The problem with ethanol in power equipment is that it tends to dissolve rubber seals/tubes. For some reason small engine manufacturers were extremely slow to

The problem with ethanol in power equipment is that it tends to dissolve rubber seals/tubes. For some reason small engine manufacturers were extremely slow to switch to ethanol safe rubber and as a result one of the most common failure modes is for the carburetor jets to clog up with nasty semi-dissolved rubber. It's also just the case that people keep their old 80s and 90s lawn mowers running because they only put a couple dozen hours of runtime on the things each year so they don't tend to die except when the ethanol wrecks the fuel system.