Forcing myself to burn gas instead of EV

Our last big trip was in the regular Prius, so the Prime has just been commuting for almost two years. I've been buying gas about twice a year. There are no repairs needed. It runs just the same after six months in that sealed tank as it did when it was new.

 

We never had state-mandated lock-down. But without the need to drive a car for my daily commute, I had no reason to have a daily driver. Yeah, if I really wanted, I could have driven my PP 100 miles daily to just driving around without visiting anyone. We made a conscious decision not to take unnecessary trips. The result was surprisingly doable and one positive side effect was the tremendous savings. Since I was lucky to be able to work remotely 100%, and had no financial impact of the loss of income, during the pandemic stay-home period over the year, we probably saved well over $20K all together (not counting any of stimulus checks which we have not yet to receive) on reduced automobile-related costs and discretionary spendings on the leisurely activities.

 

Life isn't that close to normal up here. We are not dining out or going to many of the old usual activities, or traveling to see family unless it is also essential work, such as my family elder care and farm work duties.

But it isn't anything resembling house arrest either. Where some are complaining of their 'Covid 15' weight gain, the lack of travel kept my diet under better control. Combined with plenty of outdoor activity, I lost weight last year and didn't put any of it back on over winter. This may be the longest I've maintained at a weight target during my adult life.

But I must sympathize with your spring break and tourist problems. Those are pretty much the same people causing the most problems here when they are not on vacation.

 

Every few weeks I get another email from Kennedy Space Center telling me how they'd love to have me come back again. Most, if not all, the amusement parks are open. All have special regulations and reduced capacity to provide for social distancing. If you live in FL and you feel isolated, it's your own fault.

 

No it isn't. That's ridiculous. It is the fault of the virus.

Unlike our brain dead Governor, some people are listening to the actual health care experts and have rightfully concluded that there still is too much risk in relaxing your own personal restrictions too much.

IF.....the vaccines are 90% effective, those who get the shots and then throw caution to the wind will have 10 people out of 100 contract the disease in spite of the vaccination. Some still will die.

 

Your recommendations are great for boats and power equipment. I did the same, sans Sta-bil, for the lawnmower while I had a gas one. But it is unneeded for cars. They don't have a fuel tank that is essentially open to the air.

That means far less humidity gets into the tank. Not spending all their time next to or on a body of water means even less. The only time I've seen phase separation is when I added too wet acetone to the lawn mower. Phase separation in a modern car engine is going to be rare, and the fix is to add more alcohol; that's all drygas and heet are.

The more tightly sealed fuel tank also means less volatiles are lost from the fuel due to evaporation. Then the PiP and other PHEVs would start using the engine if no new fuel was added in a year. The Prime manual sounds like it will do the same. A fuel stabilizer is likely overkill.

 

That's ridiculous, except possibly for the folks with a serious lack of imagination and inability to adapt to change. While the virus very seriously upended normal life, it still left plenty of ways to avoid isolation.

Here, our Governor and public health experts mostly worked together. The "house arrest" memes came from other folks stacking their own views atop the official announcements and trying to apply peer pressures to conform to their stricter but unofficial views.

And I can't really say that our state and local government here got too much wrong. From starting out as U.S.A. Ground Zero -- the nation's first publicly announced cases, school closures, and deaths happened within easy bicycling distance of my house, and one-third of the ground zero nursing home's residents were killed in just three weeks -- we worked our way down the state rankings from #1, to #45 in per-capita death rate, and #47 in per-capita cases. So comparing to other states, we didn't relax too much.

if the vaccine trial results were accurate, very few will die.

While none were perfect in preventing the disease, all three on the U.S. market were 100% effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Considering the trial sample sizes, that means they reduced the death rate by at least 2, maybe even 3 orders of magnitude. So the Covid death rate among fully vaccinated people should be significantly less than deaths from motor vehicle traffic, and from regular annual influenza outbreaks, neither of which are bad enough for us to impose pandemic-style restrictions or lockdowns.

The primary known risks of fully vaccinated people throwing caution to the wind are from the reduced but still non-zero risk of passing the virus along to the very many still-unvaccinated people, and from the later joining them in throwing caution to the wind. But not from vaccinated people still dying from the virus, at least in the short term before the protection might fade.

 

One thing which I don’t think was mentioned is you should burn through as much of that old fuel as possible (wait for low fuel light to come on) before putting in new fuel. That will get the highest percentage of the old fuel out. Then only fill up with a couple gallons if you don’t foresee much gas usage over the next couple months. And repeat that process each time so you don’t end up with a full tank of old fuel.

 

I have seen the discussions of the horrible things that stale gasoline does in lawn mowers, power boats, generators, old cars with gasoline engine with carburetors, and the like, but what exactly is the risk with stale gasoline in modern sealed systems like the PlugIn Prius? What exactly do products like Stab-il do?

 

Gasoline goes stale through evaporation and oxidation. As the more volatile compounds evaporate off, the octane rating will likely drop. Oxidation messes over compounds up until they eventually form varnishes and gums that clog things. Those are bad for cars too.

The difference is that fuel injection and a fuel system sealed to minimize pollution greatly decreases the amount of evaporation and oxidation occurs by limiting the amount of air that gets in and out of the tank. Stuff that does evaporate can't leave, and the air space above the fuel in the tank can only hold so much of those compounds, thus they stop evaporating off. Then less air in means less oxygen and water getting in to cause oxidation. The engineers that make PHEVs have come to the conclusion that gasoline is good for a year in the tank without intervention, and adding at least 3 gallons of fresh gas is enough to replenish whatever has been loss to aging in the tank.

Cars also have protection systems that those carburetorated engines don't have. There are filters in place to catch gunk before it gets to the engine, and they don't have something like a carburetor bowl where fuel comes in contact with air after the filter. There is also knock sensors and ignition control in case the octane is low, so they can run on octane lower than what the gas station has.

According to a post here, How does Sta-bil work ? | Bob Is The Oil Guy, Sta-bil uses hindered phenols. These are antioxidants that are also used in foo, plastics, and other goods. They basically interrupt the oxidation process by sacrificing themselves. Other brands may use other types of antioxidants. Some also have an alcohol to ward off phase separation. At least one brand has an enzyme to deal with any bacterial sludge that might form, though that's mostly a concern with diesel and heating oil.

Not sure how things like Seafoam work as a stabilizer. It is roughly 1 part isopropanol: 2 parts naptha: 4 parts pale oil. Naptha is a feed stock for gasoline, and pale oil covers a wide range of extremely light weight oils, including diesel. Perhaps there are 'naturally' occurring antioxidants in that mix, or it helps bind lighter fractions with the rest of the mix. it is an effective fuel system cleaner, so could just be cleaning out any problem compounds that do form.

That is actually the opposite recommendation for short term storage of cars. There you fill the tanks with fresh gas. This leaves a little air as possible in the tank to react with the fuel.

I understand the dilemma with a PHEV that rarely uses the engine, but more air in the tank will mean the fuel will 'age' faster. I wouldn't worry about it if you are adding gas every couple of months, but it is something to consider when going longer.

 

Thank you for the info, Trollbait.

On a closely related topic, does the oil also go bad with time? Not only do I have year-old gasoline, I also have over year-old oil. Do I need to change the oil even though the 5K mile "maintenance" nag hasn't triggered?

 

Eventually. More likely the protective additives in the oil will get used up first. replacing those is the main reason for oil changes.

Toyota's maintenance schedule calls for oil changes at least once a year. GM has an oil monitor that tracks engine use and climate, and the max a Volt will go between oil changes is two years. With low driven miles, you could probably be fine with do two year changes with a synthetic, but it is easier to remember once year without some minder system.

 

How to dispose of old-as-the-hills Sta-bil? Add a cup with each fill up??

 

That's a question that I ponder now and then. Choices are:

a)Bring to toxic waste disposal site.
b)Pour it into a bucket and let it evaporate.
c) Pour it into neighbor's gas tanks late at night.
d) pour it in the dirt.
e) down the storm drain.
f) In the burn barrel.

A is the proper choice. No idea what they do. They have a furnace at the waste collection site, so I suspect that they incinerate some of the less dangerous stuff. It's notable that many of those have the same result in that it ends up in the atmosphere.

In the dirt should contain it locally. Yeah, one might say that it can get into the water table, but we have only 15 inches of rain a year, so I'm not sure how it would get that deep. This year we have less than 10

Sneaking around at night adding it to other people's tanks might get me shot.

So go with the toxic waste disposal if it's available.

 

I might just do the ol’ pour it over kitty litter in a tray and let it evap.

I’m really thinking long and hard these days, before buying cr@p like this.

 

According to the current SDS, it is 90% isoparaffins petroleum hydrotreated HFP and an older one said kerosene. So mixing with fuel shouldn't be a problem. Could even use it as a solvent cleaner/degreaser if you have the need.

My old bottle had a precipitate though. I guess you could try dissolving that in fresh kerosene or mineral spirits. I think I just decanted the liquid off, and tossed the solids in the sealed bottle.

 

"crap" like what ?
Stabil is reasonably good at filling a legitimate need.
Of course, if you don't have the need for something.............

 

No need to do that in a Volt, it will run the engine as often as it wants and burn off gas it deems to old until the tank is empty

 

Wow, so once the gas gets old the Volt just keep running until all of the gas is gone? Can’t turn it off?

 

Of course it can be turned off. Chevy wasn't that stupid about it.

If I'm remembering previous Volt discussions correctly, it forces a certain amount of driving to be by ICE, not by EV. If you haven't used the ICE in a certain number of weeks, then it forces the next certain amount of driving to use the ICE. It won't drain the tank in a single session, but spreads it out over multiple sessions over a year.

The discussion didn't cover extreme cases such as when the car isn't driven enough to consume a full tank of fuel in a year. Or Pandemic lockdowns.