Mogas Deletions

Platte Valley Colorado, 18V, consistently has the lowest fuel prices in
Colorado. Their mogas is 91 octane before the additives are added.
Current fuel prices (7/14/05) are
$2.50 for mogas and $2.65 for 100LL. Platte Valley is north of Denver
by about 20 miles.

The lack of mogas at most airports is proving to be a real problem for
me. 100LL fouls my spark plugs badly. Having a canard aircraft, I prefer
long runways. The few airports that have mogas seem to be small fields
with short runways. I'm ordering some TCP from Aircraft Spruce for an
upcoming long trip, in case I'm forced to use that evil leaded stuff.

Options I've looked at to get mogas:

1. Contact EAAers in the planned fuel stop area, to see if they can help
with re-fueling. Might mean several trips to a local gas station with
5 gallon cans. My Long-EZ is too small to carry 5 gallon cans onboard.

2. Contact companies that deliver fuel to farmers. I did this for McCook
NE, they wanted 200 gallon minimum, so that idea doesn't seem too
feasible. I also asked the FBO at McCook if they could obtain Mogas for
me - no go, even though they have extensive ag operations.

3. Get a fuel-transfer pump system that can transfer fuel from a car
fuel tank to the airplane, that runs on 12V from a cigarette lighter
plug or clips to the car battery terminals. There does not seem to be
such a thing, so I would have to build it. At least this could be small
and light enough to keep onboard the plane. Then you might have to
explain to the FBO that you are going to pump the gas out of the loaner
car into your airplane, then go into town to top off the car tank again!
Would probably have to make a couple trips as car tanks are not that
large either.

Any other ideas?

18V looks good, but as is typical of airports that have mogas, the
runway might be a little short for a canard at such a high density
altitude field.

Doug wrote:

Platte Valley Colorado, 18V, consistently has the lowest fuel prices in
Colorado. Their mogas is 91 octane before the additives are added.
Current fuel prices (7/14/05) are
$2.50 for mogas and $2.65 for 100LL. Platte Valley is north of Denver
by about 20 miles.

3. Get a fuel-transfer pump system that can transfer fuel from a car fuel
tank to the airplane, that runs on 12V from a cigarette lighter plug or
clips to the car battery terminals.

They make some 12v pumps for the tanks farmers put in the back of their
trucks. I'll bet you could modify one of those.

Any other ideas?

Have you ever seen the calapsable 5 gallon water bladders that campers use?
Maybe you could find something like that for gasoline. Or, maybe you could
call a tow truck. Some of them carry gas. You might be able to talk them
into bringing you some.

floater wrote:

3. Get a fuel-transfer pump system that can transfer fuel from a car
fuel tank to the airplane, that runs on 12V from a cigarette lighter
plug or clips to the car battery terminals. There does not seem to be
such a thing, so I would have to build it.

I did exactly this, but for a different reason. I bought a cheap 12V
fuel pump at the auto parts store, mounted it to a wooden platform with
an on-off switch, and put some long bits of tubing on either end. I
clip it to the plane/car's battery, and use it to transfer fuel from one
tank to the other on my COZY when I'm on the ground, working on the
plane. It could easily do what you ask, at about 2-3 gallons/min. or
so. IIRC, it cost me about $25, and is pretty small.

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://marc.zeitlin.home.comcast.net/
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

On Sun, 17 Jul 2005 20:51:08 GMT, floater
wrote:

The lack of mogas at most airports is proving to be a real problem for
me. 100LL fouls my spark plugs badly. Having a canard aircraft, I prefer


What engine are you running? I found that switching to REM37BY plugs
helped a lot with the plug fouling. This was on an 0-235 also an 0-320

Ed Sullivan

Hey,
Check with Nothern Tool, they have a web site and all all kinds of fuel
transfer pumps, hand operated to electric,...and also a good selection of
big gas tanks for farmers and a few EAA guys around here have those puppies
in their pick ups. Just like pulling up to a gas station!

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft structural mech