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It was serious in that I currently drive about 25K miles per year, significantly down from the 48K that I was doing from 1980 through 2005. Most of it, since 1995, has been in central Arizona (~100 mile radius of Phoenix), but I have regular occasion to service accounts further out, like Bullhead City, Showlow, and Thatcher; plus I back up engineers in Tucson and Las Vegas, NV. Highway 17 (between Phoenix and Flagstaff) sees about half a dozen car fires a year. The Phoenix area has seen at least two in the last eight weeks, one blocking I-10 this morning.
Yes, I've seen far more car fires in Arizona in 13 years than I did in the previous 29 years in California, where, much of the time, I was driving more than twice as much.
Dale R.
Mike Wills wrote:
Not sure just how serious you were with that comment. To answer your question, over the past several years I can recall seeing a grand total of one car fire on the side of the road. I live in southern Cal and drive about 20K miles/year. Given the number of cars I've seen on the road over the past few years (probably hundreds of thousands if not millions) versus the number of car fires I've seen (1) I like my statistical odds in this unscientific analysis even if that one fire was related to ethanol use (which obviously is not at all clear).
Your own personal anecdotal fuel system issues while scary, have no proven linkage to ethanol in the fuel used. Could simply be another example of shoddy workmanship, poor engineering, or any of a thousand things. Too bad you couldnt recover the defective parts to come up with a definitive explanation.
Given the on the edge nature of the average rotary engine aircraft installation, the small statistical base, and the relatively large number of issues and teething troubles we see during early taxi and flight testing, I think there are far more significant things to worry about than ethanol in the fuel.
What I'd really like to see is some of the higher time guys (Tracy, Dave Leonard, etc...) who routinely burn Mogas tells us what their experience has been.
Mike Wills
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dale Rogers" <dale.r@cox.net>
To: "Rotary motors in aircraft" <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 11:07 AM
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re: Ethanol production
Mike Wills wrote:
I dont recall seeing scores of cars pulled over on the shoulder of the road with failures directly attributable to ethanol use.
You haven't? I don't understand how you've missed them - the columns of black smoke should have pointed straight to them.
Maybe you only drive at night? |;)
Okay, there was a bit of hyperbole there, but I can't help but wonder if the increased numbers of on-the-road car fires I'm seeing as I cruise the freeways of AZ and NV isn't due, in part, to alcohol.
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