Haha, it's bad E10 and bad chinese craftmanship that makes dirt plug up the carbs and old cracked petroleum fuel gets stale. Yep. Absolutely. Just don't mention neglective owners.
The only thing E10 does is to reduce dependency on the arab oil wells and reduce net co2 a slight bit. It does not blow up OPE any more than regular cracked gas does.
This E10 talk is just a urban legend that correlates with mower problems in this minute. But guess what, OPE reliability was just as bad 30 yrs ago or worse!
It's just that memory plays us.
Improvements in the broken ope also correlates with the fact that the owner:
1. Repair the engine and clean it, start keeping it in a shed
2. Start paying attention to corrosion, lube, spark plug
3. Hear about old fuel and E10
4. Buys a gallon of "new fuel" with no E in it and also start to rotate the jugs to avoid old fuel.
Result? Yes, it seems that taking care of the equipment actually works. But the not so sharp user draws the other conclusion: I stopped using E10 (and started doing lots of maintenance but I forget that work) and, behold, my stuff works! No more E10. It was not the rain, not dirty cans, not old plugs, not bad filters that killed my stuff, it was the bloody fuel!
Rant, I know.
