Old gas

I have a bike I'm going to get running. The 1st probability carb needs
cleaning and the 2nd is that it needs a valve adjust. I'm going to check
both. The fuel tank is full and wasn't treated when it was parked. My
intent is to pour that into my truck. I've done this before and it never
seemed to hurt anything but I'm wondering if there's some "best practice"
to follow when doing this.. would it be a good thing for the truck if I
added say, octane booster of something to the stale gas?

Mike

 

And watch out if water is in the tank.
I have parked my vmax and not used the additional tank for a while.
When i filled the second tank up i was in luck i didnt use it.
After some days i put a waterglass under the tank and let the gas run out.
I got a full glass of water (0,2 liters) out of it before gas came out

What a horror if i had flooded the tank into the normal one.
If the carbs get 0,2 liters of normal water nothing would work anymore


Cherrs,
Ingo

 

My rule of thumb is if the gas has been sitting for more than a year then
dump it. It just isn't proper gasoline anymore. I wouldn't run 1 year old
gas in my tractor so I am not going to run it in my other vehicles. If
Sta-Bil has been added at the beginning of storage then that is a different
issue. 2 years is max for Sta-Bil treated gas.
YMMV
pierce

 

Good job checking for that. I left if filled to avoid the water thing.
Thank you gentleman.

Mike

 

Thank you.. I think it's probably been around 14 months. What I am trying
to do is dump it but that's a problem around here... I doubt we have any
easy way to get rid of gas without going thru some expensive eco-process
with guys in respirators and tyvec suits Is there anything specific you
are worried about in mixing the older gas with the newer stuff to burn it
down?. It'd be about 2 gallons in 30. Thanks again.

Mike

 

What's the big deal? I would just burn the old gas mixed in with the
equally old gas in my pick up truck's tank. Sometimes the truck sits
for a *long* time without being driven and the gas has time for some of
the more volatile parts of the blend to evaporate or whatever. So the
exhaust fumes smell *awful* while the truck is warming up. You can look
up "aldehyde" and find out more than you ever want to know about what
makes the fumes stinky.

Maybe you could rig up a hose from your exhaust pipe to run through a
bucket of water to collect the particulates and the stinkies as you
drive. But then what would you do with the water?

Another way to dispose of flammable hazardous waste is to call up your
local fire department and ask them when they (or some other city
agency) are collecting old paint, paint thinner, solvents, whatever.
They do take the stuff in big cities.

Or maybe you could put the gasoline in a can with a big sign on it that
says "BOMB", and leave it on the sidewalk in front of somebody else's
house. Just kidding.

A bit after 9/11 when everybody was still running around like Chicken
Little looking for ragheads falling out of the sky there was a bomb
threat phoned into the local police department. I wanted to go down the
block to the supermarket and when I poked my head out the door, a cop
yelled at me to evacuate the area, that there was a *possible bomb* on
the corner.

I told the cop he was crazy, that it was just a five-gallon bucket of
oil somebody had
left on the sidewalk a week before. After about two hours, the cops
collected the bucket and put it in the trunk of their car and drove
away.

So, when I saw two 55-gallon drums of industrial waste sitting on the
bike path next to the river, I cautiously approached a fire engine crew
that was doing a training exercise.
I asked the fire chief not to freak out, but could he please call the
HazMat squad to pick up the two drums. He wrote the info down, next
time I pedalled by, the drums were gone.

I dunno if the police department evacuated all the ducks out of the
river before removing the hazardous waste though.

 

Well if it is 14 months old and and it is being diluted 1:15 then it
probably is OK to mix. I have seen some gasoline turn into pure nastiness
after 14 months. But as always, YMMV. Good luck.

I am not sure how I would dispose of it. Maybe put it in a jug and take it
to the paint recycling center. Paint thinner can be more flammable than
gasoline.

pierce

 

Tha's prolly safe enuf.

Here's what *I* do with things like that. Put it in an open container
outside. It will evaporate. When all the liquid is gone, throw the
container away. Or save it for the next time you need to dispose of
liquids like that -- it's quite inert.

-Don

 

I used to never use Sta-Bil, just parked my bike for the winter untreated.
Come Spring I would pour about half a cup of lacquer thinner (available at
most any hardware store) into the tank & slosh it around. It contains
alcohol (to take care of any water) along with a witch's brew of other
organic solvents that both clean out any crud and also provide volatiles to
replace any that had evaporated. It always seemed to work.....

 

Funny thing is I used to do the dame thing except I wouldn't add the paint
thinner come spring. That was 15 years ago and recently I have seen
gasoline turn to junk in less than a year. I am not sure what is different
as many things are different but I am adding sta-bil to all my gas that is
going to sit over winter.

Add octane boost? I don't know. Never used the stuff myself.

pierce

 

The truck it is... as I said, I've done it before and actually never even
noticed the odor. Just anted to see if there was a best practice or
something.

Boil it and make tea?

Every other year in my little town and we just had ours.

And fish.. fish are people too.

Mike

 

I tried 104+ in one tank of gas at the track to avoid buying 108 octane
race gas that cost three times what pump gas cost.

I really didn't need the octane boost, as my engine wasn't pinging, but
I thought, "What the heck, it's available, I'll give it a try."

Whatever the chemical was, it was electrically conductive, it fouled my
spark plugs, depositing a light reddish brown coating on the insulator.

I walked around the pits asking everybody if they had new spark plugs
in that heat range and finally found a really nice guy who was well
stocked. He was going to actually *give* me a set of new plugs, but I
paid him $10 for the plugs so my engine would run right during the
8-lap sprint race.

Later, when I got home, I discovered the fouling from the octane
booster just wiped off easily with a clean shop towel and the original
plugs worked fine.

 

Duh, dump it in your neighbor's car

 

A+

 

I just dumped about a gallon of 4 year old gas into my 2 stroke scooter and it
burned it fine. It was stinky but it ran fine. That stuff looked and smelled
like turpentine!

 

I actually poured some old gas into a cup once and tried to light it. It
gertainly didn't start buring like gasoline. It was more like kerosene.

pierce

 

actually how bout calling your local fire department and ask them if
they want it,with the high cost of fuel these days they would appreciate
the donation of old gas to use when they go out for practice and demos
of their fire fighting technigues since they usually have to buy it
anyway ,and this helps you out and helps them from having to buy it,I
would rather like to know that a few bucks is going to help them buy
safety equipment than having to buy something to just burn it off