My M20 gets long spells of non-use, I keep her in a pretty dry unheated garage, every few weeks (or so) I start her up and run her for a bit which means there is usually stale petrol left in the tank & carb, the last time I ran her which was probably more like 6 weeks ago the throttle slide was sticking, so today I finally got around to stripping the carb prior to the Devon Area MVT road run on Dartmoor this Sunday.

I was very surprised how clean the inside of the carb actually was, there is some pitting inside the carb body but only on the air intake end (which could have been there for donkeys years) and a quick wipe over on the slide sorted that out, so on the whole I would say that Ethanol has not done any damage at all.

And yet very recently a friend of mine who repairs chain saws said that he was having to replace whole carburettors quite regularly

I'm not burning large quantities of fuel so less Ethanol has been in contact with my BSA than some but I was under the impression long term storage was the issue?



And finally at the Military Vehicle Trust AGM last Sunday Mr Beddall reported that people were turning to 97 unleaded with some good results including better fuel economy.

Rob.

email (option): robmiller11@yahoo.co.uk

Chainsaw carbs typically have a fuel pump as part of the carb mechanism, with seals and diaphragms, as well as orifaces, passages and jets...all tiny and fiddly; could be more reliable, easier, faster and cheaper to replace a chainsaw carb on a unit at a commercial logging operation than to try and clean and rebuild the carb.

Unlike "real" gasoline, the ethonol/gasoline fuels retain water in suspension, (pulling it out of the air) , which can lead to corrosion of internal carb componants if allowed to sit, so draining is important if the vehicle will be sitting unused for a period of time. If you must leave fuel in the tank, keep it full to reduce the amount of airspace in the tank

JDE

email (option): teladelujo@msn.com