The Environmental Protection Agency failed to find the cause of thousands of clogged fuel injectors in Milwaukee cars after a four-month investigation.
"It is very frustrating to examine this for so long but not to come out of it with some answers," EPA Region 5 spokesman John Mooney told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Investigatiors examined complaints from 501 motorists after their vehicles developed injector problems last fall.
More than 70 percent of the vehicles were GM cars and trucks and 46 percent of the owners had purchased gasoline at Citgo, which controls 30 percent of the Milwaukee area's retail gasoline market. Some of the more than 700 vehicle owners affected spent hundreds of dollars for engine repairs.
GM blamed sulfate salts -- tiny inorganic salts formed by sulfur, oxygen and water -- for fouling the fuel injectors and said ethanol added to gasoline might have caused the problem.
The EPA requires gasoline in southern Wisconsin be blended with ethanol, a corn-based alternative fuel, but does not regulate ethanol quality.
© Copyright 2005 by United Press International
