Well, I tried to take the Trans-Am out for a drive today. It had been awhile. And for exactly that reason, I didn’t get to go for a drive. Instead, I got to take apart the carburetor – to clean out the gunk that clogged something up. More finely, because idiot – lazy – me – left it parked for six weeks or so with a tankful of ethanol-laced gas, which I pumped into the tank because I didn’t have time to drive the 12 miles to the station that has real (100 percent) gas rather than 10 percent ethanol-laced “gas.”
And so, when I went to start up the TA after its long sit, it did – but it didn’t run very well. It idled like a 95-year-old with a lung full of phlegm which is pretty much the deal here. The carb is all gunked yp. So I had to find the time to take the carb apart to clean it out. All the little passageways – jets and such – and check that none of the soft parts, such as the float and the power piston – had been dissolved into goo.
Lucky for me, I can field strip a Quadrajet like some guys can do the same with an AR-15. So I ought to be back in business soon.
And now maybe I’ll remember not to put that “gas” in the poor TA’s tank!
. . .
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Cook county in chicago gives no choice- have to drive halfway across the state to get pure gas. Stuck starting all carbed vehicles monthly or draining the carbs completely
Bought a new car in 2022 (Toyota Camry). At least local to me, one station sells ethanol-free gasoline, which is all I put into that car. If I’m out of town with it an can’t find said fuel, I will use the tainted stuff, but once back in town, I refill it with the good stuff.
Ethanol-free is the only thing I put into my lawnmower.
I know in FL where my sister lives they got Ethanol free gas. I can’t comment on how to fix this, the others are experts, but just something to think about if you ever feel like leaving Virginia
It is extremely easy to “make your own” unadulterated gasoline.
Just add water…yes, just add water.
The ethanol will separate and you can easily retrieve the “pure” gasoline from the mix
There are plenty of tutorials on youtube that you can use.
this is true, but the remaining gasoline is a low octane low quality distillate. The Ethanol is used as an octane booster and when you wash it out your residual gas is down in the mid to low 80s for octane. Unfortunately non ethanol around here is even more expensive than diesel.
Back in the days before they diluted gasoline with alcohol I used to go to the Sunoco station a friend of mines dad owned. You could dial up any octane you wanted of real gas. They also carried a 110 octane ‘white lightning’ that the truck driver made by adding 1 gallon of xylene and 1 gallon of toulene to a 1,000 gallon tank to raise the octane 9 points. I got a quarter of a can of each from the driver that I used to make my own for my 750 Triumph bored to 850 running 11.5:1 compression high-domes. Adding spoonfuls to a 3 gallon tank made it run like a bat out of hell and literally breathed Fire.
The station went out of business eventually and I used octane boost that helped a little. Then I found the clear blue low-lead 104 octane they sell at small airports for ultralights and planes. The false-flag terrorism by the hijacked government made it harder to get since you might be a fucking terrorist. You can still get it filled in 5 gallon jugs if you claim it is for an untralight and is some fantastic fuel. The 91 octane ‘premium’ with no alcohol for 4 bucks a gallon is all we can get around here. I have stacks of weedeaters and chainsaws and blowers sitting with fucked up clogged and dissolved carb parts. I’m actually going towards electric and battery-powered chainsaws and weedeaters for the smaller stuff because of this bullshit.
“ The 91 octane ‘premium’ with no alcohol for 4 bucks a gallon is all we can get around here “
!!! Count your blessings !!! 92 non alcohol is north of 5 here, 87 alcohol tainted is north of 4 many parts of the state.
Hi Sparkey,
My TA’s 455 has the 6X head castings that have something like 110 cc chambers and so the CR with these heads is a hilarious 7.6:1 (yes, really). The upside is I can use 87 octane with no detonation worries. The downside is I’m probably losing 30 horses by not using heads with say 9.5:1 or so. But then I might need premium and the only “gas” around here that is 91 octane is E10…
Ahh the ‘70s with low compression & smog compliant cam grinds. My ‘79 Gran Prix 301 (Old Yeller) ran smooth but wow no fun climbing the many mountain pass roads here in WA, ran out of steam even with the four barrel carb. High altitude, low torque, steep grades good luck!
Unfortunately, the ethanol lobbyists are probably massive. So our politicians are getting paid off, so it will never go away.
At least many small engine manuf. put a line in sand (thank you AMA), when they wanted to go to 15%. A small win.
I wish I had an answer but I feel your pain, when you run a large fleet of antiques like I do it’s really tough. Worse than the short term clogging is how very corrosive ethanol is, leave it for over a year and you’ll find carbs internally dissolved into a metallic goo and gas tanks with lots of holes in them.
Yup. destroyed 3-4 chainsaw carbs. Cost of new carb was crazy too. Even with stabalizers.
I asked the chainsaw dealer who knows their stuff and he said the metallurgy was changed to prevent the alum. pitting,. so far so good.
Doubt old auto carbs are immune from this corrosive shit.
Some of the old stuff is better, like the Carter WCFB from the 50s and early 60s. It has an iron body. Or the Thermos quad with its plastic body.
Others I may try lining with POR, RedKote, or something similar.
The good news is that there are a lot more gas stations that offer ethanol-free gas compared to 10 years ago, at least where I live (eastern WV).
ethanol, a huge boondoggle scam that has destroyed many things.
You’re lucky you have access to non-ethanol. In our deep blue state they forbid it, even for farms ieee non-dot use.
My favorite fuel stabilizer is Star-Tron. It has saved my ass many times with sitting chainsaws, splitters, etc… for 6months or more.
In our deep red state, non-ethanol is avail and everything gets it when put away for the winter. No fuel stabilizer needed.
ps Eric, one advantage of fuel injection over carbs is the system is not open to atmosphere so it doesn’t gum up as fast as carbs.
The Taryl Fixes All YouTube channel has a video where he does long term testing of gas stabilizers for use with ethanol gas and shows that they are over rated. The best ones only resulted in a few less pulls to start.
An ultrasonic parts cleaner and Dawn won’t hurt the rubber and plastic in the carb but should get that weird ethanol gel out of the carb. In your case I’m guessing it was just a little water and drumphish’s suggestion of using Brake Clean should work. Unfortunately due to GovCo a lot of the brake cleaners are reformulated now so look for one labeled as low odor/ highly flammable as many are basically just acetone now and won’t even clean rotors well now. I of course stocked up on the good stuff when I saw this happening.
Even with ethanol; a carb does not have many problems if used regularly.
If you remember the gas “crisis” of 1973, my father found the perfect solution. One afternoon a Chevron stake truck came up the drive loaded with 55 gallon drums of gasoline. Just get a nozzle an a transfer pump and your good to go. Gasoline was hard to get at the time, but he knew everyone that was worth knowing.
Bike gets StaBil and a nip of Marvel Mystery before winter storage, tank topped off with non alcohol gas. The Marvel oil is good for the injectors and the top end of the motor. 25 minute cruise home after fill up works it all into place.
Eric I’d recommend Marvel for carbs as well, might help ward off tank corrosion too. Son in law had to replace the steel gas tank on the ‘85 Defender last Fall.
In an episode of the TeeVee show, ‘Malcom in the Middle’ Dewy, the youngest child in a family of 5, gets caught & the Mom asks him, “We can do this, ‘the easy way’, or ‘the hard way’. Which is it!?”
Dewy sighs and says, “The hard way”.
Eric says, “I feel like I never have time for anything anymore.”
I have read, and now that the years have rolled on I know, that the older a person gets, the faster they experience Time.
[Insert image of a young person sitting at a desk in a classroom watching a clock on a wall ticking, as if they were watching the grass grow.]
… the older a person gets, the faster they experience Time.
Sands of Time slipped past the 70 mark for me last month. Yes, years roll by. Faster and faster it seems.
That’s too true, about to turn 78 myself and wonder how I ever got anything done before noon.
The perception of, time.
It truly is, fascinating.
It’s much like Light as a particle, or thoughts, as a particle, which can be directed. But, not controlled?
It’s automotive related too. I write the installed date on batteries when swapped out. “How the hell did 9 years slide by on that truck battery!” Off to Bi-Mart we go.
Which reminds me, the truck fuel filter will be another surprise when I see the installed date on it.
Hi Sparkey,
Got the QJet back together and installed; the TA is running right again! But I still need to drive into town to get fresh gas; the tank is about a quarter full of E10 and that needs to be burned off ASAP. I hope to find the time today.
Nuke Iowa ==> ethanol problem solved.
https://postimg.cc/HJwmqfwF
Hey man, why you wanna rub me out along with the riff-raff?
Perhaps, end goobermint subsidies to Industrial Agriculturalist and end goobermint mandates to put ethanol at the pumps might be a better route?
…Who am I kidding, “But don’t expect dumbshit Americans to realize that. They are easy pickings because they are implicated by their own complicity.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/06/paul-craig-roberts/american-democracy-is-a-hoax-the-rulers-of-america-are-not-the-people/
Sorry — no threat of mass destruction intended.
I was just doing an over-the-top, emotional imitation of Potus Magnus.
Forgot to Capitalize all the Nouns, though. My Ba-a-a-a-dddd! 🙁
I know.
Carry on.
…When the helicopters & single prop planes are dusting everyone with who-knows-what…. it’s An option worth considering, maybe even, irrespective of the “collateral damage”? Idk.
Remove the air cleaner, spray Brakleen into the carburetor, if the engine fires, it’s all good.
I left some ethanol gas in the lawnmower tank over winter, added new gas in the spring to top the tank off.
Still wouldn’t go. Dumped the gas from the lawnmower tank, two layers appeared, the lower layer was orangish in color, the old gas, the top layer was the new gas, wouldn’t mix.
Strip a bread tie to the wire, clean out the carburetor, the small holes, it’ll go again.
Brakleen again, it should fire. Get good gas, the motor goes.
Buy a new spark plug.
Yep nothing like a killer solvent to get the “juices” flowing again! Wonder how long the original formula will be available? For those of us old enough to remember it smells real close to carbon tetrachloride.
Grams, back in the ‘60s, had a can of Bartells Spot Remover – pure carbon tet!
It’s interesting. CCL4 was probably far more chemically stable than the compounds they use for cleaning these days. The banning of R12, leaded gasoline, DDT and other of the original compounds has led to Y1234, oxygenated fuel, atrizine, glyphosate and other even more harmful cancer causing compounds in our food and water supply.
I wonder what it would be like if we had stayed with things closer to the way they were in the 1960s.
Hi Swamp,
Yup. Meanwhile, every other person I see is not just heavy but obese. I’ve read half the population takes at least one prescription pill regularly. See how much healthier we are these days?
One afternoon I had time to kill before a meeting, so I sat in a parking lot right next to Wal-Mart. I am not sure whether I should have laughed, cried, shook my head, or done all three as I watched the stream of shoppers with their carts exiting the store.
Morning, Shadow!
Yup. I go to Wal Mart every couple of weeks to grab cat litter and see the same. It’s really sad. And I have empathy for these people, too. I work out hard and run several miles every other day and even so, I’ve put on weight and have been having trouble losing it. Maybe it’s because I’m over the hill now and my metabolism isn’t what it was. Or maybe it is something else – such as whatever’s in the food now. All I know for sure is that I never used to have any trouble losing a few pounds if I put them on and – until recently – could still wear the same waist size pants I wore in college. Not anymore. So if I am having trouble what of people who do not or cannot work out?
What is really sad and disheartening, is that for those who are surviving paycheck-to-paycheck, they simply cannot afford to buy and eat healthy. Buying organic? Forget it, and even the non-organic can be out of reach for many. Sadly, boxed mac-n-cheese is cheap, and it fills ones belly. No, it is not healthy, but buying boxes of that will stretch ones increasingly worthless dollar farther. I have known some who have sincerely tried to lose weight, failed, and simply give up trying anymore. And for some, they resign themselves to such a life of obesity, because for many, trying to stay in shape (aka, not round, as Garfield would quip) is akin to running backwards on a treadmill, and going nowhere fast. Yeah, I fight the ‘mid-life spread’. Am doing okay so far, but it is still a fight. And there again, I cannot help but wonder if the unaffordable is the most healthy? After all, the sicker the populace, the more dependent they are on Big Pharma, and become patients-for-life. As the old saying goes, “follow the money”.
Well-said, Shadow –
Real food is expensive food. If you cannot afford it, what do you eat? And then what do you get? Whether this is deliberate or not, the end result is the same. People looked awful in the Soviet Union. And now Americans do, too.
I use stabil in the lawnmower gas and dont have any carb issues. Not the same as your quardrajet, but i don’t bother draining the tanks or running them dry before winter storage.
Sta-Bil is a lifesaver in my old 1985 truck. As well as the genset and chainsaw.
I overheard a small engine mechanic/shop owner telling a guy from the local fire dept. that the use of that pink stuff was a huge money-maker for his shop. …It was as if, in small small engines, with small tanks, that stuff was goo.
…But, when I asked about my mower with a larger tank, he said don’t worry about it and didn’t want to expand the conversation further.
…I wonder sometimes if Pri-D, or some spelling like that, is better, but time got the best of me & I never looked into it.
I ran out of warm weather last Fall early Winter so the weed whacker and the leaf blower got a good dose of StaBil instead of draining the tanks. The 30 year old Homelite whacker lit right up last month the usual two pulls its running. I was shocked the Stihl blower started after about six pulls. That thing after 15 years, since new, is a continuing mystery of finagling to get started. “Stihl” is Scandahoovian for “bitch to start”.
Hi Helot.
The Taryl Fixes All YouTube channel has a video where we tested Pri- G and it works great. It can make bad gas run OK but you need to use more than what the label says. It took gas from surging badly to running smoothly; testing was with an L head Tecumseh.
Tech tip:
To clean out a carb quickly, try holding a rag over the carb’s opening while revving (choking it off), then quickly pull the rag away, forcing a rush of pressurized fuel/air through.
Also, a bottle of Berryman down the yap while revving will do wonders.
I always do these things first before I resort to a full tear down. It works most of the time.
…and you need to get out there and drive it at least once a month! Shame on you! 🙂
I know, Philo… I know!
I feel like I never have time for anything anymore.