Midweek Vacation
October 12th, 2009Feet Up, Parts on the Way
Looks like I won’t be going to Lakeland this week. I just got the word. The pastor is going to be so busy, I wouldn’t even see him.
This works fine for me. Saturday was a bear, I suffered all day yesterday working on the Harley, and I’ve been busy with something all day today, so when I got the news, I was ready for a break. Now I can spend some more time on the book.
I have some Harley parts on the way. I still wonder what killed my carb float. I think I dumped some water remover and fuel injector cleaner in the tank. Not sure. In the future, I plan to be less creative with additives. I just assumed they were all safe.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:57 PM
E10 gasoline. Some fuel system components may be quite sensitive. Fuel guage sending units and in tank fuel pumps in less than late model automobiles seem to fail at a faster than normal rate.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:40 AM
If any of your fuel additives included methyl alcohol (methanol) it’s likely what attacked the carb parts.
Ethyl alcohol (ethanol) is usually safe up to 10% concentration, but it tends to lean the mixture slightly which can cause problems in air cooled engines (lean mixtures run hotter). Stock Harleys run lean as it is for emissions reasons.
I’ve had good luck with a product called Sea Foam and with Chevron Techron.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:15 AM
I’m not an expert on alcohol, but it seems to me (duh) that a “fuel injector cleaner” would be a solvent.
My motorbike is a 1982 Suzuki. It sat in the garage all last winter with the fuel tank nearly empty and no stabilizer. This year I re-gassed it, and it ran like a champ. But then, it doesn’t have fuel injectors.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:31 PM
“‘fuel injector cleaner’ would be a solvent”
.
Yes. And so is gasoline. And ethanol. So is diesel. I’m pretty sure every gas treatment contains solvents.
October 13th, 2009 at 12:58 PM
Sell it. 😉
October 13th, 2009 at 7:30 PM
I know that. Water’s a solvent too. I mean, a solvent that dissolves things that don’t dissolve in gasoline. Jeez.
You don’t put gasoline in your tank so things will dissolve. You don’t put fuel treatments in there for that purpose, either. You don’t use them as solvents, OK? But fuel injector cleaner, well, that’s another story.
I’d be surprised if methanol was the culprit. And what the heck, maybe I’d be surprised. It’s just that I’ve never seen plastic dissolve in alcohol.
I just googled “fuel injector cleaner”, and without even clicking a link I learned that the “good stuff” contains MEK. And I HAVE seen plastic dissolve in that.
October 14th, 2009 at 8:19 AM
Many fuel injector cleaners are labeled as safe for carbs, and lots of knowledgeable people (the Gumout folks, for example) say to go ahead and use them in carbureted bikes. Whether this applies to the one I used is something you will never know, since I don’t recall the brand.
.
I don’t know whether it was the ethanol or the additives or just age, but it seems pretty clear that the safe practice is to drain everything when the bike is not in use. It’s risky to trust the “experts” and manufacturers.
October 14th, 2009 at 11:32 AM
“the safe practice is to drain everything when the bike is not in use”
.
Depends whom you ask. I’ve been told that having the tank empty is bad, because the vapor pressure of gasoline varies greatly with temperature, so if the temperature fluctuates you’re effectively pumping ambient air in and out of the tank, and condensing out the water each time. It may not be cold enough in Florida to cause much condensation. In parts of Oregon you get high humidity with near-freezing winter nights.
.
I’ve done it both ways: full tank with Sta-Bil (and run it before storage to get the Sta-Bil throughout the fuel system), and near-empty tank. I seem to recall it ran roughly at first in the latter case, until the fresh gas worked its way in and washed out the gunk. But there was no real problem either way.
.
Then again, my bike is crude and primitive. My guess (only a guess) is that fuel-injector systems are more susceptible.
October 14th, 2009 at 4:10 PM
If what you said made sense, any metal container would gradually fill with water. Why would water condense on a tank which is at nearly the same temperature as the ambient air? Steel has a low specific heat, and it radiates and absorbs heat fast. There is no way the temperature of a thin gas tank will be significantly out of phase with the surrounding air.
.
Another good question: why would condensed water remain in a tank which is open to the air?
October 15th, 2009 at 2:44 PM
“If what you said made sense, any metal container would gradually fill with water.”
.
No, just any metal container with a small amount of volatile liquid in it, and very little ventilation.
.
“Why would water condense on a tank which is at nearly the same temperature as the ambient air?”
.
When the tank cools, the last thing to cool would be the contents of the tank. So there would be a stage in each temperature cycle where condensation could happen.
.
“why would condensed water remain in a tank which is open to the air?
.
Why would gasoline, which evaporates far more readily, remain in there? Because the tank is hardly “open”; there’s almost no air circulation. The filler cap may form a loose seal, or have a little vent. It’s enough ventilation to equalize the pressure between the tank and ambient (which is good) but hardly enough to evaporate water out of the tank in a timely manner. Especially since any significant volume of water will be under the gasoline, not exposed to the air.
.
You’ve seen plastic gasoline containers blow up like balloons in the heat and then shrivel like a man at the sight of Helen Thomas in the cold. The collapsing effect is more pronounced when the container is nearly empty than when it’s full, because of the difference in vapor volume. You can see how, in a rigid tank with a vent, this fluctuating pressure would pump air in and out of the tank. If the tank is almost full, there’s less vapor volume and correspondingly less pumping action.
.
Even if I’m wrong about all this, it is a fact that water gets into gas tanks somehow. It is common to see rust in old gas tanks. Anyway, this isn’t just my ignorant opinion. It is also the ignorant opinion of some guy in Florida named Richard Trenk. He’s billed as an “automotive expert”, but there’s an excellent chance he’s just some street person they paid off with a bottle of Night Train. I’ll withhold judgment until you’ve had a chance to fully investigate his character and references.
.
Ugh. Look Steve, I know I’m kind of a pain in the ass. I generally only comment when I have some disagreement, criticism or advice to offer. Plus, I’m an atheist, and you seem to assume that atheists will be obnoxious all the time.
.
But I wouldn’t come around here if I didn’t basically like you and wish you well. And I’ve been reading your site for a long time. I didn’t get bored and leave when you switched from political humor to blogging your spiritual progress. I find that stuff interesting and instructive. I admire your talents. I’m just not the cheerleading type. I’d like to send my best wishes for your sister and other people you mention, but sentiments like that always seem trite and insincere to me, in a comment box. And I can’t couch those sentiments in religious terms or say anyone’s in my prayers, because I’m not and they aren’t. But I do think about them, and I do care.
.
I think I’ve been mostly humble and friendly with you. So it hurts my feelings when you go out of your way to find fault with what I say. I know you’re a smart guy, but those questions you posted above don’t stand much consideration. You’d answer them yourself in two seconds, if you had any inclination to.
.
Anyway, I kind of like that line about the Night Train, so I’m leaving it in. But it doesn’t make me happy to be snarky with you. Other people, yeah, but not you. I’m basically on your side, OK? OK.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:28 PM
This is the last comment in this thread. Ordinarily I delete comments as long as yours as a matter of course.
.
1. An empty tank has no contents, therefore the only thing that would cool would be the tank.
.
2. Any tank open to a degree that air would come in would allow both water and gasoline to evaporate.
.
3. Containers only collapse and expand with temperature changes when they’re sealed, and a gas tank doesn’t fit that description.
.
4. As far as I know, water does get into fuel tanks that are not empty, but we’re not talking about those.
.
5. If disagreeing with you is “going out of my way to find fault,” you may be overly sensitive.
.
I have a longstanding policy of refusing to host long, tedious “is so/is not” threads like this one. Maybe you didn’t know that, or that I generally don’t accept long comments. In any case, the big gas tank water debate is officially over, and readers may now calculate the scores for their enjoyment.