I have been storing my boat completely empty for the last 25 yrs,,i have a steel gas tank in my donzi OE from 1977..last year i did a fuel sender and just for giggles i put my boar scope in the hole to have a look inside,,,not a spec of rust,some s h i t on the bottom which i sucked out with my vacula but other then that it was mint inside..unherd of for a donzi fuel tank,they usually rot through by now so i guess draining it must have helped..i also tape off the uver flow so nothing can get into the tank..

empty!

I store my boat outside in lower Michigan. I have always just treated what is left in the tank with Stabil. Last year I only had 1/4 tank (80 gallon tank). Filled he up in the Spring and never had an issue.

I would drain it. Ethanol is a water magnet, and Stabil does nothig for that. I've already found this out the hard way with my garden power equipment. I've replaced three carburetors and one engine (about the same price as the darn carburetor).

Michael

What's paint? Us West Coast guys have gelcoat.

I'm just a cheap ass and put it in my truck at the end of the season. Empty the last 10yrs + with no treatments.

How do you guys empty the tank if you cant get out on the water any more?

I just pull the fuel hose off and put a automotive pump on it and pump it into 5 gallon gas tanks.

The pros of an empty tank as I see it is that if the fuel goes bad it will be less to deal with. If you go out in the spring and fill up you will be going out with all new fuel. The cons is that as I understand it it is more likely to phase seperate with less in the tank. If the small amount does seperate all the new fuel will be bad anyhow and you will have to deal with all htat bad fuel. Less fuel in the tank means that you are more likely to have moisture build up in the tank, especially if you are storing it outside with the temperature differences. I have sarted to add Mercury 2 stroke mixing oil into all my hard equipment and since I started doing that I have had much better luck. Even my chain saw that I had not used for 2 years started up easily. I am not sure if Mercury is adding anything to their oil to help or what but that is my new plan to treat what is in the tank.

Empty

I pull the fuel line off and hit the vent tube with compressed air, once it starts flowing it siphons itself out until empty.

Also a great time to reset the gauge sending units for empty, the fill up in the spring gets me the setting for full.

After draining I run my engines until they stall, then pull the water sep, dump it, and reinstall empty.

I agree above, tape off the vent lines until you are ready to go in the spring. Mud wasps and spiders love those tubes.

I pumped mine out by pulling the fuel line off before the fuel filters, and pumping it into 55 gallon drums. Then used same pump to fill daily driver all winter.