ethanol gas

[NoDakInMN]

Whether or not to use ethanol is about as hotly debated as what oil should you be using, and in both cases, it is largely a matter of opinion and personal preference. If you are using the tractor fairly regularly, you will not notice any issues as you are going through the gas fairly quickly. Issues begin to appear if the gas sits in the carb and tank for an extended time. Now let's be clear on one thing, while ethanol will evaporate and leave behind a residue, so will regular gas, ethanol just does so a little more quickly because of the lower evaporation point of alcohol as opposed to gas. So the biggest concern with ethanol, as is with regular gas, is leaving it for an extended period. As most gas tanks on our old tractor are not airtight, the fuel can evaporate. But with ethanol, you can have fuel left in your tank, and although it may not smell bad like regular gas is known to do, it can be absolutely useless. The ethanol can all evaporate out of the fuel and if you drain it into a can, you could drop a farmer's match into it and the fuel would snuff it out when it sunk into it.

Now there will be those who tell you that ethanol will destroy rubber O-rings and other rubber components in a carburetor, but that is open to disagreement, but a single barrel DLTX carb found on letter series John Deere has machine fit metal parts, so that isn't much of a concern. The two barrel ones found on the following two cylinder number series may be the same, but I haven't torn into them enough to know for sure.

So running your tractor on ethanol will not hurt it, you just have to be contentious about draining out the fuel when it is not in use for some time, just a little more so when you use ethanol. And of course, additives like Sta-bil or Sea Foam help address that issue as well as does running the carb out of fuel and opening the bowl drain as well as draining the tank.

 

[nlastovi]

(quoted from post at 07:31:57 02/06/23) There will be arguments back and forth on using ethanol gas. I'll just suggest that if you want to continue running ethanol gas just make sure you treat it heavily with Startron (found at Tractor Supply, Walmart,and a few other places.) I have a 60 that i run ethanol in...but i don't run it a lot. Being the ethanol fuel may sit for fairly long periods of time i make sure to keep Startron in it heavily. I haven't had any issues due to using it. Don't trust any other stabilizer. I've put Startron to the test in many different ways at various times...& it does the job 100%. Just my suggestion.

Having never heard of 'Startron' I did some research that hopefully will reward the sceptic reader. The marketing department of Star brite Inc. lists a slew of products and I did not look into all of them (the MSDS sheets are easy enough to find) and you can start at http://www.starbrite.com/component/com_advlisting/Itemid,681/id,14/layout,table/show_description,0/show_title,0/view,single/.

That said the MSDS sheet for "Startron Enzyme Fuel Treatment Small Engine Formula - Gas" indicates that the product contains some light distillate and kerosine. It is not clear to me where "Enzyme" enters into the discussion in that enzyme are "proteins that act as biological catalysts by accelerating chemical reactions" and I'm not seeing a bunch of 'em.


- Petroleum distillates, hydrotreated light 90-95% Distillates (petroleum), hydrotreated light [A complex combination of hydrocarbons obtained by treating a petroleum fraction with hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst. It consists of hydrocarbons having carbon numbers predominantly in the range of C9 through C16 and boiling in the range of approximately 150C to 290C (302F to 554F).]
- Kerosine, petroleum 1%-10%
- Kerosine, petroleum, hydrodesulfurized 1%-10%

Interesting review of, IMHO, marketing success.