Ethanol – bad for engines

With the coming of fall, I pulled out my generator the other day and got it ready for the windstorms which typically come in October and  November around here.

I couldn’t get it started so I took it into my local dealer for repairs.   After paying $275 to get it fixed, he gave me a word of advice.   “Don’t use gasoline with ethanol in it.”   He explained that ethanol will gum up the works if it sits too long.

He gave me the name of a fuel station that carries gas without ethanol.

That got me thinking about ethanol in general.   About how we take corn – – a food product – – and make it into fuel to burn in our cars.   It’s a requirement of the federal government.

But, not only does taking corn out of production raise the price of beef,  it also has no reason to be made into gasoline in the first place.

It’s not a clean-burning replacement for petroleum products.   Recent findings show that ethanol contributes 8 percent more bad stuff into the air than petroleum based gasoline.

Billions of dollars are spent on ethanol and there is no reason to take corn out of the food chain to make it.

Blame the farm states and their congressional representatives for this boondoggle of a taxpayer rip-off.

Oh, and don’t use gas with ethanol in your small engines, particularly if you let them sit for months at a time.