Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:57:32 -0400, Gil wrote:

How much truth should this be?

I got a service guy telling me that now the Govt mandates that Ethanol
is added to gasoline. The guy was telling me at certain percentage is
too much for the outboard engines that causes the head/piston to fail.

What do you think?

Modern synthetic oils blend well with ethanol enhanced gasoline so
lubrication isn't a problem per se.

However, ethanol doesn't play well with standard blend two cycle oils.
In that sense, your mechanic is right.

Use a good synthetic and you'll be fine.

When they first started to blend ethanol, a number of older boats had
trouble with the ethanol not playing well with the fuel hoses/tubes and
gaskets in the fuel line. I haven't heard of this problem lately, so I
think the ones that reacted to the ethanol have all been replaced.