Quote:
Originally Posted by Malt
I thought it was pretty much proven that ethanol has absolutely nothing to do with the crickets.
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It's not the ethanol that's causing the problem. There are other things in your fuel besides gasoline and ethanol. For example, during winter months in cooler locations, most blends include butane, which is a cheap filler that still keeps the octane rating up. They can't put butane in the gas in the summer, though, because it evaporates out in warmer temps.
They also put additives in the gas that are alleged to clean and protect your engine and fuel system. I'm convinced it's those additives that are contributing to the chirping problem. More than likely most of the E85 gas doesn't have those chemicals, which is why some people see their crickets disappear when they go over to E85.
Likewise, E0 is not top tier gas in the US, because to qualify as top tier gas it must have ethanol. So when you get ethanol-free gas, you're getting lower tier gas that also may not have all those fancy additives alleged to protect your engine. Without those additives, many people lose the crickets and think the lack of ethanol did it.
It would be great if we could isolate exactly what is being put into the gas that's causing the chirp, then find a way to counteract it. But there are about 2 dozen basic gas blends in use in the United States, not including all the variations in concentrations introduced at different refineries and different distribution centers around the country. The supply chain adjusts to demand and individual refinery output, so that a single station can't guarantee that the gas you buy this week is the same formulation as what you bought there last week. Whenever I see someone post that his crickets went away, I have to suspect that something changed in his regular station's supply chain to remove whatever was making the crickets happy.