Bad Gas Talk

I looked up this article

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie50239a026

Interesting effect of copper!

Back in the late 70's I owned a 1946 model 27' Elco cabin cruiser. It had factory copper fuel tanks.

When I bought it, it had been sitting in wet storage, not run in about 8 to 10 years! It reeked of stale gasoline. The tanks had a bolt on cover. They were about half full of green liquid with about 2 inches of semi-solid goo in the bottom. I had to cut the floor to get them out, had them hot vatted, came back looking like new.

Put them back in, cleaned the fuel system, got it running. But could not get rid of the smell! Also could not make it run right, flooding, needle sticking, inconsistent idle mixture. Then it lost compression on a cylinder. Pulled the head, stuck exhaust valve. But what was strange, the combustion chamber, valve heads, top of pistons looked like they had been painted with gloss black enamel paint! Thick, sticky, nasty! Ended up pulling all the valves, cleaning the stems and guides, cleaned everything up, back together.

I pumped out the tanks, got rid of them, abandoned the copper fuel lines. Installed a single aluminum tank with an outboard fuel line. That was the end of the fuel problems!

So, something definitely was up with the copper tanks and lines! Always suspected the copper was reacting with the gasoline, this article backs my theory! BTW, this was long before ethanol was added, just good old leaded gas!

Another strange thing, this boat was built by the Electric Boat Company, Yacht Division. These were not rookie builders, they formerly built submarines for the military in WW2! How would they have made such a mistake? All I can conclude is copper was the best corrosion resistant material they had, maybe it originally had some type coating.

To keep this tractor related, I don't recall ever seeing a factory copper fuel line!

It seems like today the preferred fuel tanks are either plastic or fiberglass. The tank in our fishing boat is under the floor, some kind of fiberglass, and my portable tanks for small outboards are plastic. You should get less condensation with a plastic tank also.

Well, if you get super picky: All my factory propane Farmalls are plumbed with copper line!

Point being, I guess, that folks were complaining about "new" gas back in 1929! Some things never change, like old pharts waxing nostalgic about the Good Old Days.