MOLINE, Illinois—
While ethanol has been touted as a way to reduce emissions and cut our country's dependence on foreign oil, it may not be the best fuel for your lawn mower,
weed-eater or chain saw. Many mechanics here in the Quad Cities and around the country say that putting any amount of alcohol into small engines can
damage plastic and rubber parts. And those mechanics say they have been doing a lot more repairs on small engines in recent years because more and
more people are now using these gas-alcohol blends."Oh, a tremendous amount of repairs. It just keeps getting worse each year," says Butch Trevor of Trevor Hardware in Moline. "The alcohol in the gas basically starts to break down and crack the fuel line. It destroys the seals on the inside of the carburetor."
And it's getting harder to find gasoline without ethanol mixed in. Most blends at gas station pumps are called E-10 which means they contain up to 10 percent ethanol because of federal mandates. And Trevor says while these gas-alcohol blends may be OK for your car engine, smaller engines just aren't made to run on ethanol. " It clogs up theinside of the little carburetor in the engine," Trevor says. "When I get inside a small engine that's used ethanol, it looks like somebody blew their nose in the carburetor. Another way it looks is like somebody puked in the carburetor and it hardened up."
That's because alcohol attracts moisture, which leads to the creation of a gummy residue in your engine. That moisture can also create rust. And this can happen in all types of small engines whether it's chain saws, weedeaters, or many outboard motors on boats. In fact, most marine engines made before 2000 prohibit the use of alcohol because of its nasty side effects.
But no matter what kind of small engine you may use, Trevor suggests you avoid ethanol completely, "or you'll wind up with an engine that won't start, surges up and down, or it won't run at all."
Not surprisingly, the ethanol industry says mechanics like Trevor are just plain wrong. Groups such as the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association say E-10 is perfectly safe to use in small engines.
Trevor, though, says the ethanol lobby should come to his repair shop to see the damage done by E-10, damage he says he never saw before the federal ethanol mandates. He says if you choose to feed ethanol to your small engine, sooner or later you'll be paying a visit to a mechanic like him.
There are many stations in the Quad City area that sell 100% gasoline with no ethanol included, and that pure form of gasoline will often cost you about 10 cents more per gallon. However, Trevor says you can pay that small additional cost right now... or pay the often expensive repair bills down the road.
