Boating Tips: Is Ethanol in Your Outboard?

There will be a day in the not to near future where ethanol will be in your marina's gasoline. If have read your owner's manual you know that is not a good thing. While most outboard engines will operate with up to 10 percent ethanol (E-10) anything over that is bad news. How are we going to be able to cope with the new alcohol fuels? Here are a few of the problems with boating and alcohol.

Alcohol is a great solvent. So good a solvent that it can clean out an older boats fuel system and deposit all the old crud in the engine. This can lead to not only poor performance. It can kill the engine. The higher the alcohol content is in the fuel mixture, the greater the potential for major damage. While E-10 is allowable E15 fuels and fuels with higher ethanol concentrations can start causing problems..

Alcohol and water mix. With gasoline any water the gets into your fuel settles to the bottom of the tank. If enough water gets in to the tank ,a fuel water separator normally stops everything before there is too much damage. With alcohol, the water mixes with the alcohol and runs right past the fuel separator. If enough water mixes with the alcohol, the engine will be damaged while running. In low concentrations, the engine still runs, but once the engine is shut off the water in the fuel system starts corroding important parts. An engine that sets idle for an extended period can have a great deal of rust build-up on the cylinder walls, piston rings and other steel components. Not a good thing if you want to go fishing.

Alcohol is less powerful that gasoline. At very high alcohol fuel concentrations like E85 ethanol fuel, more fuel is required for proper performance. With direct injection engines, reprogramming the fuel flow rates will be required to compensate. With carborated engines, the jets will have to be larger. Cold starts will be very difficult for two-cycle engines requiring starting fluid or alternate start-up fuels. This means your miles per gallon will go down and fuel costs up.