was.
I didn't think it went bad.
jim

JimVT said:

I didn't think it went bad.
jim

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With proper treatment, neither did I.

The diesel I'm using is over 6 years old and it runs just fine. I did treat with Power Service when new.

Last load was B20, 20% biodiesel. -NONE- of my units are rated for this. I didn't know until the delivery ticket was in hand, after the truck had left.

Depending on outages sometimes we can go two years on a few sites between fuelings. I think this is what the warnings were about.

time will tell
CT

The alcohol in the gas, and the biodiesel in the diesel really wreck havoc in an old gas, or diesel tank. The cleaning qualities, strip off all of the old Varnish, sulphur, and Lead, They both seperate the fuel from the water and contaminates, and highlight any intrusion, old contamination or condensation issues. They either go into solution, or seperation. Old Diesel, solution plugs filters. Gasoline more likely seperates, and you cant burn water. Or as we have found in small systems, clogs up the jets with corrosion. Yea, It Sucks. On the East coast here in the States, as I think as in most regions, the fuel you buy all comes from the same refineries. I know I cant afford to ship my fuel from Alaska. If you buy high octane gas, when your engine does not detonate on regular, you are wasting money. regular has higher btu content, and can give you more MPG. I know it is counterintuitive but true. No snake oil for me. I have bought and sold branded and unbranded motor fuels for over 40 years. It all comes from the same refinery bulk tank. The additive of 1/10000% is a chemical marker to ensure you are paying them their juice. I laugh when I see the advertising showing the valve deposits of a well known companies advertizing. The EPA mandates Everyones gas meets their set standards. The Joke is here in the US, Try to track down who owns the pattent for the only allowed gas formulation. Here in Delaware All gas has to be of that formulation. YSMV. The only variation is for the chemical marker to ensure the big oil companies are getting their marketing cut. Of course, Here in the States WE ALL have to comply with the FEDS standard. I am sure Someone holds the Pattent for that as well.

Learned that many years ago handling Avgas. 5 different branded trucks in line to get filled off the same exact hose.

My uncle always said buy the cheapest fuel (that won't detonate) because it's all the same, and the best oil because it isn't locked into the same set of standards.

When I was young and stupid, as opposed to being old and stupid, I used to let my small engines sit all winter with gas in them. After umteen carb rebuilds and cleaning in the spring, I quit doing that. I run stuff dry these days before storage and all my gas and diesel gets "doctored" as soon as I bring it home. I usually double up on the quantities recommended and never had a problem with storage. In fact, just last week I found two 5-gallon cans in the barn that were dated Nov., 2013. I poured them in to the old van and it's running just fine. Stab-il is your friend.

I've never had any problem with diesel. At the farm I've used 6-year old untreated diesel without a problem. At the house my diesel drums are covered and the fuel is treated as soon as I bring it home. I usually keep at least 250 gallons on hand so the turnover isn't high.

the new products all ready have a stabilizer in them, but you cant get around the effects of alcohol absorbing moisture from the air, or ulsd additives holding water in suspension for longer than normal periods. we some what have to adjust to the new products.

One of the "then vs now" on diesel is the bio component. Good old diesel is fairly stable and until it turns to sludge it's going to work. Bio diesel is proving not to have the same longevity. It is from veg oil and it will break down. If you run it inside of a year, probably never notice. With the low percentage bio (+/- 5%) it may not matter. at 15-20% i'm betting if it gets two-three years out, you will notice.