Got Ethonol?

[AbunDiga909]

Hey everybody... ya know what sucks... ethonol.

As you all know, you have large yellow stickers on each of your fuel nozzles with black print saying to not put any alcohol in your PCM engine and if you do, it will void the warrantee. O darn.

It is just my luck to find out that the whole tri state area of NY, NJ, and CT, the only three states we get gas, all put Ethonol, which contains alcohol in their gas. Shucks. :?

So we find that the only place we can get gas w/out ethonol is on the marinas on our lake. Sounds good right? Wrong. First off, its $2.99 a gallon there! :shock: :shock: . Second of all, they are all closed for the season now w/ serving gas and we still have about a month left of skiing season.

We talked to our dealer about this who has an 03 version of our boat and he says that its really ok to put the ethonol is your boat. he did it for the previous season. however, he doesnt' recommend letting it sit in your engine for the whole winter. Darn, what do we do now? Well we've already skied yesterday on the lake w/ the ethonol and all the marinas closed. (BTW, I landed my first invert on the SkySki that day!)

Anyway... so what could be done? We're not gonna not ski and the only gas we can get is Ethonol. Because of our situtation, do you think PCM will not offer the warrantee to us b/c we used ethonol even though we had no choice? Any ideas would be appreciated...

Thanks in Advance...

[Onthewater]

Sporto, don't worry about it. Everybody I know uses Gasoline that has alcohol in it. I know of one gas station within 60 miles of my house that doesn't. Just put some sta-bil in you fuel and don't worry about it. Just my worthless 2 pennies. Plus, marina gas is crap, atleast around here.

[Rick]

Ethanol is grain alcohol ie. you can drink it. Alcohol is a class of compounds including methanol, ethanol, propanol, iso-propanol, hexanol ..... It is used to increase the oxygen in the burning of fuel. It is in almost all gas anymore including all in California. In the long run ethanol is more corrosive when burned or stored, it causes oxidation(rust). That is why the car manufacturers use stainless steel exhausts now. My nautique has run 1300 hours (its a 2000) with etahnol the whole time without a problem. Old gas (sitting for more than 1-2 months is far more destructive than the ethanol. I agree with Onthewater use Stabil or any gas stabilizer and you shouldn't have any problems.

[ffmedic74]

There are goods and bads to alcohol blends. Alcohol burns cleaner and gives you more power. Average V8 on pure alcohol gets about 30+hp. This is mainly due to all the extra oxygen in alcohol. The downside to running 100% alcohol is that it leaks past the rings and turns your oil a milky color. The most important bad thing about alcohol is that it eats away at certain parts in our PCM fuel systems over time.

[AbunDiga909]

Ok, so you say it probably won't do any harm as far as the boat working goes and sitting in the engine all winter. However, you say ffmedic that it will eat away the PCM engine over time. Well, we will have it in over time and lets say a part does go, do you think it will be covered over warrantee?

Rick, you said you have 1300 hrs on ur boat running on ethonol. Have you had a prob w/ eating PCM parts?

[ffmedic74]

Methanol/alcohol always requires "beefed" up parts. I think its mainly eats away at the rubber type pieces. Most people who run alcohol motors run stainless lines etc and use special parts that are designed for alcohol. I just dont think PCM has designed their motors for use with alcohol blends yet. Someone else chime in if I am wrong!

[Onthewater]

It is only a blend, less than 10%.

[Rick]

Not 100% ethanol but ethanol in the gas as an Oxygenator. Everyone in California knows that evil ski boats cause global warming. I'd say less than 10%. Using that much gas they always ran 87 octane and the boat has had zero problems. I don't beleive PCM would void the warranty if you didn't abuse the motor as It's almost qimpossible to get a non ethanol blend anywhere in CA.