Oil

Charlie
John Talmage a farmer out East in Baiting Hollow made himself a rig as you describe to make alcohol free mogas for his Kinner powered Bird biplane.

It would seem to be a no brainer to allow aircraft that can use car gas to be able to get alcohol free gas. The amount of pollutants caused by no alcohol in airplanes would be un measurable against what comes out of cars running alcohol gas. And the reduction in lead should make the environmental people happy. Sooner or later there’s going to be no more leaded av gas. While there needs to be an alternative for higher compression motors, car gas without alcohol is all we need.

Rich.

As he does separating gas is not hard to do. He clearly understands what is needed to generate the volume he needs.
A few years back there were plenty of places down your way to get "Pure Gas". Obviously that got taken away. If anyone of those who took that fuel away knew what was used they would be on a rampage.
There is no reason any recip can not run on the non alcohol fuels we have available. I have no issue with buying a choice of 100, 114 or 116 Oct non leaded fuels. Heck we would love it if there was a greater market for our race fuels so the price could come down closer to what av gas is. Some of our fuels are well over double the cost of avgas.
Ultimately the only change an aircraft would benefit from changing to unleaded fuel is a change in pistons to run thin profile rings. This would allow for a far better ring seal and stop contaminating the oil.

Mogas just needs a little stabilizer and it lasts. I proved it in a plane with a rear tank I used mostly for CG. Only switched into it to see how it burned, only noticed higher EGTs after nearly 3 years. Still burned fine in the tractor. Add an electric pump if you have a long taxi in Texas. Last weekend my little outboard did fine on last years two stroke mix with stabilizer. The literature says two weeks for oily gas. Bull. But contaminate it with alcohol, all bets are off.

Rich I burned straight ethanol gas for about a year ( 1000 gals) if you don't let it sit and be a sponge for moisture it's ok. Only problem I ever had was the Ford model A fuel gauge in my rear tank would leak sometimes. Then I discovered StarTron and I never had any problems after that, even letting it sit. Burned 2 or 3000 gals with StarTron. Great stuff. I still carry some with me on floats.



Glenn

Trivia: aviation oil is dated. An FAA rep came into the shop I was working in and told us that we had to throw out the oil neatly arranged on a shelf because it wasn’t dated. He pointed out that the case was where the date was and the only way to tell if the oil was OK! Yes true story.

Shell used to stamp a code on the bottom of each plastic bottle. Not sure if it was for production or expiration date. Probably the first one.

Gary

Those are production dates, industrial and automotive lubricants are dated as well. There is no government required expiration but the date code allows the manufacture to be released from liability after a specified time period.

What's the shelf life?

Gary

A recent AeroShell bottle says "Retest date 4 years after date of manufacture".

Exxon-Mobil states 10 yrs on plastic bottles.
Online searching I have done shows there is no loss of functionality to old oil.
One statement referring to Mobil 1 is the oil will outlast the container in storage.
I do have a jug of chainsaw oil that the container crumbled when I went to pick it up early this year. I think some sun got to it in the shed.

algonquin said:

Trivia: aviation oil is dated. An FAA rep came into the shop I was working in and told us that we had to throw out the oil neatly arranged on a shelf because it wasn’t dated. He pointed out that the case was where the date was and the only way to tell if the oil was OK! Yes true story.

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Yep, happened here too. I now have enough oil at home to last me the rest of my life for all my small air cooled engines.

Bearhawk Builder said:

Yep, happened here too. I now have enough oil at home to last me the rest of my life for all my small air cooled engines.

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I know where you live.


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