Saturday morning left to meet up with car buddies. Got about a block away and smelled gas, pulled over and checked. Sure enough there’s a puddle of gas under the front of my car. Turned around and pulled it onto my lift, and let it cool. Expected to find a loose fuel connection, surprised to find the fuel pump itself is leaking at the bottom diaphragm, just a little over a year old. Fuel pump is a bugger to get at, not looking forward to this. Decided to change over to an electric pump and plate off the mechanical on the block.

Talking to the guy at the parts house, told him the diaphragm gave out in a little over a year? He said, “what kind of fuel stabilizer you using?”. I said fuel stabilizer, what would I need that for, I use Chevron Supreme. He said “Alcohol in the gas, you need a stabilizer to prevent damaging the rubber parts”. I said what alcohol, not suppose to be any in the fuel. He said, “No, they just don’t have to post it any more, most are running 10%”.

So I do some research and boy is he right! The law states that they don’t have to use alcohol, they just have to meet the epa standards, and guess what, alcohol gets it there, but they’re not required to post it any more!!! Really, been buying expensive gas thinking I was doing the right thing for my motor only to be hoodwinked! Turns out there are only two stations in California not using alcohol in their gas and both are near the Oregon border, 200+ miles away..

And it gets worse, turns out the alcohol attracts moisture even more so in our vented gas tanks, causing even more troubles. Plus, on carbureted motors there is gas that sits on top of the pistons at shut down, which gets into the oil attracting water in the oil as well! And, not all fuel stabilizers are rated for vented/carbureted fuel systems. Best solution is to use marine fuel stabilizers for the added water protection.

Hopefully this helps someone else before they find out the hard way about alcohol and its damaging nature to our motors….