Hacker News

points by ljf 1 day ago | 0 comments

Amuses me hear this - I ran a moped from a large tank of multi-year old petrol, and it got by fine. But maybe a modern car might be more picky?

[–] ssl-3 1 day ago

Last year, I let a fairly new portable generator with low hours on sit with gas in it for 6 months and it would not fire up. It wouldn't even sputter.

That was surprising to me because it was working quite well when parked, and I'm used to doing things like leaving lawnmowers outside continuously (including over the winter) without much trouble, but that's what happened anyway.

I drained the old fuel out and replaced with fresh, and it fired up on the first subsequent half-assed pull of the starter rope.

(Which reminds me: It's been six months again already. Time to see if it still works.)

[–] timr 1 day ago

Fuel stabilizer is cheap insurance for anything that overwinters with fuel in it -- motorcycles, boat engines, etc.

You have to put in in the tank and run it for a bit to make sure that the carbs don't have untreated fuel inside.

[–] mgerdts 1 day ago

A fairly new snowblower of mine had gas left in it over the summer. Before the first snowfall of the following winter it would not start. A dissection of the carburetor revealed numerous places where small passages were completely filled with a sticky gummy substance that had to be mechanically removed. After cleaning and reassembly, it fired right up with fresh gas. Maybe the old gas would have worked just fine once it could flow. Clearly having the gas sit in there had adverse effects.

[–] ssl-3 1 day ago

The carb on this generator has a drain for the bowl. It should've been dry in there when parked. I don't know what the insides looked like because replacing the gas was easy and it worked, so I stopped troubleshooting at that point. :)

[–] greenavocado 1 day ago

I just did this as well. Fired up my moped on 2 year old stabilized gas. Runs fine.