Outboard motor carb

[CarlF]

The only place you can get ethanol free gas in the North East US is at airports and race tracks. At marina's, you won't see ethanol free gas until North Carolina.

Running most 4 stroke outboards with the hose off until it dies does not run the gas out of the carb bowl and won't avoid ethanol fouling. You have to take the cover off and get at the carb. Honda has a nice drain screw under the cover of some engines.

One option is to have a 2nd tank and hose fileld with "small engine gas". No ethanol. High octane. This is available at Home Depot and is meant for hedge trimmers and law mowers. Comes in quart cans for about $8 a gallon. Run this through before storage. Lasts pretty much forever.

[KStepman]

To answer your question, as it should now be obvious, all small engines, left unused for more than a few days, with or without ethanol, always run the carb dry.

As this has also turned into a well needed forum on ethanol in gasoline, here's my two cents. I hope it is worth the price.

1¢
It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or maybe it does, to realize that with 10% ethanol in gasoline, we get approximately 10% less fuel economy (in our automobiles). So, what good is it? We are importing or burning as much oil as before, paying more for it at the pump, and subsidizing the making of ethanol, and giving billions of tax dollars more to the oil companies to add the damn stuff to our gas. In a rational national policy we would do away with ethanol gasoline as a well intended mistake.

1¢
WARNING Ethanol is often added manually to the gasoline in the tanker truck. Mistakes happen. Sometimes twice the ethanol. So, E20, not E10. This is certainly what happened to me and others three years ago at Annapolis, MD. No sooner did I put that gas in my three year old Mercury (Tohatsu) outboard and three year old Honda 2000 generator, that both began to fail. Fuel lines melted, gas can delaminates, carbs got fouled. Two years later, the generator is trash, and the outboard required a new carb, fuel pump, fuel tank, and fuel line. Works fine now.


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[Cat nap2]

According to Home Depot's web true fuel is not sold in stores (Ct)
Honda does have drain screws on the carb bole. They are brass and round off as soon as you try to turn them. Useless