To prevent damage to your equipment, chainsaws and other small engines should be fueled only with ethanol free gasoline. It’s worth paying higher prices for ethanol free gas and to make a special trip to fill up small gas cans with this far superior fuel. If that is the only take away from this article I will be thrilled, but for those of you looking to dive deeper, read on. 

Gas pumps have a dirty secret: the hose still contains the type of gasoline that was chosen by the previous customer. For automobiles this small amount of leftover gas makes no difference. But when filling a small gas can it could be a significant contaminant.

Inspection standards ensure that the amount of gas leftover in the hose is no more than 1/3 of a gallon, but those of us who buy 5 gallons, 2.5 or even worse 1 gallon of saw gas at a time may be putting significant quantities of corn liquor through our tools instead of petroleum.

That’s up to a full third of your saw gas that is tainted with moonshine! Well, more like a strong Vermont-Style double IPA since the gas is only up to 10% abv.

Does this matter at all? Possibly not! Could you drive yourself to the brink of madness by worrying about details like this? From experience, yes.

But the solution for it is easy and painless if you drive a gasoline vehicle. I for one will be pumping the first gallon into my truck before filling a gas can from now on. If you drive a diesel, using a larger gas can rather than smaller would dilute the contamination. Or try using two gas cans, marking which one is truly ethanol free for use with your best equipment, and saving the impure gas for (insert the saw brand you hate here).

Hope this helps somebody!

Adam McCullough, VT UCF Urban Forester