Shell Game

Money is a rather touchy subject overall, rather it be how to save, invest, or spend it. Just look at taxes and health care reform. So, when you pay for something and you dish out a substantial amount of money for it, you hope that you get your money's worth out of it. For example, you purchase a brand new Cadillac off of eBay, when you go and pick up your $50k car you discover that instead of a brand new caddy you instead got a '72 Pinto that looks like it was sat on blocks in front a ramshackle trailer for 50 years while the squirrels and cats had their way with it. I think it is obvious that you would be quite upset by the incident and say lots of things like oh gee, gosh, golly darn, while contemplating the justifiable slaughter of the individual(s) behind the scam. But what you don't know is that a quite similar scam is being inflicted upon us right this very second as we speak.
Gasoline prices have skyrocketed over the past ten years, so much that it has altered our way of life and thinking. Instead of driving a nice big comfortable SUV with a 10.5 liter engine, we now shop for Fred Flintstone powered clown cars. So when you buy gas now you think of how to get the best fuel economy and dreading the next fill up. But what you may or may not know is that now when you are buying gas, you aren't getting just gas. The sign on the pump is rather small, it reads 10% ethanol. ETHANOL! Not gasoline. So, you might be asking what is the big deal? For a little over a year now I've been noticing a little silver and yellow sticker on tailgates, on closer inspection I saw it reads E85 ethanol equipped. So the newer vehicles are designed for use with ethanol, but what about me. The BEAST! was made in 1993 and does what its told, all while sounding quite seductive like a lady talking about rate of twist in Lazzeroni barrels with a southern accent. Sexy, much unlike the current fad of sounding like Miny Me getting a purple nurple. Anyhow, the BEAST! is not meant to run off of ethanol, so you might wonder why exactly I'm bringing this up. Well when lets look to the professionals for advice on the subject. Bud Tillman of St. Lucie Outboard Marine says: "Corn and cane make great whiskey, not fuel" is company handled over 200 cases where boats were damaged from the use of ethanol as an additive in 2008. So lets look at the "scientific" reasons for this problem.
Ethanol doesn't really mix with gasoline, they have a non- polar bond. Next what settles in is condensation that bonds with the ethanol, (everyone knows water in the gas tank is a no go) which pulls the ethanol and the octane levels from the gasoline and the know pretty much useless fuel to the top. Ethanol is a very potent varnish dissolving rust and gunk from your fuel tank sending it straight to your filters and possibly your fuel injectors causing a nice clog. Wow! I'm going to have to keep shelling out money for a rather underhanded policy just to keep my truck running! Yea!!! Mom, Dad, don't expect much for Christmas this year.
So those of you that have the extra money lying around to buy one of these new fancy cars you could probably care less about everyone else that doesn't have one. Well Mr. you are effected too, because ethanol is 28% less effective than straight up gas. So, you are paying for Pepsi, and getting water. Your fuel economy is considerably less than with straight gas, I'm not talking about what a truck cap can fix, this is more. Throwing stuff on the roof rack is known to lower mileage, but to compare it to putting something on the roof would be to through Oprah up there. So, why are they doing this to us? The whole lowering our carbon footprint garbage doesn't fly, because plants need carbon dioxide to survive, and there are more trees here then when Columbus landed. Here is a better reason for why, they are too stupid to drill for American oil. This cuts down on the actual amount of oil that we use, but doesn't properly address the problem. We are getting oil from people that wipe there butts with a bare hand one second and our plotting our demise next. The whole green movement needs to realize that we are the best place to drill because we are the safest. In the mean time I will continue looking for pumps that aren't trying to kill the BEAST!