This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Ethanol & Power Equipment

We, along with numerous power equipment dealers and mechanics are finding ourselves dealing with a flood of frustrated owners who bring in their lawn mowers, chainsaws, generators and other gas-powered equipment because their machine won’t start or has a gummed up carburetor.  What our customers don’t realize is that the problem is not the engine – it’s the fuel.  

The introduction of ethanol into fuel has caused a wide range of problems.  Blending ethanol with gasoline results in issues that are very often blamed on engines or the mechanics who maintain them: rough idling, hard starting, gummed-up carburetor jets and an overall loss of power.  This picture that you see was taken in our own power equipment shop from a customer’s riding mower.  The carburetor bowl on the left is from an engine that sat just over the winter with just a little bit of fuel in it.  As you can plainly see, the deposits that remained in the fuel system for just a few months are a result of water in the presence of untreated fuel.  The carburetor bowl on the right is from a similar machine but the fuel was treated with an Enzyme fuel treatment. 

Over the past 20+ years that we have been doing power equipment repairs, we have seen new ethanol blended fuels in the past 5+ years cause expensive problems with all types of gas-powered equipment, because the fuel goes stale very quickly, forming gums too quickly for traditional stabilizers to keep up.    Fuel stabilizers and gas additives that rely on 25-year-old technology just don't work with today's new fuels. They either cannot remove gum or they remove it in big chunks that end up forming clogs. Adding a dry gas product isn't the answer either, because many of these products are largely or entirely made up of alcohol, and adding more alcohol to E10 fuel just exacerbates problems.  Because most engines are designed to run on fuel that contains a maximum of 10% alcohol, adding more alcohol to E10 gas could lead to malfunctions or even a voided warranty.  

Explicitly in the warranty statement from power equipment manufacturers it states: “There is no warranty coverage on repairs necessary due to failure to use fresh fuel (less than one month old), or failure to properly prepare the unit prior to any period of non-use over one month”.  

The old advice of draining your equipment before storage no longer applies to the new fuels, unless you completely tear down your fuel system, which we don’t recommend if you don’t know what you are doing. Even gasoline that you buy today will be considered old by Fathers Day!   

First off – we encourage everyone to purchase a higher grade octane fuel – the higher the better.  Second, since you can’t buy fuel without ethanol, treat the fuel the moment you buy it – don’t wait for even a month to pass.  Treat with what you ask?  Not all fuel treatments out on the market today are the same.  Use a newer enzyme-based fuel treatment, such as StarTron, to battle all the issues of ethanol-based fuel.  For 2-cycle equipment, where you mix gas and oil, there are gasoline products that contain no ethanol and already mixed with 2-cycle oil, such as TruFuel.   For equipment that you are going to be storing for more than a month, don’t drain the fuel tank, which may have been your practice for years.  Make sure the tank to the equipment is full, so as to avoid attracting water.  Every 30 days, run your equipment that is not being used, so can to flush newer treated fuel through your fuel system.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?