How to Winterize & Store Equipment- What Most People DONT KNOW

So, it's getting to be about that time of the year when you're thinking about storing your power tools for the season. Well, we're going to show you a few tricks so that they'll start right up for you when springtime rolls around. We're also going to go over one of those things you want to avoid. Believe that the best way to store two-stroke equipment was to simply dump on all the fuel and then to burn the rest of it off and to store it completely dry. But, I wanted to make sure. So, I called the engineers at Still and I found out that I was wrong on that and a whole lot more. All right, guys. I've got Matt. He's the head of the engineering department for both Stable Bill and Gold Eagle fuel products on the line. And we're going to talk about the shelf life of your fuel. After discussing this with Matt, I've just discovered that your typical gas that you get from a gas station has a shelf life of about 30 days max. And that means that's from the time of manufacturing. By the time it gets to the gas station and then gets in your gas tank, it may have already had two weeks on it. Meaning you've got about two weeks of shelf life left on that. Is that right, Matt? Yeah, that's right. The most common fuel you buy in the United States is E10 and has a shelf life of as little as 30 days or it starts to go bad in as little as 30 days. And then some of these guys are going with this non oxy or non-ethanol blended fuel. What can they expect out of that? That can start going bad as little as 90 days. The quality varies depending on where you buy it, but it still does go bad. All right, so you've got 30 days for your standard fuel and 90 days from the date of manufacturing for the non oxy fuel. So that means guys when you're looking at storing your fuel for the year, a fuel stabilizer is almost mandatory, isn't it? Yeah. You got to treat your fuel right, it's it's just proper fuel maintenance and then you won't have problem with your equipment come spring. All right. The next thing we got to cover is actually how to mix your stabilizer into your fuel system. You actually want to mix it into the fuel tank itself and then pour that into the equipment individually. You don't want to add stabilizer directly into your individual pieces of equipment because you just won't get the right amount in. So, by adding it into your fuel tank, you ensure that you get the right amount of fuel stabilizer into your fuel and also you stabilize your fuel for the rest of the season. The one I choose to use is by Stabil. This is designed specifically to stabilize fuel longterm, but there's a trick to using this product. When you put it in the machine, you got to allow it to work its way through the entire system. That means running and operating the machine for at least 5 minutes. But before you park that machine for the entire season, make sure that that fuel tank is as full as possible. If you have any void space inside the fuel tank, that can lead to condensation is water in your fuel. And that's exactly what you don't want. Let's go to a small engine shop to see exactly what I mean. All right, I got to get this straight. This is gasoline. That's water. That's unknown. Okay, so that's separated. So that's like a layer of unknown. Super unknown. Super not just unknown. Super unknown. You pulled that out of a small engine. By the way, fuel fuel tank. Left untreated, that water in the fuel can destroy your engine and give you difficulties when you go to fire it up in the spring. Now, unfortunately, I've learned a few of my lessons in life the hard way. One of them is never store your equipment with any debris on it whatsoever. If this mower is put away like this, this is nothing but an attractant for mice. Mice will get in here, but the worst part about that is mice don't stop with this nesting material. Then they look for other things to chew on. I've had to completely gut out excavators because the mice have chewed up all the wiring. One of the things that you want to avoid is any food sources or anything like that. So, don't leave sunflower seeds on any equipment and make sure that you clean it up before you put it away for the season. Now, your storage facility doesn't have to be pretty to you, but to an animal, it looks like home. One way to keep out unwanted pests is by simply dropping mothballs around the perimeter inside where you store your equipment. I don't know why they hate it, but it keeps unwanted animals in check. Maybe because it smells like grandma's house. All right, guys. Your end of season checklist goes like this. For most handheld two-stroke and some four- stroke equipment, make sure that you use a fuel stabilizer such as Stillville. But here's an important trick. When you're using this, fill up the machine as much as possible. You want to avoid any air spaces inside the fuel tank to avoid condensation over the winter time. And a handy little trick to keep unwanted rodents at bay is to place mothballs around your equipment where you're storing it. I hope this has helped you guys out. Leave me a comment down below. I want to know your tips and tricks for storing equipment. God bless. Go get them. Now, I got to get out of here and get ready to go plow.