Dry Carbs?

Ive read something on this somewhere but can't find it. Should fuel be left in carburetors during winter or longer storage. Some say yes, some say no. Anyone have some proof by maybe a manufacturer or gasoline producer. While we're at it what about fuel tanks. Keep it full with plenty of Stabil or Sea Foam, or empty as possible. Not necessarily looking for opinions unless you've got some solid reasoning. Not looking for arguments either!

'98 Lund Explorer w/ 50hp Merc 4cyl. (Yamaha) carburetored NO torque motor

It has been my experience you are better off with StaBil or Seafoam in the fuel and leaving them full. Trying to drain them you have a residue in them and that residue will dry up and turn to varnish and always cause issues.

The big problem is ethanol gas. Use pure gas with stabil & all will be well.

This title is deceiving. I thought you were talking about Fries without Ketchup.

I think that title would be 'grease without acid'

I have posted numerous times referencing my experience with fuels.

Non ethanol is not always "non" ethanol. Secondly and probably just as important, non ethanol is "usually" more expensive and most stations that sell it don't sell that much of it because of the price, therefore it sits in their tanks for a while, potentially picking up moisture, getting old, etc.

The cure? Move south...use the boat year round like I do. Thing is though (in my case)-that even though I do use it year round, in the fall/winter/early spring, maybe once a month instead of a few times a week.

...And yes, that is the ONLY cure, use it. Gas is made for cars. Cars don't sit for more than a week or two at a time on average. AND they're mostly fuel injected, which runs at MUCH higher pressure (30 to 3000 psi). Gas isn't made for small engines anymore.

Sta-bil. It prolongs the inevitable. How long? 85% of my work is fuel system related and a majority of that 85% is due to staled fuel. Of that majority, a good portion of them all say that they did use sta-bil when they put the equipment up the last time it was used. I can't for certain say how much truth there is to it but that's what I hear a lot of. Thus, I can't give any certainty of what actually works other than just using it once in a while. My new motor is EFI but the old one was a carb and I never had a single fuel system problem. It did sit for a few months from time to time but when I say "sit", it was started even if just for a few seconds, without dunking it into the lake. Just sitting there on the trailer, fire it up for a second or two, shut it off. Once a week or thereabouts. Leaving the fuel line attached and the 3 gal tank close to full.

There's also the drain technique and that seems to work too. Remove fuel line quick connect. Remove all fuel lines from the motor, blow them out, blow out the filter bowl, then drain the carburetor bowl and while the screw is out, spray some carb cleaner up inside the bowl drain, then reinstall the screw(s) and you're done. I know guys who do that-and it's a pain but so is cleaning carburetors, and those guys can go years without cleaning carbs. Some carbs are worse than others. I CRINGE when someone brings me a 4 cylinder carbureted 40 or 50hp Yamaha 4 stroke that needs carb repair. Even the 3 cylinder 40's were a bear. Early 2000's vintage.

I have a small lawn mower with a 3.75 HP engine on it. I have a spare carb for it. In the spring it will not start due to the fuel in it over the winter. I swap the carb with the clean one and it fires right up. Then I take the dirty one and clean it up for the next season. I disassemble it and clean every nook and cranny in it. The fuel seems to evaporate and leave a gummy residue that causes the small passages to plug up. This is a 1993 mower, I can still do that. I have seen the new mowers with the one piece plastic carbs you can not rebuild.

Here most of the places that carry non ethanol fuel are right around the river and lakes. They only have 500 gallon above ground tanks and they sell it fairly regularly, in fact a decent amount of time you go by one they will be out and you have to go to another one. I have found that the non ethanol fuel with keep considerably longer than the 10% crap will also.

I run it in all my gasoline engines except my passenger vehicles.

Run the carbs dry by pulling the fuel line. Run the tank dry or as low as possible. Filling them to the top was old school for non ethanol. Never fill your tank before storage because gas today is very hydroscopic. It pulls water out of the air and will collect on the bottom of the tank. If you only leave a gallon in the tank it will only collect so much water but if you leave it full it will collect a whole lot more. The trick is to dump fresh fuel on top of old fuel before right before you burn it every time. The fresh fuel can absorb what ever amount of water collected in storage and burn it. I also hold the ball in on the engine side of the fuel hose and pump fresh fuel thru the line. You don't want to start out in the spring with your carbs full of that rotten crap that sat in the fuel line and bulb so flush it out.

Im still waiting for these ethanol problems to happen. Been hearing about them for a while now and i've never experienced it personally. Just what I hear from others.

If you just pull the line off and run it until it dies, there's still fuel in the lines and pump. Also some left in the carb bowls. The jet(s) doesn't reach all the way to the bottom of the bowl, it can't, it wouldn't feed if it did. So normally there's a little bit left in the bowl(s) and also some other internal passages. The only way to get it all out is to blow it out. There's a drain screw in the bowl on most carbs for just this purpose. Remove screw, drain the few drops left out, then grab a blow gun on an an air hose and give the bowl a little shot, just a quick blip, of compressed air. You're done, they're as dry as you can get them without disassembly. Even then, you still have to address the lines and fuel pump.

There is another option too. Run them until it dies. Then rig up a supply of racing gasoline, the cheaper stuff, and run that fuel through the carbs and lines. It doesn't age quite like regular gasoline does. But it's got lead in it. Do not know about 100LL from airports, never messed with it as far as aging.

I use non-enthanol fuel and Seafoam. Motor has sat for 3-4 months with no issues. Use the same gas in my lawnmower and at the end of mowing season I push it in the shed. Four months later I pull it out and it starts on the first pull. So personally, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Put plenty of Seafoam in the gas I do believe that will help keep the carbs clear.

I use seafoam at 1 ounce per gallon all year long in Ethanol free gas.. at the end of the year I pull off the fuel line connector and let it stall.
My fuel tanks get drained and used in either the snowblower, ATV or truck.
Also I plug the pee hole for the water pump as I've had spiders nest in there.
Btw.. my motors come off the boats and they stay in a heated garage.. If I had a bigger motor that had to live outside, I'd probably do the same.

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I don't have a non-ethanol gaso option. I wish I did. I didn't use any kind of fuel additive in my old Merc because it never sat that long. The new Honda outboard doesn't sit still that long either but Honda recommends routinely using a stabilizer. Consequently, I now use Honda's fuel stabilizer (1 oz per 10 gal) all year round.

I don't want to be lifting my 12 gallon portable tank in & out of the boat, so I routinely top it off using a 5 gallon gaso can. The stabilizer goes into the 5 gal can. I always try to drain the 5 gal can so I know how much stabilizer to add when I refill it at the pump. I don't know if adding too much stabilizer is an issue, so in my ignorance, I'm pretty anal about how much goes in the tank and will err on using too little as opposed to too much.