kyrsyan
Has No Life - Lives on TB
After continually seeing stuff online but not being able to find supporting documentation I decided to try an experiment with my van. Yup I went big. The van is almost 15 years old and I need it to keep running for a long time yet.
I waited until the tank was almost empty, which is nerve wracking for me. Then I filled with non ethanol gas.
There were some immediate changes. My check engine light went out. The engine itself had a lot more power. And the gas mileage improved. That mileage improvement was almost enough to cover the difference in price between ethanol and non ethanol gas!
Over the course of the next while a few more improvements occurred. A knocking which had been driving me wild went away. There was an exhaust sound that no mechanic could find that went away. And the engine became quiet. And more powerful. (Did I mention power?)
When I started there was an odor to my exhaust that had us worried that I was burning oil. That went away. Any and all "smoking" from the exhaust disappeared.
Then I made the mistake of almost running out of gas while out the other day. Long story but not normal for me. So I stopped and put in 2 gallons of ethanol gas to get us home.
All of the stuff came back almost immediately. My nerves were shot by the time we got home. I get a bad reaction to knocking noises in my engine due to some really bad things that happened because of knocking noises in an engine just over a year ago. (That engine went bye bye in a really bad way.) Really, really, really bad stress reaction. And to suddenly have all the random noises return, and so quickly, just triggered bad things.
So today we go out again and I'm stressing as soon as I turn the van on and hear everything. So first stop is the gas station to refill the tank completely with non ethanol fuel. I was figuring that it was going to take most of the tank running through before the noise and stuff went away again. I am incredibly grateful that all it took was about 10 minutes of running on the good stuff.
I am definitely going to work hard on making sure I don't ever have to do that again!
Anyways, if you are running an older vehicle you might find it worth your while to run the experiment yourself. I really am amazed at the changes in my vehicle since I've done it.
I waited until the tank was almost empty, which is nerve wracking for me. Then I filled with non ethanol gas.
There were some immediate changes. My check engine light went out. The engine itself had a lot more power. And the gas mileage improved. That mileage improvement was almost enough to cover the difference in price between ethanol and non ethanol gas!
Over the course of the next while a few more improvements occurred. A knocking which had been driving me wild went away. There was an exhaust sound that no mechanic could find that went away. And the engine became quiet. And more powerful. (Did I mention power?)
When I started there was an odor to my exhaust that had us worried that I was burning oil. That went away. Any and all "smoking" from the exhaust disappeared.
Then I made the mistake of almost running out of gas while out the other day. Long story but not normal for me. So I stopped and put in 2 gallons of ethanol gas to get us home.
All of the stuff came back almost immediately. My nerves were shot by the time we got home. I get a bad reaction to knocking noises in my engine due to some really bad things that happened because of knocking noises in an engine just over a year ago. (That engine went bye bye in a really bad way.) Really, really, really bad stress reaction. And to suddenly have all the random noises return, and so quickly, just triggered bad things.
So today we go out again and I'm stressing as soon as I turn the van on and hear everything. So first stop is the gas station to refill the tank completely with non ethanol fuel. I was figuring that it was going to take most of the tank running through before the noise and stuff went away again. I am incredibly grateful that all it took was about 10 minutes of running on the good stuff.
I am definitely going to work hard on making sure I don't ever have to do that again!
Anyways, if you are running an older vehicle you might find it worth your while to run the experiment yourself. I really am amazed at the changes in my vehicle since I've done it.