I am working on restoring a car that had been seeing for several years. The car has about a half tank of gas in it, I have to assume that the gas is no longer good and will be draining the tank. How is one supposed to disposer if the bad gasoline? Back in the old days it would have been poured on the ground in a remote spot on your land, but that isn’t going to work these days.
I was thinking of getting a burn barrel and burning it, but we currently have a burn ban in effect in my county. So I am really not sure what to do with it. When I change my oil, I take the old oil to the local auto parts store and they send it off to be recycled, but I am sure they won’t take ten gallons of gas.
If I were you, I’d call the fire department, the recycling center and the auto parts store in that order to ask if there’s a procedure for disposal or a hazardous waste removal service available.
What I did was keep it in a jerry can in the back yard for years until one day I was talking with a garage mechanic and asked what they did with the bad gas they’d pumped out of my tank. He said he had an incinerator for that kind of stuff and graciously got rid of it for me.
I imagine just diluting the stale gasoline with enough fresh gasoline would work. Though I can’t tell you how much is ‘enough’.
Even better would be mixing the stale gasoline with something like gasoline, but much more of the easily-evaporated stuff, so you end up with what’s basically regular gasoline when you’re done. Can you buy something like this at an auto supply store?
Some counties have a household hazardous waste event from time to time. You could dispose of it there.
What I have done is: add 1 or 2 gallons at a time to my daily driver when it is around 3/4 of a tank or so.
Or,
Put it on Craig’s List as old gas. Someone will likely take it; they may even pay a small amount.
I would imagine the volatiles are what you burn. Volatiles have a habit of evaporating, it is just what they do. Also, IIUC, the additives tend to separate out.
Stale but uncontaminated gas I believe can be diluted 10:1 (fresh:stale) and used as is without any issue, so you should be able to get rid of it one gallon at a time.
The lighter fractions (more volatile) evaporate. These are mainly needed for cold starts. If you can get the engine warmed up, it will usually run fine on old stale gas. Winter blend gas usually has more of the light fractions to aid cold starting. Aerosol starting fluids are lighter compounds yet, often with lots of ether.
In addition, especially if the tank were near empty, it will pump air in and out with changes in atmospheric pressure, and a lot of the water from the air will condense in the tank, so it is common for vehicles that have set for long periods to have a lot of water on the bottom of the gas tank. In fact it is not uncommon for this to cause the tank to rust through.
Everyone always whines about this, but it’s just gasoline, not nitro-glycerine. Just dump it out someplace remote, it isn’t going to hurt anything. Ten gallons is kind of a lot, so just do it in two or three batches. Dump it onto pavement rather than soil, preferably in sunlight. A few gallons of gas will only take minutes to evaporate when spread out on pavement like that.
Okay, everyone tell me what an environmental terrorist I am… :rolleyes:
Thanks for the advice. I see the auto correct muffed up my topic title, changing stale to stake. Mods, would one of you kindly fix it to keep future generations from assuming I’m an idiot? Thanks
I would start the car and see how it ran, chances are it will run fine, if it starts ok just add some fresh gas and run it like normal, if it has a gas cap chances are it will be ok for many years. If you really feel you need to get rid of it I would put about 2 or 3 gallons at a time back in as I used it. If you put a few drops on the ground amd it evaporates quickly it should be fine.
Seems an awful shame to devote it to polluting the atmosphere when it could serve its normal purpose as motor fuel via the dilution method. 10:1 is conservative - I suspect you could get by at 2:1.
My reasonably extensive experience with old gas is along these lines. Fear of the stuff being no good has not been backed up. See if it runs and only worry about it if it doesnt.
If thats not good enough for you, then i find lawn mowers and garden tractors will run on anything more volatile than urine.