George Patterson wrote:
Sport Pilot wrote:
On model airplanes using methanol based fuel, they use silicone fuel
tubing. With gas engines you use tygon or neoprene tubing. The
alcohol will make those tubings harden and crack withen a few weeks.
But not the swelling and turning to liquid. That has to be from a more
active solvent such as toulene or acetone.

Not so. I never used any additives in my cars, and I had problems with softening
and swelling of the hoses in the fuel system of my van. Besides, the gas in
Georgia and Tennessee (where I lived at the time) was cut with ethanol, not
methanol.

This was a very definite, well-documented problem at the time, and no amount of
theory based argument is going to change that fact.

George Patterson
Why do men's hearts beat faster, knees get weak, throats become dry,
and they think irrationally when a woman wears leather clothing?
Because she smells like a new truck.

I understand that ethanol has the same effect on the hoses. In those
days a lot of the hoses were part natural rubber, or some cheaper
grade. Have you noticed that the hoses today seem to last longer then
they did before with the leaded fuels? When they took the lead out
they added toulene to the fuel, this would attack those cheaper hoses,
today the hoses are made to take the toulene and ethanol.