The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 199
I've got a stack of at least six fuel tanks and the carbs and fuel pumps that went
with them in my scrap metal pile. The stuff is HORRIBLE for vehicles and actually costs more petroleum to create it than the simple straight-up leaded and
unleaded fuels we used prior to the Gov. needing to find a use for all that tons
of extra corn they paid farmers to grow every year.
Reply from MARC:
Hi Lance - Good to hear from you again so soon. Speaking purely anecdotally,
my own personal experience is different. My experience with older cars and
different gasoline fuels concerns a 1956 Bentley S1 that I owned and drove
regularly for more than 20 years. I purchased the vehicle when leaded-gasoline
was still the only gasoline fuel commonly available. My ownership lasted
through the unleaded MTBE era and into the E10 era.
Bentley Owners Club members were very concerned when unleaded gasoline
was proposed and mandated. The frantic claims were very similar to the frantic
claims later made against E10. I never experienced any problems switching to
unleaded gasoline with MTBE. When MTBE was finally ordered off the market,
I heard all the same complaints about the coming of E10. Fortunately, I personally never experienced any problems with using E10.
There was a time when I did have to replace the fuel pump and some of the
hoses, but this occurred less than one year after I purchased the vehicle in
England and had it shipped to the U.S. So it was during the leaded-gasoline
era. It was my understanding that this was the first time the car needed to have
its fuel pump replaced.
What you fail to address is that many older cars were built during a time when
ethanol-gasoline blends were used around the world with great success. By
great success, I mean that you cannot find any reports of vehicle owners in the
1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s, or '60s complaining about corrosion problems related to
using the ethanol-gasoline blends. The complaints are modern complaints
probably invented by the oil industry and wrongly blaming ethanol for gasoline's
corrosive characteristics.
The point you may be making is that you and other owners of older cars have
to make unnecessary changes, or changes that are not original (or original replicas) to the vehicle. I know this is something that collectors of anything hate to
