The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 408
If gasoline was not harmful to engines, America would not have had thousands
of engine repair shops and mechanics spread throughout the country in all the
years during the age of leaded gasoline.
If you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that I said there were three
often quoted engine problems attributed to ethanol. The above explanation only
refers to the "sludge" issue. Now I'll address "corrosion."
All liquids are corrosive, including and especially water. Air, wind, solar rays are
also corrosive. Gasoline is of course corrosive, which is why certain materials
cannot be legally used to hold gasoline. But guys like you make it seem as if
only ethanol causes corrosion. When you're faced with a corrosion causing factor you use materials that are not susceptible to corrosion: You use paint that
can withstand solar rays and metals that don't rust. It's not a big deal. As corrosive as water is, we drink it and bathe in it.
During the decades in which tetra-ethyl lead gasoline was the only real fuel
available for spark-induced internal combustion engines, engine designers
used parts that were least susceptible to gasoline corrosion.
After leaded gasoline and gasoline with MTBE were banned engine designers
had to change parts that were susceptible to ethanol corrosion. So they did,
and now the vast majority of passenger cars and lights trucks on the road today
now have engine parts and fuel system parts that are no more susceptible to
ethanol corrosion than the previous parts were to gasoline. Small engine manufacturers have also been making the changes and more and more new equipment is approved for ethanol fuels.
Yes, older engines may require the replacement of parts, but older engines require the replacement of parts at some point anyway, so parts that are not susceptible to ethanol should be used. The replacement parts are usually readily
available and cost differences, if any, are negligible.
The third engine-problem issue is the myth that alcohol (ethanol) sucks water
right out of thin air and puts it in your fuel tank. This concept is a joke. Mercury
Marine, the largest manufacturer of marine engines, has clearly and repeatedly
stated: "ethanol does not grab water molecules out of the air." And they correctly
attribute water collecting in boat fuel tanks as the result of condensation, not
because the ethanol in the ethanol-gasoline blend sucked the water molecules
out of the air. You can hear more about this for yourself from an extensive webinar that Mercury presented 2011. The full webinar can be found at:
