Over the Memorial Day weekend I had some projects, chores and honey do's to get to before I could jump on the grill and put flame to flesh. No problem, I was looking foreword to building an appetite so I could eat my weight in meats. First things first I had to get the yard cleaned up and mowed. After all the rain we had a very limited window and I wanted to make the most of it. I got up early and headed outside to get started, only the mower wouldn't start. So I quickly looked it all over and yep, carburetor wasn't delivering fuel. 

So instead of getting an early start I ended up completely dissembling the entire top and sides of the mower to get to the carburetor so I could remove, clean and inspect it. Sure enough it was all gummed up so I cleaned everything up and reassembled the mower after an hour or so and she cranked right up and ran strong. I let someone borrow my mower awhile back and they committed the ultimate small engine sin, they filled it with regular ethanol gasoline! If you know anything about ethanol you know you should never put it in a small engine, or really any engine that's mid-nineties or older. It's really bad for them.

Ethanol completely gums up and will actually destroy small engines. That includes mowers, weed eaters, blowers, chainsaws and every other small engine out there. Only use 100% REAL GAS in small engines or you'll end up having to do a bunch of cleaning and repairs. Same goes for older vehicles. anything mid-nineties and older has trouble with ethanol. In truth ALL VEHICLES have trouble with ethanol gasoline.

So after fixing the mower and finally getting the yard all done I had some errands to run so I jumped in the truck to head to Walmart. Guess what? My truck dies on me in the middle of an intersection and I almost didn't get it re-started. I popped the hood and the carburetor is flooding and shooting gas everywhere. That and it's getting hot and vapor-locking at the same time. Another victim of bad gas and ethanol. I have a 1978 Ford F-150 and it hates anything but 100% real gas. Looks like I'll be taking that one apart and cleaning it too!

I must have uttered the words F'ing ethanol a hundred times over the Memorial Day weekend. I ended up having to remove, inspect, clean and repair 2 carburetors due to it's gummy and corrosive nature. Ethanol should just go away and be outlawed as an additive to any gasoline. It's terrible stuff and causes more harm than good. From small engines to older vehicles, even the newer vehicles would have better performance and fuel economy if it weren't for ethanol. I know, I know it's better for the environment because it reduces emissions. Sure it does, everyone's breaking down and their engines won't crank over!

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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