Does Fuel Stabilizer Prevent Ethanol Damage? Let's find out!

does ethanol cause corrosion in a carburetor and does fuel stabilizer help prevent it today we're gonna find out with proof whether or not ethanol is a problem I have some fuel that's been aging in some containers so let's go take a look at these samples and see what we can discover we'll look at fuel that's been contaminated with water to see if fuel stabilizer prevented corrosion we'll also inspect carburetor parts have been soaking and fuel for nearly a year to see if it's caused any damage we'll see if we can get an engine to run with fuel that's nearly a year old the six charge to the left-half fuel in them that's been contaminated with water and inside each container is some aluminum the type of aluminum that's in a carburetor the containers to the right include fuels that have different carburetor components in them some of these containers have stabilizer some of them did not so up next we're going to look at the first six containers that had water contamination with the different types of fuel in them to see if any sort of corrosion occurred with metal this is 85 with no stabilizer this is 85 with stabilizer now the stabilizer I used is this Lucas safeguard ethanol fuel conditioner with stabilizers is specifically designed for eat any 15 at b85 according to manufacturer this product was designed to help prevent corrosion and degradation in ethanol based fuels safeguard prevents the harmful corrosion in the fuel systems often associated with the use of ethanol fuels helps protect your motor from the harmful side effect of alcohol combustion ethanol is hygroscopic which means it attracts water and unfortunately this fuel had a little bit of water contamination in it so if you have an open container of ethanol it's going to attract water and absorb it ends result you're gonna end up with water contamination so the question is did the fuel stabilizer prevent the corrosion so let's take a close look inside of each one of these containers to see if any corrosion occurred this is the 85 without any sort of fuel stabilizer in it and his their corrosion absolutely the middle I placed in this container nine months ago along with a little bit of water it has a lot of corrosion on it and trust me this fuel smells terrible I do not recommend ever leaving ethanol based fuel in a carburetor for any period of time or it will cause damage in a minute we're going to take this out but let's go ahead and look at the e se 85 with stabilizer to see if the stabilizer by Lucas actually prevented the corrosion this 85 has a lucas additive in it and did it prevent corrosion absolutely not and fortunately there's a lot of corrosion on this aluminum the only difference is what's left has a different color to it you can fight without the stabilizer does not have this golden color to it I'm going to remove the metal from each container it will take a closer look at them this is a container that does not have the stabilizer yet so I'm going to take the aluminum out wow look at that look at the bill up on this aluminum definitely causing some corrosion this is definitely eating into the aluminum and leaving like a jelly-like material on top of the aluminum the ethanol has eaten through the paint on the backside of this metal and the paint is flaking off additional is causing corrosion underneath the paint so the question is does ethanol cause corrosion without a doubt it does cause corrosion does fuel stabilizer prevent corrosion from occurring in the minute I'll drive this off we'll take a closer look at the aluminum to see how much damage has occurred let's see if fuel stabilizer prevented the e85 from doing damage this is a t5 with stabilizer and as you can see it is a huge mess inside this container there is definitely a lot of corrosion that's taking place on this aluminum obviously the fuel stabilizer did not prevent corrosion so let's take this aluminum out take a closer look at 85 with a fuel stabilizer does not prevent corrosion as you can see there's definitely some corrosion on this aluminum there's some paint flake that's taking place coming off his aluminum so the ethanol did penetrate this paint and is down to the aluminum causing corrosion so I'm going to dry these off with a paper towel would take a closer look each one of them piece of metal of the right had the fuel stabilizer the ones left did not and as you can see they both have this white chalky appearance which is corrosion to the aluminum so ethanol based fuels will cause corrosion even with a fuel stabilizer this is eaten gasoline the container on the Left did not have the fuel stabilizer in it the container on the right did have the stabilizer so let's take a closer look at it this is a 10 gasoline that did not have a fuel stabilizer and as you can see there's a lot of corrosion that is formed on this aluminum this is done a lot of damage and really surprised at how quickly it worked and only nine months a lot of damage has taken place so let's see if the fuel stabilizer helped the e10 gasoline so did to feel stabilizer help absolutely there's definitely less corrosion on the piece of aluminum that was treated with the fuel stabilizer then the piece that was not treated with that being said there are still some corrosion that is forming on the bottom of this aluminum so it has caused some damage the container the left has the stabilizer the container on the right does not and both of these containers have the non ethanol fuel what's very interesting is that these containers experience a lot less evaporation than the fuels with ethanol this is a no ethanol fuel without stabilizer and there is no indication of any sort of corrosion on this aluminum it's very shiny and smooth no sort of pitting and those sort of white substance on the surface so there's no ethanol fuel without stabilizer even though it had water contamination did not cause any corrosion to the aluminum okay the middle of left did not have the fuel stabilizer the fuel on the right did there isn't any corrosion on either piece of metal even though both pieces of metal had water contamination so if you're using non ethanol fuel your carburetor is safe from the type of corrosion that ethanol causes I'm going to dry these off and we'll see if there's any sort of white chalky appearance the e85 seem to cause an equal amount of corrosion with the treated and the untreated fuel the e10 with stabilizer actually did better than the fuel that did not have this stabilizer there's quite a bit of corrosion on this metal now the fuel that did have the stabilizer still experienced some corrosion but not nearly as bad the no ethanol fuel with and without stabilizer looked the same there isn't any visible sign of corrosion both these containers had be 85 in them one of them had stabilizer one of them did not now these fuels were not contaminated with any sort of moisture and a climate-controlled shop and these containers were stored inside of a cabinet inside the shop and as you can see there isn't any fuel left in them both the fuel with and without the stabilizer seems to have some significant issues with regard to causing corrosion this is the piece of Elle they had to feel stabilized I don't know what's on it but look at all that corrosion there's been a lot of damage done to this piece of metal so there wasn't any water inside this fuel at least I didn't add any and it still caused damage the container had to be a t5 fuel in it without the stabilizer it's hot so mess imma go ahead dump it out look at all that corrosion has taken place what a yes I don't know all this goop is but it's a byproduct of ethanol inside each of these containers I included different carburetor in parts we're gonna come back to these later in the video both these containers have Etan fuel in them the one on the left has stabilizer the one on the right does not I'm gonna go ahead and take the contents out of each container the e10 with stabilizer appears to have a very very small amount of corrosion on it so I'm gonna let this dry out and we'll come back to it in just a minute this field did not have a stabilizer in it there appears to be a very small amount of corrosion beginning on this metal will come back to the other components that were inside this container later in the video these containers have the non ethanol fuel in it let's have to have these containers and take a closer look components exposed to non ethanol fuel with stabilizers if it doesn't appear to be any corrosion on this metal this is a no ethanol fuel without stabilizer so trying to smell off there doesn't appear to be any corrosion on this metal this carburetor actually looks fairly decent on the outside it's a little bit dirty but when you take the bowl off this thing it has a lot of corrosion I mean just look at this once you remove the bowl you can see there's a tremendous amount of corrosion and the damage is irreparable this carburetor is run fuel-injected systems designed for ethanol fuels don't experience this type of corrosion since modern vehicles are made of metals seals and rubber that's not affected by ethanol so gasoline that's been inside these containers for a year the quest remains is this gasoline still good this is a 10 whiff stabilizer detain without stabilizer let's see if these fuels are still good so fuel stabilizer did not prevent this fuel from going bad this is non ethanol fuel the few on the left has stabilizer the fuel on the right does not this is fresh ethanol fuel this is fresh non ethanol fuel fuel definitely goes bad over time I don't like providing subjective assessments unless I just have to do so and this is one of these instances where I don't have a reliable way to measure the impact ethanol has had on these different rubber components everything does seem a little bit stiffer that's been exposed to ethanol based fuel compared to the non ethanol based fuel the e85 definitely seems a little stiffer than the e10 and the non ethanol seems like it's the most flexible this lawnmower is out of gasoline and it should not start but I'm going to try to get it to run anyway just to make sure that the carburetor bulb is empty this fuel is nearly a year old it's e 10 without stabilizer we have just enough gasoline to get this engine running if it'll run there was never any water contamination with this fuel [Music] I'm gonna hit it with a little starting fluid to see if that will help unfortunately this old fuel is just not going to burn so I'm going to have to drain out the carburetor and we'll try the next fuel we'll see if we can make it 10 fuel with stabilizer working this engine okay the spark plug is definitely wet it's just not burning okay so the no ethanol without fuel stabilizer actually worked I had to give it a little bit of a boost with some starting fluid we tried the same thing with e 10 giving a little starting fluid to get to run it did not run and pub next will try the new ethanol with fuel stabilizer it's been about 30 minutes since I ran this engine I wanted to let it cool down it's now at 74 degrees I had to get it started flowing a couple of times but once it got going it actually ran pretty well got about two minutes of runtime out of that very small amount of fuel if you use no ethanol fuel in your small engines you have nothing to worry about obviously it's not good to leave that fuel in the engine for more than a year just because that fuel is definitely going to degrade if you use ethanol fuel will fuel stabilizer entirely prevent damage unfortunately it will not it'll still do damage but not as severely as if you don't use any fuel stabilizer at all I really have a lot of fun doing these videos this video idea was suggested by viewers so if you have a video idea I hope you'll take time to leave a comment I read and reply to as many comments as possible thanks so much for watching the video please take care and I look forward to next time

Channel: Project Farm

Views: 1,755,194

Keywords: Seafoam, project farm, lucas fuel stabilizer review, fuel stabilizer, ethanol fuel, stabilizer prevent corrosion, fuel varnish and gum, fuel varnish, gum, ethanol damage, mtbe, gasoline stabilizer, petrol stabilizer, fuel stabilizer for car, fuel stabilizer for lawn mower, fuel stabilizer for generator, do fuel stabilizer's prevent corrosion?

Id: UvS_D4_lF5U

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019