You have invested in a snowblower to make your life easier and maintaining your snowblower with regular tuneups and small engine maintenance in Ottawa is a priority for you – but when should you change your fuel? Well that depends on the model you have.
It does matter if it is a 2 or 4 stroke engine. With a 2 stroke you put gasoline with 1 to 2 % oil into the engine. As the gasoline evaporates from areas like the carburetor, it leaves this oil deposited in the carburetor. This oil deposit builds up and clogs the jet and everything else. Some of the oil will evaporate if you heat the carbuerator to 150 C during the winter, but I don’t keep my storage area that hot.
With a 4 cycle engine you put a pure gasoline mixture into the engine. There is minimal residuals on evaporation, so there is nothing to clog the jets.
There could be a problem with straight gasoline, and that would be if you have enough evaporation such that the solubility of the gasoline, alcohol and water is up set. In this case you would get a glob in the bottom of the tank, Since you do not leave your gasoline sit around in buckets, but in tightly closed cans, this is usually a small problem that is easily over come on fill up.
Oxidation could create some acids in the tank. This could be a problem if you leave the engine sit over the winter period with a half inch of gas in the tank, where the ratio between the surface area and the volume of gas is low. High surface area low volume of gas. If you keep the tank filled the ratio is high, small surface area to large volume of gas. The oxidation is dependent on this surface area to volume ratio. The more surface area to volume, larger volume of oxygen that will be allowed to react with the gasoline, the lower the surface area to volume less oxygen will be in contact with the gas.
The surface area also affect the rate of evaporation.
All in all whether or not you should change the gas depends on the snowblower small engine you have and if you are unsure give us a call and we can help. We can also help with your small engine tuneups and small engine repairs for your snowblower to keep it running like new and in tip top shape for the snowblowing season.