>Joe wrote:
> One of the other comments was about degradation of the rubber in the
> system and that brought on the thought about the fuel tanks in my wings. When
> I put the Sunoco in the tanks I put 5 gallons in each wing tank which were
> empty and then transferred fuel to the header tank, So some auto fuel laid in
> the wing tanks for more than a week. I will check the wing tanks tonight to
> see if there is any softening of the resins, The color makes me think it is
> possible
Joe:
>My question is this: Was the auto fuel you put into your fiberglass tanks
>ethanol free or was it the new, terrible, ten percent ethanol stuff? If it was
>the latter, I expect it attacked your tank material, as you worry. I live near
>a big lake and the local boat yards are doing a lot of repair work on boat
>fuel systems that have been eaten by the ten percent ethanol fuel. Some boats
>have been so damaged that they have been junked rather than do the extensive
>repairs needed. Good luck, keep us posted.
Bob Pustell
601XL taildragger/Corvair, just getting going (still)
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Bob and all;
I drained all the tanks last night, (wing tanks were empty for awhile) and
did a scrap test on the interior surfaces. I could not and did not find any
softening of the tanks interior. 2 years ago i did run auto fuel for about a
month and had no problems at that time, i just did not like the way the engine
ran. I still think that the material build up on the carb slide was very
probably the start of the fuel attacking the tank. Maybe settling to the bottom
outlet of the fuel line coming out of the header tank and becoming just a slug
of contaminated fuel that caused the deposit during engine warm up. Remember I
said it was on the entire back side of the slide indicating the deposit
occurred during low speed or idle. Also I have fuel tanks made out of 2
different materials. The wing tanks are vinylester and the header tank is
EZ poxy. The deposit color is closer to the EZpoxy color.
I rinsed all the tanks out with fresh 100ll and refilled. The only thing
that I am going to do today before I go be a test pilot again is clean out the
gascolator. I guess I will pull a couple plugs just out of curiosity.
Thanks for all the comments,
Joe Horton
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