Fuel Life

[oversize]

An interesting article on the life of fuel for those of you that don't drive your cars regularly (me included).  Scary stuff!    :

http://www.autospeed.com.au/cms/A_112237/article.html

[Squiggle Dog]

My roommate has a habit of leaving his cars parked for months or years with less than 1/4 tank of gas (back in the moist Washington air) and I knew that couldn't be good for them. Now that he has a long commute, he has finally started filling the tank full in his daily driver. When you have several cars, it's a part-time job to keep them from rapidly deteriorating, let alone actually making progress on them.

[oversize]

In summary, the article says fuel won't last more than ONE MONTH in a car and not more than 6 months in a sealed container (I presume that's full).  I used to think it was 3 months in a car, so I'm quite shocked by this revised time limit.

Years ago I was told to leave a tank full when a car was not in use, to prevent condensation.  But we seem to forget that even 'sealed' fuel systems aren't truly closed and that was back in the days when we had lead as a fuel stabilizer.  Personally I don't think any fuel should be left in an old car and that you should only add what you're gunna use immediately from a jerry can.  I'm thinking hard about what could be used to combat moisture in an empty tank.  The only thing I can think of ATM is metho, but that will evaporate quickly.

Combined with the fact the price of fuel is about to go up again, there's a good argument for converting to LPG; something I'd previously considered, but discounted due to reduced range, a drop in power, more weight, less room and originality issues....

[Squiggle Dog]

Fortunately, my W116 is my daily driver, so I don't have to worry about the fuel setting for too long, though it does take a while to burn through a tank. Now I am curious what the shelf life of biodiesel is.

[Squiggle Dog]

Now I am curious what the shelf life of biodiesel is.

I did some research, and the consensus is 8 months to a year, with 6 months being the recommended safe window. Apparently, adding vitamin E will help extend its life. Haha!

[Tony66_au]

Mark its a subjective answer mate,

I have 4 cars here that never get driven off the property and get kept with full or near full tanks of fuel.

My Standard fuel is Caltex 95 or 98 and I find it lasts 6 to 8 months before turning shitty, I have used BP 98 before that and 3 months tops with fuel injected cars and less with carb'd cars.

The EB Fairmont I have here hasn't seen the road in 4 years and came in with a full tank of BP 98 but now has Liberty E10 95 which has been in there for 2 years and the car still starts and runs well every time on 2 year old fuel but in a daily it gives so so economy (Which is why i use Caltex fuels instead).

So I came to the conclusion that fuels change too much and too often to get baseline data on ageing (I tried) and there are too many variables so now I start and run em with whatever they have in them and I top em all off with E10 95 or 98 until I get them on the road.

BTW as for E10 issues?  I used it fine in a car that was shown to have issues with Ethanol and even ran it 50/50 Race Ethanol/92 octane pump fuel for a while back when i was messing with alternate fuels and it never skipped a beat so not even the E10 issue seems 100% reliable.

Its a conspiracy man lol

[Tony66_au]

Oh and as an interesting asides........

For years we poured Metho into our fuel tanks to combat the water from underground fuel tanks, Metholated spirits is basically Ethanol and adding a 1/4 gallon to a tank of fuel wasn't unusual until more recent times, So we have been using Ethanol fuels for years and after 4 or 5 tanks the Metho to fuel ratio was pretty much the same as E10.

[oversize]

What's everyone's thoughts on adding 1% ATF to the fuel??  I've heard it has many cleaning benefits (including carbon).  What about some in the engine just before an oil change?

[KenM]

I've been using ATF in the fuel of my 450 at 2% for about a year now, but I haven't done a lot of k's and the engine was very clean internally to start with. I have noticed though that it does seem to loosen up

crap within the system because when I do an oil change I find deposits of very fine silt in the oil filter housing, which I didn't notice before so it seems like it is performing a cleaning function as intended. It can

be a different matter if your engine is dirty to start with, filters can block up rapidly apparently, fuel and oil. It's also been reported that a good dump of atf in the oil a couple of hundred k's before an oil change

can have a rapid effect. There is a lot of talk on its use on various forums if you go looking.