fuel stabilisers?

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ianainge

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i recently received some info from the forum about winterisation, it was obtain via an american web site which advised adding a fuel stabiliser over the lay up period as modern day fuels only have a shelf life of 3 months. does this possibly only apply to petrols, or both, if it applies to diesel as well where do i obtain it and is it necessary?
 
Just for petrol, the volatile additives in modern petrol most certainly do go off.
An aside, we found a petrol dump in Libya, from the last war, in 1969, we used the petrol (German) in our vehicles, it was fine, so it is probably only modern fuels, by the way that dump is probably still there, we recovered it with sand etc. It contained about 3000 tons of fuel and about another 100 tons of amunition. We were going to blow it up, for safety, but it was in such good condition, we just left it. I could probably still find the map reference if anybodies interested?
 
The fuels we buy are normally made for seasons and regions . Petrol and diesel fuels are blended for the ambient temperatures of the area where they are Purchased (UK summer / Winter - Med summer / winter - Norway summer / winter). If you store fuel purchased in the summer you may experience wintertime operation problems. In the case of diesel the fuel may cloud or gel. In the case of gasoline, the gas may not vaporise well and cause starting problems. If you are storing fuel in a boat, it is best to leave the fuel tank full and use a commercial grade fuel stabiliser prior to storage.

In the link below is a Norwegian Material Health & Safety Datasheet for one, which does give the name of a supplier in the UK.

http://www.blommarine.no/nalfleet/norsk/9-303 Diesel Fuel Stabiliser.htm

There are probably lots of others around so should not be too difficult to source...


AHM
 
Fuel Set, apparently. They've got a wab site that tells you all about it. B1 tinks its available off the shelf at Penton Hook, I think.
 
I've used Fuel Set when I had the S37, but don't know if it's the same thing. The importer lives near Salisbury and has some pretty impressive 'before and after' samples taken from bus diesel tanks. Don't know how it works chemically, but basically it allows the water from condensation in the tanks to mix with and burn with the fuel, rather than settle in the tank and cause the dreaded diesel bug. A bottle costs around £25 quid from chandlers, and the mix is so miniscule (approx 100ml to 400 litres of fuel) it lasts a long time.

I worked on the principle that it could do no harm, and probably did a lot of good, especially over winter months when tank condensation is more likely. Don't think it applies to petrol though.
 
Apparently its the same with petrol as diesel. As you say it allows the water to be absorbed into the fuel. The web site gives some pretty impresive testamonials(sp).
 
I have used fuel set for 4 years, excellent stuff, first saw it when working as a boat mechanic down in devon, we were the agents for it. I ran out this year and when I put 200 gals of diesel in the boat in mallorca without it, ended up with the dreaded bug again!! I've yet to defeat it this time, as I may give solly a try, when I get back to Barcelona, before I top up my tanks. The great thing about my fuel system, is the fuel all gets pumped through my seperator filters and then back to the tank when the engines are running, so over a period of ten hours all my fuel is filtered, this with fuelset defeated it last time, changing the seperrator filters three times and completely stripping them down and cleaning out, what a bloody mess the stuff (bug) makes!
 
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