A strange richness...

wrote in message
...
: In the fifties farmers would burn something we called "Powerfuel" in
: their carburated tractors. I worked in a garage & we could never get
: them going without priming with fresh gasoline.

My dad's 1939-ish Oliver-60 Row Crop (that he still uses to plow snow and
run
the PTO pump for the logsplitter) was one such creature. It would run on
either gasoline
or kerosene ("farm-fuel" is what I'd heard it called). That tractor's a
hoot to drive
around.

Through rush hour traffic, no doubt! ;~)

I amost always have my engine stall after about 20
seconds during a cold start regardless of priming or throttle pumping.

Can you tell if it is flooding out or starving out? And do you also
get the loping coughing etc after the first throttle advance?

On 27 Apr 2006 11:36:03 -0700, "nrp" wrote:

I amost always have my engine stall after about 20
seconds during a cold start regardless of priming or throttle pumping.

Can you tell if it is flooding out or starving out? And do you also
get the loping coughing etc after the first throttle advance?

Pretty sure that it's starving out. No coughing though.

Our tractors have just set around since last fall... We burn the
cheapest, nastiest, mogas we can find... We do not use Stabil, etc...
Drag the battery charger over to the tractor... Give the battery a 5
minute buzz to wake it up from laying around for five and a half
months, jump on, pump the throttle, hit the starter, and away we go...
Dunno why your gas goes bad, mine doesn't...
Now, if you leave the tank nearly dry and let it evaporate down to
sticky crud in the bottom of the tank... Pour fresh gas in, washing the
crud into the carb... Then your gas has gone 'bad'...

denny

Our tractors have just set around since last fall... We burn the
cheapest, nastiest, mogas we can find... We do not use Stabil, etc...
Drag the battery charger over to the tractor... Give the battery a 5
minute buzz to wake it up from laying around for five and a half
months, jump on, pump the throttle, hit the starter, and away we go...
Dunno why your gas goes bad, mine doesn't...

Same here. We've got a lawn tractor, a leaf-blower, a weed wacker, and
a snow blower. They ALL use mogas that sits for half a year, and we
never have a problem.

To believe that mogas goes bad in less than a month is goofy.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Same here.
We've got no less than 30 gas powered trucks that sit from October to April
with less than 1/4 tank (gives the thieves less to steal and makes them work
harder for what they get).

Wake up the battery, insert key, choke, crank, start, run.

We also have a 2 - 10,000 gallon tanks for gasoline. They sit from October
to April with less than 2-3 feet in them. By the time spring comes, this
gas is god knows how old since I didn't get a manufacture date on the load
when I bought it the fall before. We run the tanks down to about 1 foot,
then I buy another load. The gas is used in everything from tractors to
trucks to lawnmowers to dozens of small engines. No problems, it simply
works and it's always the cheapest gas that I can find.

Jim

The problem isn't long term cold storage or large quantities. It is
critical small quantities (like a carb bowl) that are heat soaked (like
an airplane) after shutdown. A starter will work its way thru it if it
isn't too bad, but why?

Mogas has a wider distillation temp range than a/c fuel. The light
components of mogas will more easily evaporate from the bowl leaving
you with a more-like-kerosene mixture for starting, depending on how
long it has been sitting. Yes you can usually get things going, but it
does mean grinding the starter more.

In the fifties farmers would burn something we called "Powerfuel" in
their carburated tractors. I worked in a garage & we could never get
them going without priming with fresh gasoline.

Well, they must've changed the mix since the 1950s a bit, because I
have never experienced any of the adverse symptoms you describe, in any
internal combustion engine, from tiny 2-strokes, to automotive V-8s, to
aircraft engines.

Or maybe we get better mogas here in Iowa? :-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
: Same here. We've got a lawn tractor, a leaf-blower, a weed wacker, and
: a snow blower. They ALL use mogas that sits for half a year, and we
: never have a problem.

: To believe that mogas goes bad in less than a month is goofy.

It definately starts to *smell* skunky. Whether or not it makes an appreciable difference after
only one month is another question. For a marginal mogas STC like our O-360 (180hp) and its 91 AKI
requirement it might be easier to evaporate the "high octane" components. For low-compression, it'll
probably run on just about anything.

-Cory

--

************************************************** ***********************
* Cory Papenfuss, Ph.D., PPSEL-IA *
* Electrical Engineering *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
************************************************** ***********************

A suggested bedtime reading (in 4 sections) for history and technical
details of gasoline is he

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part1/