Non-ethanol chainsaw fuel
I've been having some trouble with the chainsaw and was ready to take it in for a tune up. Anna mentioned how she
read in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Countryside magazine that
fuel with a 10 percent ethanol mix was not good for 2 stroke chainsaw
engines. I checked at the gas station and sure enough it had a 10
percent mix of ethanol. It seems like most gas stations around here
sell the ethanol enhanced fuel, but I got lucky and found one outside
of Gate City on route 23 that advertised non-ethanol fuel.
Some folks will say it's not that important, but all I did was empty
out the 10 percent ethanol fuel and mixed up some 2 cycle fuel with no
ethanol and my problems went away. This guy
suggests that the problem can be avoided by using the high octane
gas, which tends to cancel out the ethanol effect. My chainsaw is of
the older generation, and I'm going to keep ethanol away from it if
that's what it tells me to do.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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1) Aviation gas is designed to run at a constant load and differs significantly from automotive type fuel. Aircraft run at constant loads and have pilot controlled mixture adjustments. In cases with varying load, such as cars and small engines AvGas can cause detonation problems (early ignition of the fuel charge before its time, which can destroy an engine). With AvGas running close to $6 per gallon, I doubt this will be a good option anyway.
2) The reason that ethanol in fuel causes problems in older engines is primarily in the gaskets. Older gaskets may swell in the presence of alcohol. Swollen rubber parts may prevent the fuel pump from working. Even worse, they may constrict fuel passages, causing the engine to run lean and burning it up.
My background is in automotive engineering and I personally avoid ethanol diluted fuels whenever possible. In very modern cars, it may not be a problem, but older engines may suffer significantly. I recommend that you drive a little further and pay a little more for gasoline without ethanol.