“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” Attributed to Rita Mae Brown
When the first snowstorm blew in last winter, I hadn’t used my snowblower much in two years. I am the neighborhood snow remover for four driveways; most guys like playing with toys that have loud motors. I was happy to fire it up. And fire it up. And fire it up. Wouldn’t start. Shoveled out the old fashioned way only about five inches of light snow. Went to the local hardware store and bought a sparkplug.
Wanted to get ready in case the big one hit that the long term weatherman was telling us might happen, and I did what any reasonably handy person has done for two hundred and fifty years. Watched a YouTube video, took apart the eight things that had to come off to get to the sparkplug and replaced it in my driveway. Our 24” Ariens has an alternate electric starter, so I ran the power cord out from the outlet off the back deck. After a little prompting, she started up. The pull cord hasn’t been able to get it going for a couple of years. Let it run for a while, and while the thing ran steadily, it ran rough. I thought I would wait until the annual preventive maintenance of the spring to let the experts diagnose the imperfections. Since we hadn’t had much snow for two years, I thought we would be OK.
The biggest blizzard in fifty years hit hard on my birthday in February and kept us inside feeding the woodstove for nearly two days. Deep, heavy, and drifted. Just under three feet of the stuff according to those that measure such things. My limited mechanical aptitude held up for the storm. I had stationed the snowblower at the end of the driveway under a tied down tarp and with the power cord running to the house. I was able to get my driveway cleared. Two or three hours more cleaned off those of my elderly neighbors.
The town plows were MIA for a couple of days on the side roads keeping the main routes open, but a fine young man from nearby Escobar Farm roared in on his giant tractor with a front end loader bigger than my car. The wheels were taller than I was. He seemed to enjoy running noisy machinery at least as much as I did, and he opened the five roads in the whole neighborhood until we all had access to East Main Road that the town had cleared. Free at last.
All was well on Birch Road. We could get to church, Home Depot, Clement’s Market, and Coastal Roasters coffee shop, and that’s all a guy really needs.
“If your liquors too red it’ll swell up your head. You better stick to that good ole mountain dew.” Stanley Brothers, Mountain Dew
When the daffodils came up and red wing blackbirds came back to the suet cage next to our birdfeeder, I realized I was well behind in preventive maintenance schedule for the snowblower. My old snowblower service company closed its doors for good last summer, so I had to find a new one. I don’t have a pickup truck anymore and needed someone who could pick up the machine. The company that services our lawnmower every year didn’t work on Ariens. A trusted friend who had lived here for decades recommended a small place a couple of towns away. When I called, the owner was friendly, smart, and knowledgeable. Picked it up in a day. Gave me a reasonable estimate for the PM work.
He called me a couple of days later and asked if it had been running rough, cycling higher revs with slowdowns, and needed more choke than required when it was new. “Yes.” Ah. He asked if I ran regular gas in it. “Yes.” Spending the extra on ethanol free gas and buying it in cans someplace other than a gas station didn’t seem critical to me. Much cheaper and more convenient at the bottom of the hill Cumberland Farm into my own can.
“Thought so,” he said.
“Oh, oh,” I replied to myself.
“Your carburetor needs to be rebuilt. The jets are corroded and ruined. It’s the ethanol in the gas. I knew it as soon as I started it up.”
Somewhere in the ancient past I knew that too. I ran special straight gas in my chainsaw like the saw shop warned me to do. I may have even known somewhere in my corroded memory that I should have done the same thing for the lawnmower and snowblower small engines but hadn’t. I either ran them dry at the end of their season or put some Stabile in the tank for the off season. I thought that was good enough, and they kept running. Until they didn’t. The indestructible lawnmower soldiers on. I promise to treat it better. But the snowblower carburetor is a winter creature and less forgiving.
Four hundred dollars later, I had the lesson permanently engraved. Much cheaper than a new self-propelled, 24” competent snowblower, but four hundred I could have better used for a weekend in Maine to visit old friends. When I got it back, it ran like a different machine with power and enthusiasm; started with one pull on the cord. Who knew?
I should have.
“I don’t know if I’m smart, but I think I can see, when someone is pullin’ the wool over me.” Bob Dylan, Let Me Die in My Footsteps
Large motors in cars have been adapted by their manufacturers who see which way the wind blows to run on ten percent ethanol biofuel mixed into our petroleum. Small engines like chainsaws, lawnmowers, and my unfortunate snowblower have smaller jets more easily corroded, and the fuel stored by less than diligent owners like me can sit unused off season for a longer time. Ethanol attracts water; if enough water accumulates, separation can occur, resulting in a water/ethanol layer that can cause corrosion, poor combustion, and fuel-system problems. It can even eat your carburetor.
Ethanol is most often manufactured from ground up corn, a convenient cooperative of government mandates, farm state politicians, a zealous farm lobby and late to the green party Big Oil anxious to appear agreeable to the people who will occasionally superglue themselves to museum masterpieces to save our much abused home planet. While it does do its job for the corn farmers by keeping food prices and sales up. Things are more expensive for the consumer, especially for those least able to pay. But you have to break a few eggs, and I’m not sure how much it accomplishes in keeping the oceans from rising into our kitchens and slaughtering millions along the coasts as climate Ph.Ds. Greta Thunberg and Al Gore predict.
The corn lobby, agribusiness, ethanol refiners, farm state congress members who enjoy political donations and lucrative speaker’s fees at conventions in places like Turks and Caicos, and well paid, well-nourished lobbyists love ethanol, but artificially supported prices because of the five or six billions of bushels of corn used to make the stuff every year affect a wide variety of other folks. More expensive corn on the table and the increase in ground corn feed raises dairy and beef price affects everyone who buys groceries, which is most of us. Lower income consumers, some poorer countries which rely on food imports to survive, livestock farmers, and anyone buying gas take it good and hard as H.L Menken warned us.
Some critics say ethanol just placates the planet protectors but with no real positive effects for the planet. Ethanol is about a third less efficient than the petroleum version, so it reduces over all miles per gallon by about 3%. When you add in the manufacturing energy to make the stuff, the additional diesel used for farm equipment and to transport it from farm to manufacturer to the place where it is diluted into the bulk of our fuel, and the energy to produce the extra fertilizer it takes to grow it, there are those who say it does not save much carbon from being pumped into the atmosphere, if any. And it ate my carburetor, so I am not feeling particularly charitable to the corn lobby this month. I know it’s my fault deep down, but I would have liked some help protecting myself from myself.
I can live with burning straight real gas in my small engines. I’m probably not despoiling the atmosphere very much, and at eighty, the shoveling and mowing with an old hand reel mower is a bit beyond my long term capability. If you want to superglue yourself to the Mona Lisa on my account, I have no objection and understand your concern.
” Nothing is ever really lost as long as we remember it.” Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Golden Road
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