Ethanol blended gas is BAD, BAD, BAD!

[choogenboom]

Agree varnish is not corrosive. I let a sample of gas from my tank evaporate and what was left was a golden sticky residue - likely varnish. So my best guess is that if that fuel is run through the engine and then the engine is left to sit (36 hours was the record minimum) that the fuel pump impeller and impeller housing would get coated with varnish after which it would exceed the fuse rating (5 Amps) in current when trying to start up.

In terms of the quantity of varnish, not knowing what the history was of the fuel run in the boat, and in general not being aware of the dark side of ethanol, I was adding E10 fuel to my tank in small quantities, hence a potentially high ratio of varnish to fuel. Its possible that if I had filled the tank completely that the varnish would have been sufficiently diluted to be rendered harmless.

 

[Anonymous]

E-10 Fuel and Varnish

I am living this hell right now. I purchased a Spirit 175 with a Mercury 100. It had sat for about 2 year with 1/4 tank of fuel. The previous owner said he treated it but 2 years is a LONG time. I drained the fuel (through the existing filter and feeder line) and later learned that the fuel feed line probably doesn't take all the fuel out.

I filled it with 48 gallons of E-10 and now I can run it about 1 hour steady before the fuel filter clogs. I change the filter (on the water) and it runs great again. The first time it took about 20 minutes to clog, the last time was about 1 hr 20 minutes. I gather that time will make it better but it is really a pain. Any suggestions?

 

[BobP]

Are you using the large external fuel filter / water seperators like the racors?

If so, that's an incredible anount of junk, what's the material look like? Is it particulate matter or gel like stuff? This is an important question.

You can continue with new filters, or :

There are mobile services for hire that go to the boat and process the fuel, I'm sure it's not cheap.

You may be better off $$ wise to buy a bunch of 6 gal poly gas cans and fill them directly by bypassing filter, until you drain it all out, jack up front of boat to get more out. Then you can worry what to do about the bad in the ploy portables latter.

If this doesn't fit your needs, buy one or two 24 gal true red poly gas tanks and use those for your tanks and leave the junk fuel in there until deciding what to do with it.

Then refill and get back to boating. If using existing tank, I'd dump a shock treatment of EZORB in there before hand, just in case. Who knows, the stuff may actually help.

 

[Anonymous]

I am using the large external water/fuel seperator filters. They look like a small vehicle oil filter. I haven't opened one up yet. I believe they filter from the outside in so looking into the center of the filter the gas is clean. I figured the gunk was on the outside. I'll try to split one open if I can.

I've already drained all the fuel one time but I am sure there was a couple of gallons left. I have about 3/4 of a tank left right now.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Anonymous]

I went out and cut open the old (clogged) filter. The paper material inside was brown in color and "hard". All the gas had evaporated so I'm sure this is hardened varnish. I filled the filter with water and the paper filter material remained hardened. I would imagine that nothing (at least not water) would pass through this filter.

I think I'm going to drain my tank (again). The access point for the tank is in a very bad place so I'm not sure if I'll pull that out. I'll try draining and refilling and carrying a lot of spare filters.

 

[choogenboom]

Better that your filters clog vs the problems I have been having where the varnish is so dissolved its passing through my filters resulting in seized fuel pumps.

1) get an automotive after market fuel pump - I bought one online for $60.
2) plumb the pumps inlet in after your spin on filter. Most filter blocks have two inlet and two outlet ports so use a free outlet port.
3) put the hose from the pump's outlet back into your fuel tank
4) get some cheap 20 micron spin on fuel filters
5) start running the pump which will recirculate the fuel through the filter
6) when fuel flow stops, replace the filter and repeat until filters no longer clog
7) make one final pass with a more expensive 10 micron fuel filter

The Merc 100 probably uses 10 GPH and basic automotive fuel pump can run at about 70 GPH, so if it took 80 minutes to clog while running your engine it should clog in about 15 minutes when running the fuel pump.

 

[Anonymous]

Great idea. I was just going to drain the remainder of the fuel but this will save me about 30 gallons of fuel. It is supposed to rain all weekend so I'll just process it all weekend.

Thanks, I'll let you know how it works out. I already bought an after market fuel pump to drain it the first time. I am holding the fuel in a 55 gallon drum until my local landfill has a hazardous waste day.

 

[choogenboom]

Disposal of old fuel was one of my problems as well. If I decided to drain the old fuel what do I do with 150 gallons of old gas? For now it looks like I will get away with using it up as decribed in earlier posts.

Good luck!

Chris

 

[Anonymous]

After several hours of filtering as noted above (and 3 filter changes) I was ready for a test run. I ran for about 1 hour in relatively flat water in the Potomac River. I was coming back to the launch and hit someone's wake and the boat quit about 2 mnutes later. I changed the filter and the boat ran good again. I decided to recreate the situation and sure enough the same thing happened. When I replaced the inline filter it ran fine again. The only thing I can figure is that the fuel was sloshing around in the tank and washing varnish off the top (or high sides) of the tank. I'm at about half a tank now. I guess I have to continue to process this varnish out of tank (what a pain!!).

 

[choogenboom]

Local Yamaha tech told me someone sells a widget that is made specifically for tank cleaning. You put a hose into the fuel sender opening and it sprays gas at high pressure randomly around the interior of the tank - like if you let a high pressure fire hose go it dances around on its own. A second hose goes to the bottom of the tank and pumps the crap out and its then recriculated through a large filter.

On one of my tanks that was empty I dropped a hose in with a 6" pipe nipple on the end to weigh it down and used it like a vacuum cleaner to suck the tank clean and dry. I did find a nice sized pile of something (likely varnish) in the corner of the tank which I was able to suck out.

Bottom line is eventually you'll get it cleaned out. I just bought 4 replacement filters and put them on my boat - just in case!

Chris

 

[Anonymous]

Update on Varnish Problem

I called Grady and they were very helpful. I ended up pulling the sending unit from the tank and flushing the interior with Acetone. I then took a hand siphon to pull the remaining gas/acetone from the tank. I let it air dry for a day and reassembled it. Here is a lesson learned, the float in the sending unit must have also varnished and when I let it dry it stuck in in the "E" position. I ended up having to pull the unit back out of the tank after refueling and freeing up the float with a thin wire. Everything is back in place, all the filters are changed and I added a can of Sea Foam just to make sure. I am heading out on the maiden fishing voyage on the 14th of November. I hope I've got it clean enough to catch some fish.

 

[markb8608]

What about aluminum tanks

Hi everyone
We have been talking about the water problem in the filters and engine. But what is happening between the aluminum tanks and the ethanol. Someone here mentioned white powder. I have read about this issue (white powder = aluminum oxide) on another website.
My friend owns a newer BWhaler. But he has a plastic tank ,which is compatible with alcohol. Should we be thinking about replacing the aluminum tanks/
mark

 

[gradyfish22]

Fuel polisher's will clean the fuel in the tank and take put impurities, the only real way to clean bad gas unless you remove it all. Fuel Polishing is expensive, but in the end you can run the fuel and do not lose much, if you remove it it is almost as expensive, but factor in the wasted gas you could have burned after polishing, it is often mroe moeny. Yuo need to find someone who can do this.

As for the original post.. Yamaha should NOT be responsible, this was not normal use using street gasoline. The boat also should not have been stored for a long time with 1/2 fuel...water will form for sure, even more so in fuel with ethanol, that was the biggest mistake. If the fuel, even with 10% ethanol was stored 7/8 full and with a fuel treatment to keep it from breaking down this would not have heppened, or would have been a lot less extensive. By allowing air in the tank you allowed the ethanol to break down quickly, with 10% ethanol you have maybe 2 months with untreated fuel before you start to get a gel to form and water to seperate, in hotter climates maybe 1.5 months. If you have a full tank or 7/8 tank with little room for air, this slows the process down a lot. Any time fuel is stored for long periods of time it needs to be treated. We store our boat with StarTron Enzyme treatment for the winter's with somewhere between 7/8 and Full tank and have had 0 issues and we have high ethanol in our fuel.

 

[amr72]

?

I did the opposite. My tanks were 7/8 empty--about 5 gallons in the aux tank and about 15 gallons in the main. The fuel has ethanol. I treated both tanks with stabilizer and ran the treated fuel through the engines (optimaxes). The boat has been sitting for 4 months now, with another month to go. I never had a problem with my previous rig (yamaha hpdi and a plastic tank), but this is my first off season with this setup. Any advice?

 

[choogenboom]

update

Since my last post on this topic I have had to get the horshoe filters replaced and have the VST tanks opened up to clean the filters on the inlet to the high pressure pumps. $700 for that work. I just finished rebuilding the fuel injectors since their filters were clogged. See

http://www.yamahaoutboardparts.com/foru ... #post43684

for a detailed description of what I went through with that.

If no one has done it yet, I think there is excellent grounds here for a class action lawsuit to recover money for the damage caused by ethanol. I am easily into the thousands of dollars at this point and I have to believe there are 10's of thousands of boat owners that have similar damages.