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i have a 2001 chevy and i've been having problems with it ever since they went to puttin 10% in the gas... sometimes the truck doesn't wanna crank it start up idle for a few seconds a cut off but if you crank it up and hit the gas it will stay running as long as you push the accelerator.. come to a stop sign does the same thing.. and it only does it sometimes not every time.. anybody else have this problem?? the guy at the local parts house sold me some gas treatment called HEET and i put it in let it sit for a while and went to crank it up and it has been running fine.. please help and give me some feedback so i can get this stopped if possible
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ME LUV IT LONG TIME!!!

I haul gas for a living.

If there is ANY water in your tank (or the store's tank), the ethanol will seperate from the gasoline in your tank and blend with the water. The water and enthanol will sink to the bottom of the tank, where the fuel line pick up is. That causes big problems. Where you might have had a trace amount of water in your gas (no big deal usually) the ethanol blends in it creating a mess. Say you have a 20 gallon tank and 10% of it is ethanol. That's potentially 2 gallons of water + ethanol in the bottom of your tank once the phase seperation happens.

It gets worse... Gasoline now that is blended with Ethanol comes from the refinery at 84 Octane. The high octane rating of the ethanol brings it back to 87. If you remove the water from your tank.. you're left with 84 octane gas.

I just noticed you're in Cleveland, MS. I actually used to haul gas to a couple of places down there with my last gas hauling job. Small world.

In and around Cleveland there are still a few Shell and maybe Citgo stores (as well as possibly some unbranded stores) that do NOT have ethanol. I don't know which ones. The Gas Terminal in Greenville that supplies Shell and Citgo products is not blending ethanol in their fuel. I would look for any stores that MIMS oil delivers to. They haul from the Greenville almost exclusively.

All the Exxon and Chevron stores converted to 10% Ethanol a while back. Walmart did too.

Sayle Oil Company, who used to supply Cleveland's Shell near the Sonic, started hauling the gas out of Memphis, so I know that store is 10% Ethanol. There should be others near you who haven't converted.

This ethanol shit is a mess. Hopefully it will be phased out soon.

A couple of other tips...

Try to buy your gas from the same place.. every time.. if possible instead of shopping for the best bargain. That way if you DO end up with water in your tank, you know where it came from. Try to get it from a high volume store that way it doesn't have time to seperate in the store's tanks.

The money you would save from going from store to store is so mediocre anyway. Say you save 5¢ per gallon by going from store to store. When you fill up a 20 gallon tank, that only equates to one dollar per fill-up. It's worth it to know the store you're buying from has quality fuel.

Also, if you've got the balls... lift up the lid over the underground gas tanks and see if there is any water around the fill pipes. The lids are usually color coded. White is regular. Blue is Plus. Red is Premium. Yellow is Diesel. Some stations don't have a plus tank because the pumps blend plus out of 67% regular and 33% premium.

You can run some Sea Foam in it, any FLAPS should have it.

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75 Luv, 350 V8, TH350, Camaro rearend. New 1975 Luv Step side. Stock for now.
Grandmaster of the "Shade Tree" way.. I can't see the yard for all the cars. Come on down and we will sit on the porch and watch the grass grow.

it was defaintely water.. i put some HEET in it this morning and it cleared up.. should i put this in everytime i fill up to keep this from happening since our crazy ass government decided it would be so much cheaper on them to put ethanol in gas and in the long run screw us?????

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ME LUV IT LONG TIME!!!

HEET is not expensive so i would say yes, cuz it does help alot with water problens

There are two answers. One is that they want to reduce our dependance on foreign oil.. But you lose about 10% of your fuel economy running 10% ethanol... so you end up using as much gas as you would with no ethanol. Think about it... if you get 17 mpg with conventional gas you would get 15.3 mpg on E10 gas. 200 miles at 17 mpg is about 11.8 gallons. 200 miles at 15.3 mpg is about 13 gallons - or 11.7 gallons of gas and 1.3 gallons of ethanol. See what happened there? You're burning as much foreign oil as before.

The other answer is the oxygenator in conventional gasoline - benzyne - has been found to be hazardous to your health. Ethanol is an oxygenator and supposedly isn't hazardous.

I don't like it. It has made my job a nightmare. I hope that it turns out to be temporary. Being that it's a government thing, they're not likely to admit their mistake though.

i posted this same thread that i started on another forum i'm a member of and they said that the government says by the year 2012 its suppose to be 15% ethanol... looks like its only gonna get worse for us...

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ME LUV IT LONG TIME!!!

Alchohol or Ethanol??

I keep hearing PEOPLE say that there is Ethanol at the gas station.
Hardly do I hear anyone say Alchohol. Yet the signs on our gas tanks say "Free of Alcohol" or something of the sort. Or some say 10% Alchohol, but I dont remember seeing any that say Ethanol or E85 blend.
Am I mistaken?

Ethanol is E85 or corn (vegie) gas.
For as long as I can remember I have heard of buying bad gas, sometimes they put Alcohol in the tanks so that it will help keep the tanks free of moisture.

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If they do that then they should also buy our lawn mowers and gas weedeaters.
That stuff kills them!

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E85 is 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline.

Ethanol is 199 proof Alcohol. Right now (most areas) are required to use an E10 blend. Some places use E85. You have to have a flex fuel vehicle to burn that stuff though.

The places that say "free of alcohol" have not converted to E10 yet.

Alcohol in your gasoline is bad. It doesn't rid your tank of moisture. It blends with the water, and seperates from the gas and sinks to the bottom of the tank.

Not everyone, me too, thinks we are gaining anything by using ethanol. More fuel used to grow the extra corn, transport the corn, process it, and so on. Some say it has driven the price of corn so in some areas people are unable to afford to buy corn.

There is supposed to be a bad thing, where they are cutting down the rain forest to plant corn and other crops that can be used to make ethanol...

I am all for farmers making money, as my family was in farming and ranching, am still a Texas Farm Bureau member.
I think it is a subject people need to research. I think it may have been more of a political thing than any else.
I don't hug trees or lick frogs

At sometime I think it is supposed to go up to 15% then 20% ethanol.
I also believe everyone should learn about what goes on, be aware of what something may become, and who is behind what, and VOTE your Consensus with informed knowledge.

Sorry if I seem off topic and to be trying to sway people anyway on any thing. If it is inappropriate and I will delete it or a mod can delete it.

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75 Luv, 350 V8, TH350, Camaro rearend. New 1975 Luv Step side. Stock for now.
Grandmaster of the "Shade Tree" way.. I can't see the yard for all the cars. Come on down and we will sit on the porch and watch the grass grow.

I love E85 but absolutly hate E10

E10: just sucks all around. Its so hard to get a correct tune on, and the consistency of E10 is very poor. try it yourself, go get a gallon from all the stations and run a Hydrometer test and it will make you think twice about using it as a performance fuel.

E85: Its a pain to get used too.... but once you get the hang of tuning with it, it makes good power numbers. 105 octane and a generally cold burning fuel makes supercharger and HotAir turbos happy campers. E85 is excellent with high compression, narrow cams, forced induction, or nitrious use - but to see full benifits a N/A motor needs atleast 10.5-1 and can go as high as 13-1 with no issues.

A.j.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykgDNjeTa0g

Just an FYI...

It takes 3 gallons of diesel to make 1 gallon of ethanol.

This is an ethanol discussion thread. Nothing you said is off topic or inappropriate.

drummerforhire

Thanks

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75 Luv, 350 V8, TH350, Camaro rearend. New 1975 Luv Step side. Stock for now.
Grandmaster of the "Shade Tree" way.. I can't see the yard for all the cars. Come on down and we will sit on the porch and watch the grass grow.

here in OR we just went to E10%, in the last year or less.

we can still get 100% gas thru are local pacific pride card lock fuel sales.

to get it you must have it delivered to your place, for (off-road use only) no less than about 200 G or so.

but when you buy it you pay the state tax,
to get your $$$$ back on the tax you have to go thru paper work with the state.
so its sorta legal to run it on road, if you dont do the paper work, i men how can a cop, or any one tell if its 90% or 100% gas.

but for diesel like most of the USA, you dont pay the tax to begen with, wether at the pump or delivered to your place. (for off-road)

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86trooperT/D 2.2
84 L\B 4x4Diesel LS 2.2
84 S\B 4X4 gas rust bucket 1.9
86 L\B 4X4 gas 5 speed 2.3
the twins, 81 pup and 81 LUV both are diesel 2.2



The Energizer Bunny is trying to keep up, and is starting to gasp for air!!

I ran mine on E85 to see the differences with my programer. Sure does make a difference. But there arnt very many E85 stations around here so its hard to keep 100% E85 in the tank.
I liked it.... but I dont have to do alot of driving so keeping an eye on the gas guage typically isnt that big of a deal for me.
I'm moving further away from work, and E85 is so hard to find I wont get a chance to play with it anymore.

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Just for argument an 8.0 compression motor will run on straight alcohol when tuned for it and see a power increase of 10-15 percent but will have a cold start issue.Also there is no compression limit for alcohol as even multi. turbo ed diesels will run on straight alcohol.HEET is a alcohol that absorbs water like methanol but is not as caustic as methanol.

This will no doubt start some heated conversations but being a fan of ethanol (corn liquor)i will enjoy controversy.
More later

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1978 pro street step/side 455Buick, 4sp,4.11s, 31/18.5s

HEET is methanol (wood alcohol). IsoHEET is isopropanol (rubbing alcohol). Both should be 100%. They work because although water is not miscible with gasoline, water is miscible with HEET and HEET miscible with gasoline, and that's why it's a water remover and also a gas line antifreeze.

I put some IsoHEET in (because my store didn't have HEET in stock) for water removal (I was troubleshooting a crappy idle) and have found that it seems to loosen up whatever rust I have in the tank as well, causing me to change fuel filters about 100 miles after I put it in. Oh well.

Methanol isn't very caustic btw, (although don't drink it! everybody knows that's bad) but it can cause things to rust because it mixes with water. As we all know, ethanol mixes even better with water, and that's good to drink but bad for the gas tank.