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Supercub and Mogas

Hotrod, I consider the blender pump my idea but will never get credit. Back in 2003, I contacted Clean Fuels USA based in Texas and talked to the guy in charge of certifying a Gilbarco single hose pump for E85 use. He said my idea of using a blender was good but that it would never be needed. In 2005 when I went to Oshkosh I fueled up with a blender that Utica Energy ethanol had just installed a few miles west of Oshkosh. The manager happened to be there and said technically what they were doing was illegal and weren't broadcasting for fear of getting shutdown. I still pursued it here at home and back then one of the board members of the local Co Op said it wouldn't work because he was sure his wife wasn't smart enough to figure out what button to push. Today that is where the closest blender pump is being installed about 7 years ago when more intelligent people were elected to the board. Ignorance abounds and just a few days ago a friend of mine said his new Ford Escape can use E85 but also the owners manual says a minimum of 87 octane. He wondered how he could use that 85 octane E85. I about fell over!!!!!
 
Yep, here is some of my corn a few days ago. Not no till but close so very, very little fuel used. Isn't all that soil conserving residue on the surface beautiful and not much herbicide since I try not to let any weeds go to seed.
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Missed a couple of posts before. Farmboy the E10 87 octane was mixed with the 2-cycle oil that the Lawnboy needs. Steve P you are right, ethanol is a great way to have fewer emissions because it burns so much cleaner. China is going to increase ethanol use since the air is so polluted. My sister lives in coastal southeast Virginia and there is an ethanol mandate to help clean the air. Boaters hate it but my ex- brother in law used it in the twin 175 Mercury outboards and didn't have problems. He was sold on Startron I think it was. Anyway I rode in it and no problems-----just have to understand and manage.
 
Yup. Startron is good. And needed (almost required) to limit the effects of ethanol and todays quality of fuel on the whole.

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A side note: the Peterson STC for my C-90 requires that I mix 10% avgas with auto gas to provide adequate lead to valve train. MTV

10% avgas, interesting.
From the Petersen Aviation website:

We recommend you use one tank full of 100LL every 75 hours to replace lead on the valve seats.
By doing so you will be supplying adequate lead for these parts. Also, during break-in following an overhaul or replacement of a cylinder, you should use 100LL for 25 hours in order to supply lead during the break-in process. A mixture of 75% unleaded and 25% 100LL yields a lead content equivalent to 80/87 octane avgas (0.5 gram per gallon). Radial and Franklin engines should use this mixture at all times if possible because they are dependent on lead to prevent valve seat recession


and

Radials, Franklins, and Continental engines from the A-65 thru the 0-300 should have lead provided constantly. A mixture of 30% 100LL and 70% unleaded gasoline yields a lead content equivalent to leaded 80/87 octane aviation gasoline. This is enough lead to protect valve seats but not enough to foul the plugs


Personally, I used to run 25% 100LL in my last 2 airplanes, and run 20% avgas in my current C1180.
Mainly for logistics reasons -- I have 5 gas cans, when at home I put in 4 cans of mogas followed by 1 can of avgas.
The 25% ratio was because I only had 4 cans then.
 
I keep my bulk tank at home e free, but XC I burn it .in the Rotax with zero issues. Haven't burned a drop of Av Gas in 12-15 years, averaging 200 hrs a year
The money saved goes in the beer fund, and I can't drink it up fast enough as it's a pretty.major savings, NOT nickels and dimes but about a 50 dollar bill kept in my pocket every fillip. If I had a Lycoming I'd go blended as much as possible, from what I'm reading here.
 
I am a bit careful with unknown tanks. I will not put auto in my J-3 wing tank, and use avgas exclusively in the Decathlon.

in California we had something called MTBE. It would eat "sloshing compound" and maybe sealant. I saw several cases of severe fuel contamination due to (presumably) the MTBE eating the coating.

My wing tank thus becomes the avgas injection system - turn it on when I think the 75% mark approacheth.

MTBE is long gone, but who knows what they put in that stuff? It burns fine when all components are known to be compatible.
 
That’s good info Hotrod.

So my understanding is lead is essentially a lubricant, but helps prevent carbon build up. Is this to simplistic, is there more to the value of lead story?

Pb


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Lead was added by the oil companies as an anti knock additive or octane booster to prevent detonation. They had no concern for your valve seats. Any cylinder overhauled in the last 30 years or so has hardened seats I would assume. Best info I can find is that 2018 will probably be the last year for leaded fuels. Swift fuels will be the provider of lead free Av Gas as it stands right now.
 
The answer goes back to this day in 1921, when General Motors engineer named Thomas Midgley Jr. told his boss Charles Kettering that he’d discovered a new additive which worked to reduce the “knocking” in car engines. That additive: tetraethyl lead, also called TEL or lead tetraethyl, a highly toxic compound that was discovered in 1854. His discovery continues to have impact that reaches far beyond car owners.

Kitman writes that Midgley himself said he tried any substance he could find in the search for an antiknock, “from melted butter and camphor to ethyl acetate and aluminum chloride.” The most compelling option was actually ethanol.

But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be patented and GM couldn’t control its production. And oil companies like Du Pont “hated it,” he wrote, perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-invented-180961368/
 
I knew a colorful old timer who told me that he used to add tetraethyl lead to his av-gas. He still had a bottle on his shelf. Didn't seem to effect his longevity as he lived to a ripe old age.
 
Now that is flat spooky. I was in the refining business for a long time beginning in the lab in 71. Even at that time, the larger refineries were already being weened away, by the feds, by limiting the amount of TEL per gal. Smaller refineries were not as limited and could still use almost 1930s type amounts. At a smaller refinery, I was directly involved in obtaining and setting up for use for TEL addition. The safety protocol (forced and on site inspected by Ethyl Corp, the only US source for TEL left at that time) would scare the crap out of any sane person. The person in charge of adding the TEL (offloading, transferring, pumping, measuring; had to wear special coveralls that reacted by color (blood red) to even a single drop of TEL. If that drop was found, the individual had to immediately start the cleansing protocol. That started with a fully naked shower in KEROSENE with scrub brush followed by a hot water shower of specified (I forget) duration. Any clothing under the coveralls were to be destroyed (incinerated). Folks can play with it all they want as long as I am informed so I can get a couple miles upwind of them before they do so. I am glad it is gone from auto fuel and it will be good when it is gone forever.
 
A little more from the article I posted above. Maybe like smoking, a few are lucky but most aren't.

So in February 1923, a filling station sold the first tank of leaded gasoline. Midgley wasn’t there: he was in bed with severe lead poisoning, writes History.com. The next year, there was serious backlash against leaded gasoline after five workers died from TEL exposure at the Standard Oil Refinery in New Jersey, writes Deborah Blum for Wired, but still, the gasoline went into general sale later that decade. In 1926, she writes, a public health service report concluded there was “no reason to prohibit the sale of leaded gasoline” so long as workers were protected when they made it. Blum continues:

TEL filled the same technical function as ethanol, he wrote: it reduced knock by raising the fuel’s combustability, what would come to be known as “octane.” Unlike ethanol, though, it couldn’t be potentially used as a replacement for gasoline, as it had been in some early cars. The drawback: it was a known poison, described in 1922 by a Du Pont executive as “a colorless liquid of sweetish odor, very poisonous if absorbed through the skin, resulting in lead poisoning almost immediately.” That statement is important, Kitman wrote: later, major players would deny they knew TEL to be so poisonous.
 
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...So my understanding is lead is essentially a lubricant, but helps prevent carbon build up. ...

Lead is added for octane boost (aka anti-knock), but is also a lubricant.
We add it (via 100LL) to mogas to keep the valves happy.
I don't know where you got the "helps prevent carbon build up" part,
plug fouling is reduced with mogas use due to the lack of lead in it..
Lead fouls plugs-- it usually shows up as little balls, aka clinkers, which you have to dig out with a dental pick at annual time.
 
Ethanol and agriculture groups sued the EPA on Tuesday in response to the agency's recent approval of small-refinery waivers from the Renewable Fuel Standard

CVR Energy is owned by energy billionaire Carl Icahn. For a time, Icahn served as an adviser to President Donald Trump and recommended the hiring of Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator. Icahn also sought RFS reforms when counseling the president.

"We want EPA to explain why it is reasonable for HollyFrontier, which apparently could not afford to comply with the RFS, could nonetheless afford to undertake a $1 billion stock share repurchase program during the same time -- and that's before the company received over $300 million in tax cuts last year. Likewise, the petitioners would like to understand how EPA could find hardship at CVR Energy, which reported a $23 million profit in the biofuels credit market in the first quarter of 2018 due to what it called a lower RFS obligation."
 
I run a mix of ethanol free and avgas not because of concern for my valves but because straight car gas runs so dirty in my engine. Tailpipe is sooty and no amount of aggressive leaning cures it, cannot be good overall. I also have about 2 gph less fuel flow at wide open throttle climb out as compared with either 100 or a 50/50 mixture which is my usual blend. Dunno the reason for that or whether it is good or bad.



Lead is added for octane boost (aka anti-knock), but is also a lubricant.
We add it (via 100LL) to mogas to keep the valves happy.
I don't know where you got the "helps prevent carbon build up" part,
plug fouling is reduced with mogas use due to the lack of lead in it..
Lead fouls plugs-- it usually shows up as little balls, aka clinkers, which you have to dig out with a dental pick at annual time.
 
And bottled up nicely in a red container so I don't have to mix my own concoction! hahahahaha...
Yea, and those red bottles suck. Leave one sitting around too long and they just fall apart . I don't use it much cause I'm just too lazy but one of my pilots that's flies the 1340 swears by it.

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Yea, and those red bottles suck. Leave one sitting around too long and they just fall apart . I don't use it much cause I'm just too lazy but one of my pilots that's flies the 1340 swears by it.

Sent from my E6810 using Tapatalk

Yup, i pour mine into one of their old red cans

Glenn
 
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For those with an interest. If you read it beginning to tend (133 pages) you must have worked in the industry or are a total chem. geek. I think it is one of the best assemblages of refining information in one spot that I have ever seen. Put together by the Colorado School of Mines.

For those with the least amount of interest and only want to know about aviation gasolines, flip to page 34. FYI, neither this nor my 1.5 years in a refinery lab will help with blends. Mixing chicken soup and tomato soup isn't and never was on the agenda in a test lab.


https://inside.mines.edu/~jjechura/Refining/02_Feedstocks_&_Products.pdf
 
180Marty, Maybe a little off topic here, but I am curious if Iowa's fuel has a different blend than surrounding states. Maybe a strange question, having traveled through Iowa many times, both my gas and diesel powered vehicles get less mpg when I buy my fuel there. I am very strict on keeping records on gallons used and my F-350 get 2-3 mpg less and the car got even less mpg. Not a large test, maybe 6-8 times and I always noticed less mileage.

Back to using mogas in airplanes. I have used it off and on for 30 years and the only problem I ever had was a leaky primer. Can't officially blame it on using mogas though. Maybe it was just old.
 
All I know is 84 and 91 octane are what come up the pipeline from refineries down south. Not sure if those are different from other states or not. My cousin has a late model full size diesel Dodge pickup with all the emission stuff like it left the factory and he gets 28 mpg with Iowa diesel---I didn't think that was too bad. Were you bucking a headwind?
 
When we fish spotted in 80/90s with Cubs and 0 320s the boats brought us 55 gal drums of "car gas" ( before ethanol) and we chamois every drop and it ran fine however lots of engines after 4/5 drums would have
A valve of two starting to drag in a guide. When started
You would start to get the John Deere tractor sound as
The valve timing and ignition timing started to part company. One quart of MMO added to a drum of fuel,
would not only straighten that right out, but you would
Not have it again. I am with Glen on this one. It flat works.
Possibly kerosine will as well??? I have no way of knowing. The 50/50 blend of 100/ non ethanol seams to
Be widely accepted . I think there is good chance 30% av
gas is ample for valve lubrication but thats just our 2cw.
 
Ethanol and agriculture groups sued the EPA on Tuesday in response to the agency's recent approval of small-refinery waivers from the Renewable Fuel Standard. "We want EPA to explain why it is reasonable for HollyFrontier, which apparently could not afford to comply with the RFS, could nonetheless afford to undertake a $1 billion stock share repurchase program during the same time -- and that's before the company received over $300 million in tax cuts last year. Likewise, the petitioners would like to understand how EPA could find hardship at CVR Energy, which reported a $23 million profit in the biofuels credit market in the first quarter of 2018 due to what it called a lower RFS obligation."

Reading through this old but recently posted on again thread:
Sounds to me like the ethanol and agriculture groups are whining because some refiners are no longer going to be forced to buy their product. :cry:
Like I've said before, get rid of the mandates and let the ethanol sell (or not) on it's own merits.
 
I run a mix of ethanol free and avgas not because of concern for my valves but because straight car gas runs so dirty in my engine. Tailpipe is sooty and no amount of aggressive leaning cures it, cannot be good overall. I also have about 2 gph less fuel flow at wide open throttle climb out as compared with either 100 or a 50/50 mixture which is my usual blend. Dunno the reason for that or whether it is good or bad.

Personally I don't care too much about whether my tailpipes are sooty,
as long as my plugs burn clean (which they do).
And
I'd say lower fuel burn is a good thing....if your rpm and climb rate are the same.
(which is unfortunately probably not the case)
I have never noticed any power / performance loss when burning mogas--
even when I burned 100% mogas .
My usual blend is 75-80% mogas with 20-25% 100LL.
 
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