What is this ?

Photo below shows what I have found in many carburetors, from small leaf blowers to gas tractors.
I have noticed this more in chainsaws because I work on so many. This particular photo is a carburetor off a Husqvarna saw.
And --No its not sawdust.
I do know it is caused by ethanol gasoline, but what is it?

If you know it's caused by ethanol, you'd also have to know what it is.

Not necessarily. He could be asking the owners what type of gas they are using, and may only be finding that crud in E-10 users. My local Stihl dealer and repair guy tells everybody who buys from them to use non-ethanol gas, and their oil for 2 cycle stuff. When I bought a chain saw recently, they doubled the warranty if I bought their 2 cycle oil.

Looks like the air filter foam being sucked into the carb.

As I recall, it was some oil embargo in the early seventies which thrust us into a wood cutting craze. I ended up in the corner of a cold cement block building working on chainsaws, (then string trimmers, but that's another story)
I found all manner of crud in various places. I can't tell for sure what's in this picture, but it looks much like the "fuzz", or "lint" I may have found back then. I used to assume it was the fuel filter in the tank coming apart. I don't think there was any ethanol then.

"I have found in many carburetors, from small leaf blowers to [b:5a41b0f730]gas tractors[/b:5a41b0f730]."
All had been using ethanol gas.
I have never found this in any of my carburetors and some are 20+ years old.
I never use ethanol gas and suggest to all my clients to do the same.
It is a very fine "dust" that you can't even feel rubbing between fingers.
One of my friends suggested it was a byproduct of corn?
Another suggested it was a reaction of alcohol, gas and moisture?

That's a good funny.

PT Barnum would be proud.

Paul

I think it's a buildup in the fuel system that was loosened up by the ethanol, which is a solvent. We had similar problems before the use
of ethanol, what did we blame it on then?

It is a one world order plot. Ethinol, micro bug poooop, corrosion
from water reacting with ethinol, and some other stuff. Here is 5he
filter from one of my Hondas. Crud on the prefilter and jelly gunk on
the zink in the carb. Most all caused by water and ethinol mixing and
makeing corruption.

(quoted from post at 07:22:50 06/28/18) As I recall, it was some oil embargo in the early seventies which thrust us into a wood cutting craze. I ended up in the corner of a cold cement block building working on chainsaws, (then string trimmers, but that's another story)
I found all manner of crud in various places. I can't tell for sure what's in this picture, but it looks much like the "fuzz", or "lint" I may have found back then. I used to assume it was the fuel filter in the tank coming apart. I don't think there was any ethanol then.

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Yes! I found crud much worse than that in lawnmower carburetors BEFORE we ever knew what ethanol was.

What part are you not buying? Maybe we could have a discussion. . .

Exactly, find this garbage in carbs regardless of type of fuel. Never seems to be a problem in devices that are used frequently only the ones that sit.

Residue left after gasoline evaporates. I have it around the filler caps on several tractors. I never had a problem using E-10 in any of my stuff and I leave 2-cycle gas in the cans year to year sometimes. But we can always find something to blame, can't we?

Some people refuse to be believe corn 🌽 squeezins are a problem just like they refuse to believe calcium chloride will rot your rims

I don't know just what to say. I never had any love loss for Gas engines anyway. Never had one that would run long in the small lawn mower size engines. If they make 5-15 years they are usually junk by then.
As for the Chloride deal. yup it will rot steel rims out,if you leave them without fixing in a prompt manner. If the tire is fixed promptly the damage is minimal. We have some rims on our H that are the originals. As for the MD we have had it since the early 70's and have still got the same ones on it. In fact we have not bought any replacement rims due to chloride.

Sthil claims it is corn starch from ethanol gas. the gas vaporizes and leaves the residue behind.

Well.

You can put all your stuff on a shelf and look at it and admire it and not do anything. Itwill hold up pretty well, but a few decades will even break down some parts of it by doing nothing.

Or you can use your tools and maintain them as you use them. Using an item naturally ages and wears on it.

Ethanol and crop oils has done wonders to help the environment and lower the cost of transportation fuel in this country. its really the only positive we have in the fuels market. Unless you like mtbe and it's effects?

Calcium chloride is heavier than water and is not toxic to critters and the environment/ groundwater and so on. It is the best option for weighting tractors that need weight.

Many many small engine shops have made a pretty penny with scare stories about ethanol, they don't have to work hard just replace components and blame ethanol, sell their double priced oils and sell their little tin cans of $10 a gallon gasoline and roll in the money they make. Certainly they only have your best interested at heart?

You can choose to see these things, or not. Up to you.

Paul

not sure what it is, but I have seen the white powder before. It was in a 1977 swather motor. I used ethanol because that's all we got. only took 1 fill and that carb was full of it. I rinsed and changed filters and cleaned for 2 years. And then it stopped. I don't know why but I assume it had something to do with the new gas cleaning years of film off the inside of the tank. There was actually a cup full of powder in the tank the first time I took the tank off to clean it out. I was suspicious someone might have put limestone powder in it, but could not understand why they would. I have NO problems with garden tractor ,lawn mower chainsaw, etc. My lawn mower is under snow every year and it still starts up in spring and away we go. No additives in the gas. Just park and wait for spring. It is a 2012 cub cadet. still same battery even. So I don't by the ethanol myth.

Paul -Yes, Stihl really DOES DOUBLE THEIR WARRANTEE IF YOU BY A 6-PACK OF THEIR SYNTHETIC 2-STROKE OIL WITH A NEW GAS POWERED TOOL. Been that way for 4-5 years.

I believe your argument is that if you use your tools regularly, E10 will not cause any problems. Aside from the breakdown of fuel hoses in many chainsaws, you are probably right. But by their very nature, most small engine powered lawn and garden tools are used only part of the year, and "sit on the shelf" for months. Who mows lawns or weed-whacks in the winter, when nothing is growing?

The original poster verified my suggestion that he tied the "crud" to the use of ethanol fuel, so I don't know on what basis you are disputing it.

Finally, even though E10 fuel may be better for the environment, the vast majority of it is used in constant-use automobiles, and the environment gets those benefits. But just because it works fine in cars doesn't mean we must use it in our intermittent use small engines as well, especially when many just dump out the unused fuel at the end of the season and waste it. And I don't understand how it lowers cost- we have one E85 station locally, and the cost of E85 is higher than gasoline, so it stands to reason that adding ethanol would increase the cost, even ignoring the lower fuel mileage you get.

yep That is the sh-y-t!that is killing the gas engine tractor market! you can
beat it if you run your gas engine daily.. OR by shuttin off the gas and running
the engine til it stalls when you put them to bed for a month.OR, also add a gt
of hydraulic oil to 5 gallon of gas .OR use red heet.OR use lucas fuel
stabilizer .

"Ethanol and crop oils has done wonders to help the environment and lower the cost of transportation fuel in this country. its really the only positive we have in the fuels market."

Good Lawd!

What planet do you live on!?

Dean

My chain saws set for months at a time with e15 in them have never had that problem. Look inside any gas tank
that has set a long time and what do you find?? There's a b Allis Chalmers out here that has set for at least
20 years, never had ethonal in it. Got's the same stuff in the carb.

The brown chunk in the carb looks like dirt
from poor fuel storage practices. Ethanol
is not the devil, poor maintenance
practices are. My stuff sets up for long
periods, always starts right up when
needed, but I take care of my stuff. I
also buy clean fuel and keep it clean, as
the old tractor fuel caps say. If ethanol
goes bad, why is my whisky aged for 7
years?

Jeffcat ...... man, those pics are clear and sharp images. The FBI could track you down from your fingerprints in the one. Hope you don't have any outstanding warrants for growing weed back in the 60's or anything like that.

In the last 3 hours, I have started my Farmall M with E85 from last June, my chainsaw that hasn't been started in 3 or 4 years and had just a touch of fuel left in it with pumpgas I mixed I think it was early August last year, which I also put in my weedeater earlier this year, and haven't had one single problem with either of those. I have seen that brownish crud before though. It would always be in my 4 cycle weedeater no matter what I did. I did though learn that I really, really need to get steps on my M. It was all I could do to climb up on it.

we work on all brands of small engines and the ethanol is ruining them it will eat the rubber up in a short while ---why people still deny this is beyond me ---we even have to run double filters on pumps we sell gas out of to catch the extra trash

Jiles, I was finding that exact fine brown powder in Tillotson carburetors on snowmobiles in the 1960s. I think that was before ethanol.

(quoted from post at 10:21:30 06/28/18) Sthil claims it is corn starch from ethanol gas. the gas vaporizes and leaves the residue behind.

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Donald, if there is corn starch in ethanol gasoline there must be ground coal in oil.

How were the fuel lines? If that saw was fitted with the yellow lines, (tygon) I bet they were about rotten and that is debris that flaked
off the inside of the fuel lines. At least that is what I blame it on when I open a carburetor up at work.

At any rate, probably the screen did not catch it all and its causing problems somewhere else in the carburetor.

If the saw was running a walbro filter, it could also be debris from the wool like material the filter is made of. The walbro filter has a
screen it it that is supposed to catch any stray fibers, but may not.

So it’s not sawdust? I have seen that stuff too in a chain saw carb. But I haven’t seen it in any other cab. A year ago last winter I cleaned up a gummed up fuel system in a generator that never saw ethanol in it’s life. The owner used a mix of 50-50 av gas and no lead non ethanol in the tank thinking this fuel concoction would not gum things up. Well it still gummed up. I cleaned it up by soaking it in E85.

AFAIK you cannot buy any non-ethyenol gasoline within 75 miles of Abilene, Texas. Virtually all our gasoline comes by pipeline from a ALON refinery in Big Spring, Texas. Additives added at the truck terminal.

I have seen first hand evidence of the damage ethanol bearing fuels can cause. I firmly believe you need to use different tactics with ethanol fuels than better grade gas. That being said, I also believe the problems stem from the specific blends of ethanol in a given area. Some places don't seem to have the issues other places definitely do. All I can think is it's the specific fuels available.

As far as the rest, I've seen a lot of "sawdust" in carbs on saws, trimmers, tractors. I think it's really, really fine dust, not necessarily wood dust, but other kinds of dust. And a filter breaking down is also a good suggestion. It's different than the varnish and metallic corrosion we see.

Who ever it was that said calcium chloride isn't toxic to animals/plants- horse puckey. You blow out a filled tire in a field and it'll be bare ground 3 years later unless it's in a real wet spot.

(quoted from post at 15:03:07 06/28/18) Not necessarily. He could be asking the owners what type of gas they are using, and may only be finding that crud in E-10 users. My local Stihl dealer and repair guy tells everybody who buys from them to use non-ethanol gas, and their oil for 2 cycle stuff.

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I've never found non-alcohol gas in my area, except for racing fuel for $6.99 a gallon.

Minnesota has been on E10 for a lot of years now, decades(?),and are up to B15 diesel in summertime as of this year.

Lot of us use it in our mowers and snowblowers and it works fine.

The issue is the crud that is in gasoline. Gasoline is a very dirty fuel, made up of many components, all of which have different boiling points, and degrees of varnish and such creation.

Ethanol is a good solvent, and it cleans out your fuel system. All that crud and varnish and junk gets cleaned out of your gas cans, tanks, and fuel systems.

It's easy to 'blame' ethanol for it. Actually once your old crud system gets cleaned up, ethanol will help keep your system clear of that gas crud, as it keeps the stuff in suspension and deposits away. But of course, you get that one bad slug of crud if you've never used ethanol on older stuff.

Certainly, ethanol added gasoline is a bit different. It's best to handle it a bit different. Certainly gasoline, water, and ethanol react differently than just gasoline and water. But, either way, a person has a problem. It is funny that to combat small amounts of water in gasoline, people add types of ethanol.... and now if the gasoline comes with ethanol already in it, oh my, the world is ending, the horror! Whatever, people are funny.

So, why do we buy mowers and snow blowers with bad fuel hose in them? Certainly an easy fix to spend an extra $2 on a machine that has the right fuel hose on it from the beginning? No one thinks of this?

It is a shame the E85 costs more in your location. It shouldn't be that way, here in the upper Midwest E85 is typically 60 cents cheaper than E10, as it should be. It requires a different tank and nozzle at most filling stations, and with the antiquated opinions of many it is a low volume seller, and so some stations charge more for it and that drives its use even lower. That is an unfortunate vicious circle, hopefully we can get away from that old thinking sooner than later.

The best option is a variable rate dispenser nozzle, when the buyer can pick the percent of E in the mix. Most current modern vehicles on the road today run best on about E25, and that is the blend we should be getting to. E85 is fine and all, but it just doesn't seem practical for many in this country. E25 is the sweet spot for modern computerized engines to make use of the btus from the gasoline and the octane and smoother more efficient burn of the ethanol, giving people the best bang for the cost per gallon.

Folk will continue to believe what they want, but if you search out there a little bit, there is a lot of anti-ethanol put out by the oil industry that is, um, a big stretch to be generous....

on the other side, ethanol will never replace our fuel needs, we won't ever be running 85% E across the board. It does a nice job of complementing and working with gasoline, allowing more gallons per barrel of crude poorer low octane gasoline to be blended with cleaner high octane ethanol and give us a lower cost motor fuel. Perhaps that 25% use rate will be an ideal end goal until we find something different to use entirely. That will be some time away, despite the optimism of electric proponents.

Moderate use of ethanol in our motor fuel supply is doing a lot to keep fuel costs low, and helping keep this planet a little greener. Been proven many times over, despite what a few anti- groups keep spouting out.

Paul

Paul, when I bought my chainsaw in 1982 I wasn't thinking about ethanol. My bad. :roll: