Cirrus says it doesn't approve of the use of G100UL or any other unleaded fuel in its SR series aircraft but G100UL's developer says that position flies in the face of the airframer's own FAA-supervised testing. Cirrus issued a statement on Thursday saying it now believes that G100UL that leaked from an SR22 in California "resulted in damage to airframe components and could create airworthiness concerns."
We are hammering this topic into itsy bitsy tiny shreds and pieces. If we tie structural component failure to the fuel which is used to cool the lead spewing Frankenstein motor up front, we’ll get our collective bums out of this nasty liability slingshot.
Eureka!
So, in essence if I pour a cup of GAMI fuel in with the regular 100LL and the front of my Cirrus falls off, its the fuels fault. Perfect.
Hope the composite plane manufacturers legal departments are taking lots of notes! There could be a graded quiz/ test on this.
What a mess. It’s hard to believe this has been going on for as 20 or more years.
Myself, at this point, I’m not switching from 100LL until at least 90% of single engine planes are running on the “other” or 100LL is no longer available or cheap enough.
I’ll let the masses be my ASTM certification. At least I’ll have a better probability of not being an outlier
Ah; Cirrus is Lawyer phobic; as is every business in the US. Simpler to not change anything than to change something and wait while the lawyer vultures circle. If the GAMI aircraft hasn’t had a problem, if testing of the structure materials shows no problems, what is this person complaining doing which is causing issues? What skin is in the game? Cirrus talks about “seals”; Seals are a problem with all fuels; seals and sealants deteriorate over time and require replacement; nothing new there. Cirrus is simply taking action to avoid being a target, because Lawyers don’t need real issues to sue, any change in anything must mean there is something wrong and a suit ensues!
This is an utter and complete Mongolian Cluster ( ). We seem to have at least 4 players here. The incumbent 100LL sellers are of course trying to throw every monkey wrench into the gears possible. At least two vendors of unleaded fuel are busy with rent-seeking sabotage of each other, Now Cirrus is in the mix because apparently someone got a stain on something.
On the other hand, before everyone thinks the complaints are complete bollocks, the tale of Betram fuel tanks should be studied carefully for lessons, Betram boats are well known as good offshore fishing boats and are quite well made. For ages they molded their fuel tanks integral to the hull. All was well if the boats were diesel. When ethanol gas came around, gas engine Bertrams started suffering engine failures causes by mysterious black goo wrecking the engines.
This turned out to be the ethanol dissolving the resin the hull and tanks were made from! The chemicals would pass right through the fuel filters but ruin the engines like the old prank of dumping sugar in the tank. As far as I know the engines were ruined before enough resin was removed to compromise the hull. Any current gas engine Bertram has new engines and aluminum fuel tanks installed to replace the originals.
A final thought - A lot of you think screwing around enough will end up in 100LL forever. It will not, it IS going away at some point.
The chemicals would pass right through the fuel filters but ruin the engines like the old prank of dumping sugar in the tank.
Sugar is a poor example - it dissolves very poorly in gasoline (less than a teaspoon in 15 gallons). Snopes.com has a good writeup on this urban legend, which includes a bit of advice on using sugar as a revenge tool:
…just sprinkle a fair amount of sugar on the ground beneath the opening to the fuel tank of your victim’s car and leave an empty sugar sack in a conspicuous spot near the vehicle. Then sit back and watch your victim go wild trying to figure out how to deal with all that sugar he assumes is now in his gas tank.
Braly’s stubbornness has brought a lot of this on himself. It’s AVGAS, not AI. Face it, there’s not enough money in GA fuel to interest the major players in petro. A couple still produce it as a sideline, but they know the downside liability outweighs the profits to be had so as long as it’s fairly easy to stick with the status quo, they will. Producing ethanol-free MOGAS for the bulk of GA and letting attrition and replacement of big piston powered aircraft with Jet-A powered ones is an easy solution.
Or we can splash in the 100UL quagmire accomplishing nothing until we are no longer part of the final result.
I would love to be able to get ethanol-free unleaded avgas: same problem - the ethanol dissolves the airplane. What hadn’t been thought about was that when you let E10 sit, it starts to separate and then you have concentrated ethanol attacking the plastics. Not a problem in cars, because fuel doesn’t sit for long; big problem in airplanes, which from time to time sit for 6 weeks (or more) between flights.
The plastics are fine with gasoline. They’re fine with lead. They’re not okay with lead substitutes, so far.
Separately, our engines are NOT so okay with lead. For most of us the lead fouls the plugs and shortens engine life.
Most of us only need unleaded avgas (UL94). We’ve all heard that “60% of the fuel is burned by aircraft that require 100LL” but I haven’t seen the data to support that. My prediction: either we all standardize on UL94, or we’re all going to wind up burning Jet A - and that’s going to be a much more expensive transition.
“Easy” in the sense that it’s basically a “do nothing” solution, but not so easy for those who fly those “big piston powered aircraft”. There is a rather significant cost jump in going from piston to jet/turboprop, especially if you factor in “big piston” helicopters. Letting that segment of GA effectively die out would not be a good result for GA as a whole.
How old were the Cirrus airplanes whose sealant was affected by G100UL?
What sealant have they been using? (Had it been replaced since Cirrus built the airplane.)
Not many ‘big piston helicopters’ flying, perhaps a few S-55 and siblings re-engined with turboshaft engines.
Helicopters switched to turbines long ago for the weight advantage. Bell 47s were in operation in the 1960s, the smaller Robinson helicopters are flying but the latest product is turboshaft.
There are big fixed-wing airplanes with roundies, show ones like the B-29 that will be at AirVenture this summer, plus single-engine racers. The working airplanes - Martin Mars waterbombers - are retiring to museums. (Few CL215s operating, slowly being converted to turboprop engines as most of the CL line already have.)
It has been thought of PLENTY by anyone with a boat, chainsaw, or antique car. Ethanol gas has caused enormous problems with boats and probably is responsible for at least 2/3s of the repairs outboards shops do. Boats and airplanes have fuel tanks vented to atmosphere and ethanol absorbs water. The longer it sits, the more water is absored into the fuel and eventually the ethanol and water separate out from the gas into a sticky non-flammable goo. As I found out the hard way when my fuel cap gasket had a minor leak, my water separator was totally helpless to fix this issue. Bad enough on a boat where an engine failure is not usually life threatening, but even worse in an airplane. The conventional sump the tanks preflight becomes useless.
There is a reason boat owners will pay about $1 a gallon over the price of ethanol car gas to find a marina selling ethanol-free fuel. It has some weird designation like “Recreational 94 octane ethanol free”. Perfect for many airplanes too
Whoa…
Cirrus claims that Shell sells a 100VLL avgas. untitled
Perhaps changed from “To prove those properties, Shell will embark upon an intensive program that will include submission to ASTM International for a new piston-engine fuel spec. Shea said the new spec will be almost identical to D-910 in performance, but will vary slightly.” ( Shell Announced Unleaded Avgas Replacement - AVweb).
IOW Shell’s proposed fuel needed changes to the ASTM standard.
