Any tips for dealing with problem caused by 100 gal of 2 yr old fuel?

[dolemite_1]

Without getting into the back story, my boat (twin 350 mags) has 100 gallons of 2 yr old fuel. It ran at a bit above idle speed fine yesterday for about 2 hrs. Today I go to start it up and both engines have a surging idle and sound like they are about to die at any moment. I checked the Gen 3 cool fuel filter and separator (both) and the bottom one seemed dirty so I replaced them all. The fuel itself did not seem to have water in it but the color was yellowish brown.

Considering this is affecting both engines and the color of the fuel I presume I stirred up some gunk in the tank coupled with the old fuel and that is the cause of my problem. Ideally I know draining the tanks would be the best thing to do, but is there anything you would try first. I am looking at putting 6 bottle of that 104 ocate booster stuff along with Phase guard 4 in order to bring up the octane and try and burn the fuel off. What do you guys think?

Also going to look at running one of the engines off a canister of fresh fuel to isolate the problem down to the existing fuel.

Thx

Brian

 

[Bondo]

Without getting into the back story, my boat (twin 350 mags) has 100 gallons of 2 yr old fuel. It ran at a bit above idle speed fine yesterday for about 2 hrs. Today I go to start it up and both engines have a surging idle and sound like they are about to die at any moment. I checked the Gen 3 cool fuel filter and separator (both) and the bottom one seemed dirty so I replaced them all. The fuel itself did not seem to have water in it but the color was yellowish brown.

Considering this is affecting both engines and the color of the fuel I presume I stirred up some gunk in the tank coupled with the old fuel and that is the cause of my problem. Ideally I know draining the tanks would be the best thing to do, but is there anything you would try first. I am looking at putting 6 bottle of that 104 ocate booster stuff along with Phase guard 4 in order to bring up the octane and try and burn the fuel off. What do you guys think?

Also going to look at running one of the engines off a canister of fresh fuel to isolate the problem down to the existing fuel.

Thx

Brian

Ayuh,..... While additives can prolong the life of Fresh fuel, once fuel goes Bad, there ain't no bringin' it back to life,.....

Pump it out,....

 

[dolemite_1]

Over the two years the boat did have more than enough star tron added to it and ran on muffs quite a bit. Would you think that the gas is still to old to run? I was think of adding that Pri - G stuff http://www.amazon.com/PRI-G-16-oz-Fu...productDetails also.

My hesitation on removing the gas is not to get my moneys worth out of it. It is how do I go about getting it out or where can I dispose of that much fuel. I live in NY so it may be a bit harder here. I also don't have a trailer.

Thx

Brian

 

[Bondo]

Over the two years the boat did have more than enough star tron added to it and ran on muffs quite a bit. Would you think that the gas is still to old to run? I was think of adding that Pri - G stuff http://www.amazon.com/PRI-G-16-oz-Fu...productDetails also.

My hesitation on removing the gas is not to get my moneys worth out of it. It is how do I go about getting it out or where can I dispose of that much fuel. I live in NY so it may be a bit harder here. I also don't have a trailer.

Thx

Brian

Ayuh,.... With gas, I do a Smell Test,.... If it Smells like gas, I run it,....

If it no longer smells like gas, I pump it out, 'n get rid of it,.....

As I said, there's Nothin' you can add to Bad gas, to make it Good gas,....

To remove it, ya need a pump, 'n a couple of 55 gallon drums to pump it into,....

 

[jester31]

Did you ever think there might be water in the old fuel causing your problem? I think you should dump the old fuel, because you never know what's in it,,, Plus, as Bondo said, you can't make bad fuel, good again.

 

[dolemite_1]

Well, I ran the boat off an auxillary tank and didn't seem to make much of a difference. I pulled two plugs and they looked like the pic below; rich fouling. That lead to me lifting the air filter off to check and I noticed the throttle body filter was gunked up. From what I understand if that filter is gunked then my IAC is probably on its way out as well. I am waiting to borrow my friends diacom software to hook up to the engines computer to see what I find. I also know that I now need to replace the plugs. Also my gas fumes alarm had gone off the the last day I used it. probably sue to the overly rich environment.

Any thoughts?

 

[HT32BSX115]

Howdy,


My guess is that you ahve another problem possibly NOT related to fuel. Having said that, and admitting that I have actually ran 2 year old fuel, I wouldn't just throw it all away.

I would pump it out into a suitable container and run it in the car after diluting it with fresh gasoline.

Because it' is 2 years old, I would probably run it 25%("bad" gas) to 75% (or more, fresh gas)

Your old gas is essentially "bad" because of the loss of octane (and lighter components) .

In a high HP engine ran at fairly high power settings (like any marine engine) running that fuel will result in a risk of detonation which could permanently damage your engine(s)

Since your car or (unloaded) truck runs at much lower power settings at any normal highway speed, you can get away with running old gas if it's diluted with fresh gasoline. (I recently burned about 3 gallons of 5 year old gas in my fuel injected car by mixing it with 10 gallons of fresh gas. I couldn't tell the difference)
Just make sure there's no water or other debris in it.

Regards,

Rick

 

[pro-crastinator]

Reminds me of when I was at the farm and ran out of gas for the push mower.
Found a bucket (yes - bucket) of fuel that smelled like lacquer.
Put it in the mower. Ran the mower for hours. Went inside and called it a day.
Next day, tried to start the mower and it had NO compression.
Laquer had built up on valve stems and prevented the valves free movement thru the valve guides.
Pain in the butt but it was fixable. Just forced the valves into the guides - which "scraped" off the laquer from the stems.
It sounds like your valves are floating.

Engine lived on for many years.

 

[dolemite_1]

So I hooked up my friend of a friends diacom computer software to the engine and no real codes. I took recordings but realize I don't fully know how to interpret them. I attached two of them here one running off the fresh fuel and the other running off the older fuel. Does anyone have the program that they can take a look at these and tell me if anything sticks out to them? Also it seems the engine runs a bit better the longer I let it run on fresh fuel or older fuel.

Also going to be putting new plugs in this Friday.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4xmBC6-tGVNckltVm93UmU4S1U/edit?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4xmBC6-tGVNYlJqam9iRXcwMTg/edit?usp=sharing

Thx

Brian

 

[nola mike]

How big is your tank? If you're only half full or something, maybe just fill the tanks with fresh gas. And Rick, I thought it was the other way around. Your more volatile components are gone, so the remaining fuel is less likely to detonate. Which is actually more like a high octane fuel...

 

[achris]

2 year old fuel is bad news. Doesn't matter how much snake oil you added, it's still dead. I wouldn't even bother testing it, I would just chuck the lot. Yes, it's quite a bit of 'money', but it's still less than replacing even one engine.

Mike, yes the lighter elements are gone, but it's those lighter elements that DELAY the fuel burn, and add the energy output. Fuel that fuels too fast (ie low octane) is the main cause of detonation, and engine destruction.

BTW, high octane fuel burns SLOWER, not faster. It also has a higher energy yield....

Chris........