Ethanol dissolves a lot of things that regular gas doesn't. I'm reasonably sure it was either something in the fuel now, or it was residue built up from decades of use that started dissolving and gunking things up over time. As Tom suggests, the ehtanol in most of today's fuel would keep most of this stuff solvent as long as fuel was flowing. In my case I didn't have a problem until the car was parked for about four months. Had the problem shortly after I started running it -- VERY shortly -- like while idling after a few minutes before I got it back on the road. The ethanol enriched gas could have dissolved built-up residue in the tank over the time it sat. Since it wasn't gradually flowing through the engine it had time to concentrate in the fuel that was in the tank. So there was enough to stick the valves in the fuel when it was started again whereas there wasn't enough concentration before. I've only had (or head of) the valves stick when a car has sat for a while, usually more than one month.
--------- Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:52:54 -0700 From: tom jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx> Subject: Re: [AMC-list] d@mned holley carb anyway To: "AMC, Rambler, Nash, Jeep and family" <amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Message-ID: <c81e13650906201652n259527bfj32c30ae9d6f85713@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" My first thought was plastic dissolved, because it only manifested as an acute problem on the stems of the intake valves. Only there! The carb bowl did have a "dirty toilet" look where whateveritwas evaporated right at the top, but whateveritwas stayed solvent, and new gas would dissolve the old goo, and so the inside of the carb never got all that dirty. -- Frank SwygertPublisher, "American Motors Cars" Magazine (AMC)
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