MTBE to Ethanol additive change-over ..PROBLEMS

although this affects mainly boats, I thought I'd cross post this here in case any of you have a fiberglass fuel tank.

There are great 'problems' showing up due to the 'changeover' of gasoline addives - MTBE to Ethanol: Fiberglass fuel tanks dissolving and leaking, harmful destructive deposits formed inside engines, etc. About half the USA states have already banned MTBE additive and are rapidly changing over to an ethanol additive, the ethanol is quite incompatible with most of the fiberglass resin used in fuel tanks. The decomposition products of the 'melting/dissolving' resin doesnt burn and will form vast and destructive deposits in the engine (similar to putting sugar into the gasoline).

for more info:

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BOATUS.com website.

Reply to
Rich Hampel
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Jeeps use steel or polyethylene fuel tanks.

Earle

Reply to
Earle Horton

Reply to
Rich Hampel

sounds unsafe - easy to crack in an accident...

Dave

Reply to
Dave Milne

The PROBLEM isn't the fuel. The PROBLEM was the poor choice of materials in the first place.

Reply to
Bret Ludwig

All CJ7's made cannot use ethanol as far as I know. CJ7's have plastic tanks and the owners manuals for the 80's vintages specifically forbids the use of any alcohol mix no matter what 'drying agents' they try to con you with.

So who came first, the CJ7's or the farmers lobby?

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail >
Reply to
Mike Romain

Reply to
L.W.( ßill ) Hughes III

There's really more to it than that. MTBE additives and Ethanol are not compatible and will cause precipitates to form that affects fuel line/fuel filter delivery and cause combustion problems. When switching from MTBE fuel to Ethanol fuel, make sure you run the tank near dry before refueling and vice versa. This will limit the effects of incompatibility.

Scott

Reply to
reconair

The CJ7s, the farmer's lobby, or the methanol lobby?

This is from the source, the Canadian company that is trying to tell the good people of California what they can and cannot ban in order to protect their environment.

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"methanol competes directly with ethanol at refineries and any MTBE bans will directly reduce sales of methanol"

That is the bottom line, profits for avaricious Canadian capitalists. Elsewhere, they admit that "MTBE can make drinking water supplies unpalatable", yet they are using NAFTA to force California children and puppies to drink it. For shame.

By the way, your CJ7 uses the same polyethylene material in its fuel tank that my YJ uses, and I live in Colorado, a notorious "farmer's lobby" state. (Curiously, I live in the only Colorado county with no agricultural zoned land.) No problems yet. For the other side of the MTBE story check out this page,

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or anything else youfind in your favorite search engine. Earle

Reply to
Earle Horton

All the "Alcool" E100 burning cars in Brazil have plastic gas tanks too.

Reply to
RapidRonnie

IANAPetrochemicalEngineer, but I can't find anything online about MTBE and ethanol forming precipitates. I've found that the US EPA does generally forbid mixing the two products in bulk, but there's no ban on mixing in the consumer's tanks. The rational for the ban has to do with increased Volatile Organic Compound emissions, not chemical incompatibility.

The following ethanol industry technical paper states that all fiberglass tanks designed for gasoline are compatible with gasoline/ethanol blends up to 10% ethanol, and that it has approval letters on file from both Fluid Containment (formerly Owens Corning Fiberglass) and Xerxes Corp, the two major commercial fiberglass tank manufacturers. (pg. 16) It goes on to say that tank relining materials using epoxy or polyester resins from the late 1970s and early 1980s are not compatible. Page 18 has a short chart of compatible and incompatible materials.

Or:

Without having looked at the OP's pdf I'm guessing that the boatyard is having problems with boat tanks older than 1980.

rec> There's really more to it than that. MTBE additives and Ethanol are not

Reply to
Lee Ayrton

The owners manual that forbids the crap makes no differentiation between the tanks.

I think it has to do with the steel lines rotting and the carb soft parts melting. I cannot go more that two years on a float needle these days. The one I have in now is starting to give up the ghost. They have the soft tips.

My gas mileage and power also goes totally to crap when alcohol is mixed in. I drop to 16 or 17 mpg from my nice 23 mpg highway and it fights to hold 70 mph vs only needing a half pedal down with 'real' gas.

Mike

Lee Ayrt>

Reply to
Mike Romain

All the CJ-7s that I've had contact with had the 15 gallon steel tanks, but I gather that the optional 20 gallon tank was plastic.

Mike Roma> All CJ7's made cannot use ethanol as far as I know. CJ7's have plastic

Reply to
Lee Ayrton

Sugar in the gas won't result in vast and destructive deposits, even though the popular belief is that it will. Table sugar can't dissolve in hydrocarbons, it might just as well be ground glass in the tank. It will clog up the fuel sender sock and the fuel filter, but you won't find caramel syrup under the valves. See:

Rich Hampel wrote:

Reply to
Lee Ayrton

I had a pisser of a time with my 90HP Honda 4 stroke outboard this past spring. Clogged passageways, rough running, crapped up lines etc. Cost me over $500 to have repaired, and it had to be done a second time!!(No cost) My mechanic (Chris) was quoted in the Boat US article and I guess the problem comes about when the two gasolines are mixed together. Forms a sludge and just makes a royal mess!

Also, had to replace a gas tank on my two month old weed whacker because the fuel dissolved the seam of the plastic gas tank. It looks as if it just melted the glue(?) bedcause it ran down the outside of the tank. Looked like hardened epoxy.

It was not a very pretty Spring. Got into boating about 3 months late. A lot of fellows in the boat club had similiar troubles.

Hope for better this year.

Kevin

Reply to
Kevin Gunther

Kevin Gunther wrote: [snip]

I'd be inclined to blame the ethanol for liberating accumulated varnish and sludge in a seasonal-use engine than for precipitates.

Reply to
Lee Ayrton

Definitely the FRG tanks made before the mid 80s are begining to show severe attack and 'penetration/leaking' .... and you definitely do not want free gasoline in the bilge of a boat ..... goes BOOM. The insurance underwriters that follow the boating industry are currently 'frantic' about the MTBE to ethanol changeover.

Reply to
Rich Hampel

That might be a problem with an older engine, but this engine was only on its fourth season. I had run it out, fogged it and stabil'ed it each fall. It was the combination of the fuel types. Boaters all over the stases of NT and CT were having this problem. Take a look at the BoatUS article.

KG

Reply to
Kevin Gunther

The resin systems used in fiberglass boats were never rated or designed to be used for fuel storage. The experimental aircraft guys were doing the same thing with the "idiot savant pickle fork" aka Long-EZ and derivatives when the auto fuel STCs made it clear that there was no magic juju that kept the museum piece Lyc from burning "car gas". The Canard Pusher newsletter from Rutan said there was no problem with it.....the BOAT GUYS had done it for decades!!...

Sadly the real fix is: open up the structure and put in a fuel cell bladder or rotamold, or cut out the top tank glass and reglass it in with a resin system known to be compatible with any fuel you can imagine used in the next 20-30 years. If you are paying some boat shop to do this it's going to be cheaper to buy a new hull.

Reply to
Bret Ludwig

Awww, where's their sense of _adventure_?

Rich Hampel wrote:

Reply to
Lee Ayrton

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