How to handle contaminated gas

JerEazy

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Jul 26, 2017
Messages
234
200EXTED for what it may be worth. Running pre-mix

Finally got the engine running great - but I’ve been using a portable tank as I assumed the sediment and such in an old sitting tank would (at minimum) cause running issues based on contamination.

so I put 25 gallons in the tank, installed a fresh FW separated filet and hook it up to a line, then a 10 micron, then pump, then another 10 micron and then back into the tank. Basically trying to polish the fuel myself.

Once it was all done I installed a new FW filter and decided that after 6 gallons on the portable I was going to hook up main and test.

Welp, she fell on her face. Pumping the bulb into a jar on the water resulted in milky/foamy fuel. Hooked back up portable, emptied the bowls, and got her started again and ran great.

so the question comes to, what’s best to do here? Put more fuel in? Treat? Use the same system and Change the FW filter like every 10 minutes? Or just have someone come out and clean it professionally?

I see some some items online that filter water out - but - as seen on TV right?

thanks for the advice.
 

GA_Boater

Honorary Moderator Emeritus
Joined
May 24, 2011
Messages
49,038
You ran the double filtered gas into the main tank or the portable?

How long did you polish? You had 25+ gallons of bad gas to polish.
 

alldodge

Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 8, 2009
Messages
40,581
If I understand correctly, the main tank had some old gas and some water.

Added 25 gal or fresh gas to the old and tried to polish it back to health which didn't work

The problem is once gas goes bad you cannot make it good. Adding fresh gas to old bad stuff just gives you more bad gas.

I would pump it out completely, remove fuel sender and use pressure washer inside the tank. Do that a couple times and pump back out until clean

Also need to find out how water got it to begin with
 

JerEazy

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Jul 26, 2017
Messages
234
Thanks for the responses. I ran the filters gas bank into the main tank.

The main tank was empty (empty for 10+ years) when I added 25 gallons of gas to it and then ran my “polish” system. Based on my stop watch the fuel pump was pumping about a gallon every 2 minutes. So 50 minutes for a “full cycle” and I ran it for about 6 hours.

i feel the issue was the water and funk hit the FW filter first and it reached water capacity and then just kept filtering waterlogged fuel. I swapped the 2 other in line filters out at 3 hours.
 

JerEazy

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Jul 26, 2017
Messages
234
Pro coming on Friday to empty and clean the tank. Better to have it done right and not have to think about it.
 
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