I Hate the Fuel available right now!!!!!!

[goof008]

+1 to Lakesides post

The longer you let E10 sit in your tank or gas can, the longer it has to absorb water. I found when I boated a lot, it was best to get gas from Shell and I think it was Sunaco, as their mid grade and premium fuels didn't have the E10 added, but that was a several years ago, and I kinda stopped looking. But if you look at different stations, the good ones like Mobil/Exxon, Shell, Marathon and Sunoco, you may find one that still runs non E10 gas.

Good luck, and if you can't find it, just get less at a time so it doesn't get old before you use it up.

 

[ralphbsz]

In California, all gas that is sold to be used street-legal has to be oxygenated. And since MTBE (the more benign oxygenator) is now illegal here, all street gas will have about 10% ethanol, like it or not.

One thing: Engines need to be retuned. Bigger deal: ethanol dries out many "rubbery" components, such as gas hoses and carburator diaphragms. This is particularly true if the components had been used with MTBE, which makes those components swell. This leads to cracks.

Fortunately, you can buy racing gasoline and avgas. Avgas is leaded, and even though it is sold as "LL", it is quite leaded. This is unhealthy if you spill it and get it into your system, and if you breath the fumes (which on a chainsaw is pretty unavoidable); but the health effects are minor. The bigger deal is that lead will often clog spark plugs. But it is easily available at air ports, and reasonably cheap.

Fortunately, one can get gasoline that is both unleaded and non-oxygenated;this is specialized racing gas used for off-road racing. I just bought 5 gallons of "VP racing fuels" type C10: about 100 octane, no lead, no ethanol. Here in the western US, there are two racing fuels I know of: Sunoco (a.k.a. www.racegas.com) and VP (a.k.a. www.vpracingfuels.com); there may be more. There are two handicaps: It is hard to get (I had to spend a few hours tracking down distributors and dealers, and eventually special-order it from a performance motorcycle shop), and it is heinously expensive: I ended up paying $12.40 per gallon.

For a regular professional chainsaw user (who goes through a lot of gas, and doesn't have time to tinker with carburators and gas, because any hour he's not out in the forest cutting he's not making money), I wonder whether just rebuilding the carburator and fuel lines with new parts once, and then using affordable high-quality automotive gasoline isn't a much better deal than using exotic expensive racing gas.

 

[Lakeside53]

For a regular professional chainsaw user (who goes through a lot of gas, and doesn't have time to tinker with carburators and gas, because any hour he's not out in the forest cutting he's not making money), I wonder whether just rebuilding the carburator and fuel lines with new parts once, and then using affordable high-quality automotive gasoline isn't a much better deal than using exotic expensive racing gas.

I'm not seeing any real issue with pro saws that use a lot of fresh gas. It's mainly with saws that have seen sitting, and particualarly in damp unheated homeowner garages... AVgas is a reasonablee solution to the "once every 6 month" homeowner", but the best solution is simply to run the "not to be used for 4 months device" out of gas, and dump the old gas in your car.

 

[RiverRat2]

I'm not seeing any real issue with pro saws that use a lot of fresh gas. It's mainly with saws that have seen sitting, and particualarly in damp unheated homeowner garages... AVgas is a reasonablee solution to the "once every 6 month" homeowner", but the best solution is simply to run the "not to be used for 4 months device" out of gas, and dump the old gas in your car.

Yep,,,,IVe found best to wait until you have used about a quarter of the tank in the vehicle,,, then add the few gallons into the many in the bigger tank and no problemo!!!!!

 

[hornett22]

here in Connecticut...........

89 octane has little or no ethenol.it is what i run now in all my equipment.