rev up your engines, today I'm gonna show you, how
you can figure out what's wrong with your car using this little bitty plastic
test bottle, I had somebody tow me a car that had been in another shop for three weeks,
they couldn't figure out was wrong with it,
I kind of thought ah let's test the gasoline, they did all kinds of
electrical mechanical tests, but they didn't say anything about testing the
gasoline, this ethanol testing kit cost less than 10 bucks doesn't cost anything,
it can test the level of ethanol in your gasoline, and you might ask why is their
ethanol, commonly known as alcohol in my gasoline, so here's the story behind it,
when I was a young mechanic they used leaded gas, that's the
only gas you could buy was leaded gas, and they put lead into
the gasoline as both a lubricant for the valves the metal parts, and as an octane
booster to raise the octane, so the engines didn't knock when you're
accelerating, the lead would stop such pre-ignition, but of course as we
found out maybe the Romans never knew, that might have led to their decline
lead is not good for you whether you drink it or breathe it in, and since it
was in the car's gasoline you were breathing fumes out, lead is not good, so
they took the lad out, back in 1990 they passed a law that said you got to take
all that led out of gasoline by the year 1995, so there's no more leaded gas in
the United States, but they had to replace the lead with something, so they
replaced it with a chemical called MTBE and this MTBE both oxygenated the
fuel so it burnt cleaner, and raised the octane level so the engines wouldn't
knock when you accelerate, especially with higher compression engines, now this
additive worked perfectly fine at least for the machines, but not so great
for people, because it turned out that the MTBE
was getting spilled in the groundwater from underground tank leaks and stuff, so
that was the end of that, they had to get rid of that replace it with something
else, and much to the pleasure of Midwest corn farmers, they decided to replace it
with ethanol, alcohol that's made from corn mainly in the United States
ethanol actually burns very clean, and it the octane level of gasoline, it's got two
major problems with it, ethanol has less British thermal units, BTU less energy
than gasoline, so if you were in a car with a hundred percent ethanol in it, you
would get about 20% worse gas mileage than you would with the same amount of
gasoline because it has less energy, and two in higher concentration the ethanol
can destroy rubber products in the car, really absorbs water a lot, so you can
end up with too much water in your gas tank, so it's got its downsides too, but
that said the ethanol is in use in American gasoline, the most common use is
10% ethanol and 90% gasoline, look at the pumps a lot of times it'll say, may
contain 10% ethanol, well if it says may that means that almost always that's
what's in it, now such gasoline has additives in it so that little bit of ethanol
doesn't damage anything, now let's say if you've got one of those
flex fuel cars that will run on all kinds of different fuels, on those you
can use e85 which is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, but flex fuel cars that can use
that has special fuel pumps, fuel lines, fuel injectors, sensors
they got all kinds of stuff so that they can run on any
variety of ethanol gasoline mix, they'll work perfectly fine but only in those
flex fuel cars, if you have a normal car that isn't flex fuel, do not put the e85
in it, because if you have too much ethanol in your fuel in a normal car
it's not gonna run right, it's gonna absorb a
lot of water, but really how the heck are you
gonna know what's in your gas tank, well this little test kit comes in really
handy, I had a car towed over here a few weeks
ago, I did this test and find out that the vehicle had almost 30% ethanol in a
car that could only run 10% max, I ended up draining the gas tank changing the
fuel filter and then the car ran perfectly fine, and this was after
somebody else had worked on the car for weeks and weeks and couldn't figure out
what's wrong, just get a sample of the gasoline, take
the cap off and I'm gonna use this little pump I got in autozone for
less than 10 bucks, just goes right in and then just pump a
sample out, as you can see here you fill it up to water here, to this line
here's some tap water, not gasoline tap water, we fill it put a little line there
there now it's right at the line, that goes right on
the water fill line, now we fill it up to the gasoline fill line
which is the top line here, then what do we do, put the top on tight and shake it up,
that mixes it all up, that's gonna tell us how much ethanol is in that gasoline,
now as you can see it's settling down the lines coming down we wait until it
stops settling, you need patience as you can see it's starting to, so I'd say yeah
give it a good 10-15 minutes, okay as you can see it's settled out now, and it's
between 15 and 20 I'd say it looks like about 17% ethanol is it, so that's way
too much ethanol supposed to be a maximum of 10%, now like I said if you
had a flex-fuel car that can run on e85 that's 85% ethanol and that would run
perfectly fine on this, because the flex fuel cars can run on any amount of
ethanol from 0% to 85% ethanol, the sensors and the computers and the fuel
pump they can handle that and they tell the computer how much ethanol is in the
fuel, they have ways of testing it with their sensors, so that it can set up the
car to run, if it's 20% it'll run on that if it's 40% it'll run on that, but in a
normal modern car that isn't flex fuel you do not want more than 10% ethanol in
your fuel, and in this case it was about 17 percent which is bad, and in the case of
the vehicle I fixed a few weeks ago, the ethanol content was almost 30 percent,
I had to drain the gas tank, change the fuel filter, and then I filled it up with
super with some shell v-power gas and then drove it around for a day or two
and it went totally back to normal and the only way I would have ever figured
that out, is with this simple little test kit, hey who would have thought you need a
science kit to fix your car, but hey that's modern technology for you, and
since this is mechanic Monday I'm giving away one of these kits, to have a chance
to win just place a clean non offensive comment on the youtube comments below,
and the winner chosen randomly by computer, so if your
car isn't running right and has you pulling your hair out because you can't
figure out why, you'll be able to figure out if it's in your gasoline, because
there's too much ethanol in it, so if you never want to miss another one of my new
car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell