For 60 years Sta-Bil has been the choice for adding to fuel that has to be stored. It works great. Things like snow blowers that sit for 9 months between uses start right up. Sta-Bil is heavily involved in all forms of motorsports. When I bought a Predator engine from Harbor Freight I see they require the use of Sta-Bil to maintain the warranty.
I noticed recently that they now have a product for “In Season Use”. It’s not clear what advantage it might offer. So now they sell a Sta-Bil for the times you don’t need Sta-Bil. The original product is now called “Storage Sta-Bil”
It says that the in-season product has PEA cleaners. That means polyether amine cleaners; the same stuff that Chevron Techron and Gumout Regane has.
It’s good to clean deposits out of carburetors, combustion chambers and fuel injectors. And in carbureted and port fuel injected engines, it’s great at removing intake valve deposits.
So @Little_Nemo has it mostly right; they’re trying to use their brand recognition to market an everyday fuel system cleaner as “in season protection”.
Originally I started using Sta-Bil 360 Marine for an outboard motor to protect against ethanol. The outboard went away a long time ago, but I still use it for all of my yard equipment, mostly for ethanol, but it does protect for storage up to a year. So it’s been (kind of) every-day use for me for years since I don’t over-winter things - I’ll probably cut my grass more often December to February than I did during the drought of this past summer.
I can’t see how the new product is much different, except that it seems to be less concentrated than the Marine stuff.
I’m not familiar with the marine grade but 1 ounce of the original Sta-Bil treats 2.5 gallons of gas and the In Season treats 5 gallons. I use the original all year long also.
The original stuff is basically a chemical blend that’s intended to react with oxygen before the gasoline and stave off other chemical reactions that make gasoline spoil in storage.
The in-season stuff clearly doesn’t need to worry about that, so like I was saying earlier, it’s a fuel system cleaner more than anything else.
Like I was saying, it’s not the same formula. If you read the website, it’s much more like Chevron Techron or Gumout Regane, with polyether amine fuel system cleaning additives, not sacrificial anti-oxidants like the traditional Sta-Bil formula.
They’re just using their name to market a different sort of product.
