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Comment by nsxwolf | Hacker News Reader

I initially didn't take the "drain the fuel" advice when I got my snowblower, because I never did it for my lawnmower and it was fine year after year.

And in its second season, it utterly failed to start. My friend gave me a tip to drain the fuel and put some fresh gas with a little jet fuel in it, and it started immediately.

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You can always stabilize your fuel too and it will last into the next season. However, depending on your climate it may be worth it to just buy cans of fuel at the hardware store. It's much higher quality than what you'll get at a gas station and doesn't contain additives, which are very problematic for carburetors when left in the tank until the next season. It cost more but if you're not blowing snow too often you probably won't even notice the cost. They also come in smaller cans so you can store nicely if needed.

I only use the high quality hardware store stuff now. I simply don’t run my snowblower enough for the price difference to be meaningful.

It's noticeably better. The engine timing is so good with it compared to the gas station stuff meant for fuel injected automobile engines. Higher octane and compression I believe and the snowblower engine just hums and burns clean.

Huh. I had the opposite experience, bought some canned hardware store fuel for my snowblower out of laziness, and it wouldn’t even run. Seemed to be too high octane or something, kept stalling out. Had to drain it completely, put regular gas in and it’s fine.

The octane shouldn’t matter. It was probably really old and broke down. The main advantage of the canned gasoline is that there’s no ethanol which is really bad for small engines. It attracts moisture and doesn’t burn evenly which is why canned fuel (or any non-ethanol fuel) is so much better.

Maybe? It was from Home Depot, given their turnover i assume it was pretty new. I’m just guessing at the octane, because it sounded like the engine was running too fast, if that makes sense. Small engines are built for e90 now, so it’s not a problem. Apart from storage.

Yeah, back when I lived in Wisconsin I would put fuel stabilizer in and I didn't have issues. I would highly recommend that over draining the fuel, which just sounds like a pain in the ass.

Easiest way is to just let the machine run until it’s out of fuel. I put a vice grips on the throttle.

Most snow blower carb bowls have a drain screw so it's trivial to drain it. Cleaning the carb if gunk is in there is pretty straightforward. Generally if it fails to start then it's gunk in the carb.

One problematic additive is ethanol, often found as 10% of gas pump fuel volume. Ethanol absorbs water vapor from the air, then settles to the bottom of the gas tank or carb bowl, and corrosion or deposits may ensue. Drain tank & run engine until carb is dry, or use canned fuel, or add stabilizer like SeaFoam and fill tank to the very top. Ethanol-free fuel is available, but may be hard to find, see: https://www.pure-gas.org/

some states sell ethanol-free gas (ours in LA are blue pump heads, diesel green, e85 is yellow, and regular gas is either red or black depending on the service station.

One of my neighbors has a shadetree business repairing small motors and he taught me to always use ethanol free, and instead of draining it (since it's got ethanol in it) to use the fuel shutoff valve and let it run the bowl dry itself. I don't have too much small gasoline stuff left that i care about (a weedeater and a couple of honda generators i never use), my tractor is diesel, and my whole-house generator is propane (from a small tank, haven't needed to upgrade since i got the generator shortly after Hurricane Laura.)

I'm torn. I bought a used pressure washer that had been drained before storage. The carb bowl gasket and foot valve packing were all dried up and the carb was full of schmutz from the remaining gas and corrosion from water that had made its way in.

I'm recently leaning towards fuel stabilizer and leaving the tank full to ensure as little air space as possible for water to get in. At least for seasonal storage. Not sure about long-term storage since even stabilized fuel is supposedly only good for two years.

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