RST Engineering wrote:
Ethanol should not be approved for use in general aviation aircraft. It
seems like a great idea, but the ethanol is highly caustic

The hell you say. Your source? And to WHAT is it caustic? To fuming
red
nitric acid, WATER is caustic.


and eats
hoses

Hasn't eaten a single hose on my Miata and it has been running on the
stuff
for ten years.


Rubber hoses in recent models of cars have been made more resistant to
ethanol. The vast majority of airplanes, however, were built before
1987.

Then we'd better wake up and smell the coffee. I don't mind tilting at
windmills, but when I've got legislators the country-wide embracing alcohol
as a Good Thing(tm) I'd damned well better learn to live with it. Politics,
my young friend. Get used to it. Replace the damned hoses if that's what
it takes.






and corrodes carburetors

How? The chemical reaction between ethanol and steel/aluminum appears to
be
benign. Again, your source other than OWT?


The chemical reaction between ethanol and steel/aluminum is not benign.
I was able to turn up several papers documenting that ethanol was
corrosive to aluminum, at the very lest. It also corrodes fuel
injectors.

OWT.




and cylinders.

Seems that the entire US auto fleet would be in serious doo doo if this
were
true. It ain't.


Oh, but it is true. You may be a little young to remember,

Sonny, I was shaving heads on flathead Fords when you were in liquid form.



but back in
the days when ethanol was first introduced, the entire US auto fleet
was in very serious doo doo. Mechanics all over the country were kept
busy cleaning and repairing engines and fuel system components damaged
by ethanol. No part of the fuel system was immune, from the gas tank to
the exhaust system. Of course, this was all before the Internet
existed, so if all you know is what you learn from the Internet, you
are probably totally ignorant of that bit of history.

First mechanic certificate came along in 1965. I hardly think the Internet
existed then. Sure there were unforecast problems, but if the aviation
industry can't build on that storehouse of information and experience and do
some serious redesign, then we'd better take the wings off and use the
fuselages for chicken coops, because that's what's going to happen.




An airplane is not an automobile. Over time automobiles have been
redesigned to be more tolerant of ethanol, whereas airplanes have not.
A somewhat shorter engine life may be acceptable to an automobile
owner. It is not to an airplane owner.

The world is changing. Get used to it.






Ethanol is also more
expensive than gasoline.

Not the argument. Keep OT please.


Well, that was random. What are you, an ethanol salesman? You are going
to have to come up with a better argument than just telling me to shut
up. Ethanol is more expensive than gasoline. It also reduces gas
mileage. I suggest that those things are important to pilots.

I'm not telling anybody to shut up. I'm asking for serious, unbiased,
analytic, scientific study instead of you quoting "Cecil" (the Seasick Sea
Serpent???) as your points and authority.

Jim