The folly of E15 anti-hydrocarbon policie
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EPA’s E-15 ethanol plan is bad for our pocketbooks, environment and energy policy
Guest post by Paul Driessen
The Obama Administration’s anti-hydrocarbon ideology and “renewable” energy mythology continues to subsidize crony capitalists and the politicians they help keep in office – on the backs of American taxpayers, ratepayers and motorists. The latest chapter in the sorry ethanol saga is a perfect example.
Bowing to pressure from ADM, Cargill, Growth Energy and other Big Ethanol lobbyists, Lisa Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency has decided to allow ethanol manufacturers to register as suppliers of E15 gasoline. E15 contains 15% ethanol, rather than currently mandated 10% blends.
The next lobbying effort will focus on getting E15 registered as a fuel in individual states and persuading oil companies to offer it at service stations. But according to the Associated Press and Washington Post, Team Obama already plans to provide taxpayer-financed grants, loans and loan guarantees to “help station owners install 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years” and promote the use of biofuels.
Pummeled by Obama policies that have helped send regular gasoline prices skyrocketing from $1.85 a gallon when he took office to $4.00 today – many motorists will welcome any perceived “bargain gas.” E15 will likely reduce their obvious pump pain by several cents a gallon, thus persuading people to fill up their cars, trucks and maybe even boats, lawnmowers and other equipment with the new blends.
That would be a huge mistake.
E15 gasoline will be cheaper because we already paid for it with decades of taxpayer subsidies that the Congressional Budget Office says cost taxpayers $1.78 every time a gallon of ethanol replaced a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol blends get fewer miles per tank than gasoline. More ethanol means even worse mileage. People may save at the pump, but cost per mile will increase, as will car maintenance and repair costs.
Ethanol collects water, which can cause engine stalls. It corrodes plastic, rubber and soft metal parts. Pre-2001 car engines, parts and systems may not be able to handle E15, which could also increase emissions and adversely affect engine, fuel pump and sensor durability. Older cars and motorcycles mistakenly (or for price or convenience) fueled with E15 could conk out on congested highways or in the middle of nowhere, boat engines could die miles from land or in the face of a thunderstorm, and snowmobiles could sputter to a stop in a frigid wilderness.
Homeowners and yard care professionals have voiced concerns that E15’s corrosive qualities could damage their gasoline-powered equipment. Because it burns hotter than gasoline, high ethanol gasoline engines could burn users or cause lawnmowers, chainsaws, trimmers, blowers and other outdoor power equipment to start inadvertently or catch fire, they worry.
As several trade associations have noted in a lawsuit, the Clean Air Act says EPA may grant a waiver for a new fuel additive or fuel blend only if it has demonstrated that the new fuel will not damage the emissions control devices of “any” engine in the existing inventory. E15 has not yet met this requirement. EPA should not have moved forward on E15 and should not have ignored studies that indicate serious potential problems with this high-ethanol fuel blend.
Largely because of corn-based ethanol, US corn prices shot up from an annual average of $1.96 per bushel in 2005 to $6.01 in 2011. This year we will make ethanol from 5 billion bushels of corn grown on an area the size of Iowa. E15 fuels will worsen the problem, especially if corn crops fall below expectations.
Ethanol mandates mean more revenues and profits for corn growers and ethanol makers. However, skyrocketing corn prices mean beef, pork, poultry, egg and fish producers pay more for corn-based feed; grocery manufacturers pay more for corn, meat, fish and corn syrup; and families see prices soar for almost everything on their dinner table.
Farmers like pork producer Jim A were hammered hard. Over a 20-year period, Jim became a part owner in a Texas operation and planned to buy out the other shareholders. But when corn and ethanol subsidies went into effect, the cost of feed corn shot from $2.80 per bushel in 2005 to “over $7.00” a bushel in 2008. “We went from treading water and making payments, to losing $100,000 a month,” he told me.
His farm was threatened with foreclosure and the ominous prospect of having to make up the difference in a short sale. After “never missing a single payment to anybody” in his life, he almost lost everything. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, a large pork producer leased the property, the bank refinanced his loans and Jim arranged a five-year lease. But thanks to ethanol he almost lost everything he’d ever worked for.
Even worse, the price of tortillas and tamales also skyrocketed, leaving countless poor Latin American families even more destitute. Soaring corn and wheat prices have also made it far harder for the USAID and World Food Organization to feed the world’s malnourished, destitute children.
Simply put, corn ethanol is wasteful and immoral. And yet E15 advocates want to go even further.
“For 40 years we have been addicted to foreign oil,” says Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis. “Our nation needs E15 to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, keep gas prices down at the pump, and end the extreme fluctuations in gas prices caused by our reliance on fuel from unstable parts of the world.”
That’s nonsense. America is blessed with centuries of untapped petroleum resources that antediluvian Deep Ecologists, ideology-driven politicians and EPA officials, and subsidy-obsessed renewable energy lobbyists seem intent on keeping locked up, regardless of the negative consequences.
These oil and gas deposits cannot be developed overnight. However, 40 years is not overnight. Yet that’s how long America has kept Alaska’s ANWR coastal plain, most of our Outer Continental Shelf, and most of our western states’ public lands and resources off limits to leasing, exploration and drilling.
If we had started the process twenty, ten or even five years ago, we’d have enough oil flowing to slash imports and cut world crude and US pump prices significantly. If President Obama had approved the Keystone XL pipeline, within two years over 800,000 barrels of Canadian, Montana and North Dakota crude would be flowing daily to Texas refineries – with similar effects on imports and prices.
Developing these resources would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs – and billions of dollars in lease bonuses and rents, production royalties, and corporate and personal taxes.
America’s surging natural gas production has already driven that fuel’s price from $8 to barely $2.00 per thousand cubic feet (or million Btus). That alone will persuade auto makers to build nat-gas-powered cars and trucks (and consumers to buy them), without massive new subsidy programs as advocated by T. Boone Pickens and assorted politicians. Natural gas can even be converted into ethanol (and diesel).
It will happen, unless Congress interferes – or EPA tries to regulate horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) into oblivion, and send natural gas prices back into the stratosphere.
Right now, we are burning our own – and the world’s – food, to fuel cars and trucks. And to grow corn, convert it into 14 billion gallons of ethanol, and ship it by truck or train, we are consuming one-third of America’s entire corn crop – and using millions of pounds of insecticides, billions of pounds of fertilizer, vast amounts of energy (all petroleum-based), and trillions of gallons of water.
Just imagine how those numbers will soar, if E15 is adopted nationwide – or if Big Ethanol’s big dream becomes reality, and motorists begin to burn “cheap” corn-based E85 in flex-fuel vehicles.
Will President Obama, Democrats and extreme environmentalists ever end their hatred of hydrocarbons, and their obsession with biofuels – and start embracing reliable, affordable energy that actually works?
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Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.cfact.org) and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Related articles
- U.S. approves 20 firms to make ethanol for E15 (reuters.com)
- EPA moves closer to approval of 15 pct ethanol gas (kansascity.com)
- EPA gives E15 go-ahead despite objections, approves production applications (green.autoblog.com)
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Here’s is a great example of the fallacy of picking winners and losers.
Winner — Big Agriculture
Winner — the Farm Vote
Winner — Politicians who can collect more campaign contributions
Winner — Lobbyists
Winner — Environmentalist groups
Losers — All taxpayers and consumers worldwide
Losers — Poor people in underdeveloped countries who can’t afford more expensive food
Unaffected — Big Oil.
The pro-ethanol comments make some good points in their misguided attempts to defend. 1) There is no need to renew the ethanol subsidy because the corn yields went up and the corn will be planted anyway, 2) the negative effects of corn prices on other farm and food mfg. sectors is not as well documented and displayed than they should be, and 3) propping up the gallon-age consumption of demand that is taxed on a per gallon basis serves to keep tax revenues up (for other diversionary games away from highway repair funds) while effectively accomplishing the holy grail of all liberals in raising the gasoline tax. Also, the move ahead on E15 by EPA is in part a compromise to work on technical benefits to the ethanol lobby while temporarily suspending (not fighting for) the subsidy. This serves all the nefarious interests during the election run up and after that the ethanol lobby will regain its subsidy and in the presence of the E15 mandate. Enjoy you piggies but just don’t call it good public policy by any stretch of the imagination. Just don’t come back and tell me a taxpayer-funded ethanol pipeline network is justified!
A crank, and possibly a camshaft change all for the cost of ‘a night out at a good restaurant.’?
Where do you eat?
Even a ‘head’ change can’t be that cheap … I don’t plan on making those kinds of changes to the old L99-equipped V8-engine in the Caprice to accommodate E85; what do you do when lower octane fuels like E10 or straight UL gasoline are used?
(I’m crassly assuming you raised the compression ratio and jockeyed with the ‘advance’ (in/with the computer/ignition/fuel controller via the many kits/firmware/software now available) to achieve these incredible performance and economy figures.)
Will the vehicle pass the emissions standards for the class and model year? I have to get the L99-engined ’94 Caprice run on the dyno each each year for the emissions test, since it it’s not OBDII equipped.
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Paragraph or part please that addresses the ‘home and land grab’ issue?
This should not be a hard thing, since everybody is ‘talking’ about it and seemingly up in arms too.
(My experience has been that most people simply do a ‘hand wave’ in the general direction of the UN site and can’t locate or point to the specifics of this issue in the docs rather they just want to beat up on the ‘bogey man of the day’ and fall in line following the mad crowd on an issue.)
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FactChecker says:
April 25, 2012 at 8:36 am
@_Jim
The website is here
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml
It makes for some interesting reading.
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Interesting reading is an understatement.
REPORT OF THE UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
(Rio de Janeiro, 3-14 June 1992)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF ALL TYPES OF FORESTS
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-3annex3.htm
RIO DECLARATION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm
CSD Sessions
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/csd/csd_index.shtml
Poptech says:
April 25, 2012 at 7:52 am
…There shouldn’t be any government farm subsidies or government involvement in farming at all. All government welfare to farmers should be eliminated. I always laugh at the so-called “independent”
farmer crying about not getting enough government handouts….
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Poptech most farmers do not get subsidies. Those are only for “Commercial” products like cotton, wheat, corn, soy. Vegetables, fruit and meat has no subsidies at all. The subsidy money actually ends up in the pockets of Monsanto who supplies the seed and Cargill, ADM… who buy the farm product BELOW the cost of production. ( The grain was then sold overseas and used to bankrupt third world farmers )
These are the facts no one ever bothers to tell the public.
Agriculture contributes more than $950 billion — 16 percent — to the GNP each year.
There are 2.2 million farms in the USA. According to the 2007 census over half the farms, 1,167,751, reported losses, with an average loss $15,596.
Only 396,054 farms have gains of over $25,000 a year, that means 1.8 million are near or BELOW the poverty threshold.
1,070,668 farms have less than 25% of their income from farming.
Only 4,048 are full time farmers deriving 100% of the income from farming.
The average age is 55.4 years with many farmers beyond or approaching retirement age
According to the USDA, almost 90 percent of the total income of rancher or farmer households now comes from outside earnings. More than 60 percent of US farms are resource, residential or retirement farms.There is a widening gap between retail price and farm value. a USDA market basket of food has increased 2.8 percent while the farm value of that food has fallen by 35.7 percent!
American farmers are working two jobs so YOU can get cheap food and the multinational corporations can make BIG BUCKS and wipe out small farmers in other countries.
References:
Who makes the bread: http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/00july-aug/lilliston.html
Freedom to Fail How U.S. Farming Policies Have Helped Agribusiness And Pushed Family Farmers Toward Extinction: http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/072000/lilliston.html
Ag Statistics:
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/index.asp
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/st99_1_063_063.pdf
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/st99_1_004_005.pdf
http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/st99_1_059_059.pdf
Cui bono ~ Who benefits?
ADM (and Monsanto) are the big winners in the bio-fuel scam. When the Biofuel law went into effect ( the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 ) Archer Daniels Midland cleaned up big time on bio-fuel Biofuel business Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) saw its profits increase throughout all its segments year-over-year, after it formed a strategy to enhance crop-sourcing and processing capacity…. The company reported net earnings of $1.9bn and segment operating profit of $3.2bn for fiscal 2010
Dwayne Andreas worked for Cargill and then worked for Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADMC) becoming CEO in 1971. He is considered the TOP campaign donor in the USA.
Interesting that it was two Florida Journalists who got their behinds handed to them during the “FarmWars”
Remember the adage “Penny wise and pound foolish”?
I think that applies here too.
You are micro-focused on present-day ‘proven reserves’ figures and therefore ‘locked’ into a philosophy of living strictly within tightly defined limits which hampers economic growth. Again, the price and availability of energy factors into economic growth and prosperity.
Another term that come to mind: Zero sum game. Your perspective don’t allow for any further oil/petroleum discoveries so we are stuck with a ‘pie’ of a given, fixed size. … wasn’t the natural gas industry in the same mindset a few years back?
Now look at that market, and make no mistake about it, it is a Drill Baby Drill scenario.
Can you say: “No shortage of supply”? (Well, today anyway!)
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Corn alcohol is for drinking, not fueling. Long live White Lightening.
No such changes are required.!
My first conversion involved one change and one change only. I replaced the stock 440 cc/min fuel injectors with the Japanese market 550 cc/minute injectors for my model car. It cost me a couple hundred dollars for the new injectors, and the old injectors could be sold for nearly the same price to some one who needed stock injectors.
The only thing you need to do to convert a modern car to run on E85 is to increase the fuel flow between 15% and 30%. A 15% increase will allow the natural tuning adaptability of the modern ecu to use any blend of fuel from straight gasoline to straight E85. It will be slightly rich mixture on straight gasoline and slightly lean on full E85 but the car will run just fine.
A 30% increase in fuel flow rate will fully convert to E85 with the engine management fat dumb and happy at its normal fuel trims.
My 88 and 86 model year cars will run on 30% and 50% blends of E85 with no changes of any kind in warm weather, but need similar modifications if I want to use E85 in cold weather.
Yep passed with flying colors on our IM240 dyno test here in Colorado (2001 model year WRX) it still met the ELV emissions limits. With modern electronic engine management the computer will do most of the adaptation itself if you just give it the capability of reaching sufficient fuel flow to get normal mixtures. In almost every car that folks have tried it on, all that was required for a minimum effort E85 conversion was to install higher flow rate injectors (look for an injector of the same type as stock that flows 130% of the stock injector). E85 runs just fine on stock ignition timing curve, although slight tweaks can be made to timing and mixture if you have the means to adjust them to get slightly better fuel economy. The biggest problem folks have with simple conversions is cold starting on E85 in sub-freezing conditions. The simple solution to that is to add 2-3 gallons of gasoline to the tank of E85 when it is cold. The more complex solution is to play with the cold fuel enrichment and such if you have tunable engine management system.
On naturally aspirated engines if you want to build an “optimized” engine for E85 yes it helps to bump the compression ratio to about 12.5 -13.2 compression ratios, no cam changes are “needed” but slight cam timing changes or a different profile might help if you are going for a whole hog conversion. E85 produces more exhaust gas volume than an equivilent gasoline setup so it likes a low back pressure exhaust system and slightly longer exhaust valve open time would probably help in a full conversion.
What no one wants to admit is most modern cars will run perfectly well on a 30% blend of E85 right from the factory with absolutely no problems of any kind. A hand full wil adapt to far higher blends if given a bit of time to adjust. It is the dirty little secret the EPA and the manufactures don’t want anyone to know. I drove the WRX on a 30% blend of E85 for years and both my 88 and 86 Subaru’s on similar blends in the heat of the summer with no modifications of any kind. The two older cars get a bit cranky about cool morning starts on those blends but run just fine once warmed up. That could be easily cured if I wanted to drop in larger injectors or find some other means like bumping fuel pressure a bit to increase fuel flow a bit.
Larry
@ur momisugly _Jim says:
April 25, 2012 at 8:57 am
FactChecker says:
April 25, 2012 at 8:36 am
@ur momisugly_Jim
The website is here
http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_00.shtml …
Paragraph or part please that addresses the ‘home and land grab’ issue?
This should not be a hard thing, since everybody is ‘talking’ about it and seemingly up in arms too.
(My experience has been that most people simply do a ‘hand wave’ in the general direction of the UN site and can’t locate or point to the specifics of this issue in the docs rather they just want to beat up on the ‘bogey man of the day’ and fall in line following the mad crowd on an issue.)
***********************************************************************************************************
Jim, perhaps the “mad crowd” simply thinks you should do your own homework. Or does your, no doubt busy, schedule preclude that?
Agenda 21: its a voluntary effort with some pretty unrealistic objectives like eliminating poverty. If this is one of the goals then its a Fail so far and they’ve poured 20 years of effort into it.
What if anything have they accomplished in the last 20 years?
Gail,
US farming practices are a bit of a Catch 22. Central Midwest farmers have a preference for growing corn and beans even though they know that the value will be diluted by South American imports and regional competition.
There are other crops they could grow but choose not to do it.
Going to assume the carbs on these small engines were re-jetted; as mentioned above, when running my 1500 Coleman these days it takes a small amount of ‘choke’ setting (while running) to make the engine run properly (eliminate surging and stumbling under load), otherwise, it appears to run significantly lean (on E10 even), and that ain’t good as you know …
Anecdotal, but authoritative discussion on the ‘dangers’ of running engines too lean:
http://pmgen.com/hhoscambusters/index.php/topic,195.0.html
This may be the reason why so many small engines fail with E10.
On another note, a technique called Lean of Peak maximizes fuel economy while preserving engine life (piston-powered aircraft engines):
http://www.gami.com/articles/frugalflyer.php
Thanks, government for mandating a ‘motor fuel’ incompatible with our non-vehicular equipment, without an option even to buy straight gasoline for those applications requiring it, as well mandating a product with an even shorter ‘shelf life’ (E10 has a shorter shelf life than gasoline alone even) …
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@_Jim 4-25 9:17 am
I disagree. I clearly stated proven reserves are increasing. Increases are due to improved technology and in spite of production.
The pie grows. It is suicide to consume domestic oil unnecessarily. Every President has known this. A small but viable domestic industry is required, and this we have.
Drill Baby Drill is Dumb Baby Dumb.
The “grand hand wave”?
Is this turning into Real Climate (“Read the literature – gavin”)?
I’m trying to be civil about it, George, but this is actually a ‘competency test’ to see if the nutters can readily back up their ‘claims’. So far, it does not appear they can …
Besides, I might not ‘zero in’ right away on the phrase or paragraph that they seem to have, in spotting nefarious UN goals. Can I not rely on the expert guidance of those enlightened who have gone before me?
.
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PS. Pls note the name: _Jim on account of all the Jims/jims on the board. Thanks.
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VACornell says:
April 24, 2012 at 5:27 pm
About half of the united States is private land. Even though the Administration restricts
the use of its half, the private sector can get us to 100%, or even to the point of exporting
crude oil, by say 2020….
__________________________
Never underestimate the stranglehold of bureaucracy. You forgot the “Spot Owl” Gambit. (Endangered Species Act)
The hype: http://drake.marin.k12.ca.us/academics/seadisc/endangeredspecies/2008/northern_spotted_owl/why_is_it_endangered.htm
The reality:
To show how idiotic this can get. The government even tried to forfeit a farmer’s tractor for allegedly running over an endangered rat….
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen:
Self-imposed limitations.
This is what guides our legislators and executive branch politicians think, as guided by lobbyists, industry ‘professionals’/trade groups and certain think-tanks … this is the philosophy which guides the Obama administration and most all congress on both side of the aisle; the informed intelligentsia setting the course and agenda in regards to domestic oil exploration and supply.
Sorry, Roger, we are going to have to agree to disagree on this subject, and I still think you are totally if not completely wrong on this subject.
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Jim says:
April 25, 2012 at 7:28 am
Fair point…. I was referring to the predominant automobile fleet situation of fuel injection and computer control…You are correct there are still plenty of carburetors out there with venturies and needle valves and air intake ports… all configured for octane 87.
The ideal gas law makes no provision for the size of the molecule does it!
And SIZE MATTERS!
the volume of 1 mole of vaporized C8 = that of C2….
That has a profound effect on air-fuel ratios.
The Maine DEP is still working to clean up the gasoline additive MBTE from our drinking water… This is just more junk to keep them working ehhh? I’m tired of this BS!
From the GWPF
“Biofuels will cause food prices to rocket, warns ActionAid ahead of clean energy ministerial”
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/103219/biofuels_will_cause_food_prices_to_rocket_warns_actionaid_ahead_of_clean_energy_ministerial.html
“Cameron’s government must beware ‘clean energy’ biofuels con, as new ActionAid report shows the shocking fallout of EU policy”
“This is why assertions of fuel consumption based purely on fuel energy content are not only false but intentionally misleading, and if done knowingly are out right lies.”
Larry
Thanks very much for that comment.
You actually tested E-fuels in your car and found a significant improvement is gas mileage over straight gas. This is the first time I have ever heard anyone claim that ethanol improves gas mileage. All I usually hear about is how ethenol will save us all from the devil CO2. I don’t care about CO2, I care about fuel costs. If it improves my gas mileage, I’m interested.
If it improves gas mileage why aren’t they shouting this benefit from the rooftops?
Dennis Nikols, P. Geo. says:
April 24, 2012 at 8:25 pm
How the hell else can they get farmers to vote for them. It is crass politics and absolutely nothing else.
___________________________________
Corn farmers are a small fraction of the 2.1 million American farmers. They lost the farmers when they passed the “Food Safety Modernization Act” among other things.
From Farmer blogs
NoNais: Government is systematically killing the golden goose.
Farm Wars: A Message from Our Criminal Government: “We Got to Get Paid”… The mainstream media also failed to mention that both the Republican and Democratic political parties accepted this fraudulently obtained money as well.
NAIS Stinks: Democrat’s Secret Attack on Agriculture with Food Safety Bill
Food Freedom S 510 is hissing in the grass: S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act*, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.
R-CALF USA Issues a Baker’s Dozen List of Why Cattle Producers Should Oppose USDA’s New Mandatory Animal ID Rule ~ November 30, 2011 R-CALF USA, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on domestic and international trade and marketing issues.
Here are the names of the 73 US Senators who today sold out the American public’s right to grow and sell crops from their own gardens and farms without government oversight, regulation or permission. Here are the 73 Senators who today made it a crime to store and sell Nature-based seeds and grow crops without artificial contaminants, pesticides, and poisons. About one third of them are coming up for re-election in 2012.
Larry
After readiing the comments here about ethanol, I had completly forgotten that when I was a kid a neighbor converted his rather boring 2-stroke outboard boat motor to ethenol. Once he got it going it took off like a rocket, it was so fast and so loud, it was the hit of the summer, everyone wanted a ride in this really fast beast. He called it his ‘alky’.
I think I’m warming up this ethenol thing after all.
Yep they replaced the stock fixed metering jet with an adjustable orfice jet for he testing (I presume an ajustable needel and seat setup like most carburetors used to have for the idle mixture etc.
You are correct the simple solution is to just partially choke the air intake, that is the function of the choke in the first place to enrich the fuel air mixture for starting. If the manufactures actually cared about the consumer they would give you a simple means to adjust the mixture (although I would not be surprised if EPA regulations make that illegal).
That said 10% ethanol only leans out the mixture by 3% (added oxygen content of the fuel), if the engine is running so lean that that is a problem the manufacture had the engine running dangerously lean in the first place. That mixture change is about the same change in fuel air mixture that would happen if you went to a 1000 ft lower elevation. Does not sound like a good base tune up to begin with. I wonder if your fuel filter is clogged or you have a bit of dirt caught in your carb jet and are just blaming the problem on ethanol added fuel when there is really some other cause. A well tuned internal combustion gasoline engine should not care much at all about a 3% change in fuel air mixture, it certainly should not push it over the edge into lean surge idle behavior. The change in mixture for an engine that comes up here to Denver is almost 18% and modern engines have no problem with that at all.
Maybe you just need a carburetor clean up. Small engines have always been plagued with problems due to long storage periods and dust dirt, cobwebs, bugs and what have you finding their way into their poorly sealed fuel systems. I would suspect the obvious first rather than just blaming the fuel. I had problems with lawn mowers chainsaws, and other small engines long long before ethanol added fuel came around, and it was almost always a piece of grass or a leaf fragment or a bug that decided to die in the gas tank over the winter.
Larry
I have a 2005 Elantra. It went from ca 19mpg when I bought it in 2006, down below 15mpg! I finally realized the gas I used had 10% ethanol. I found a station with just plain gas, and the mpg went back up to ca 19. Then it started dropping again. I finally remembered to check the pump and sure enough – ‘… up to 10% ethanol added to this gasoline…..’
Now I have to TRY and find a station in this town that doesn’t pollute it’s gasoline. There probably isn’t one.
If it’s this bad on 10%, I suppose on 15% the car will get the same mileage as a Patton tank.