Northwest Fishing Reports

I've been running an oil/water separator filter on my 115 Yamaha & T8 kicker for about a year and so far have had no issues.

If you don't have an oil/water separator on your boat motor, take a look at this video. It may help to motivate you in that direction.

http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/segments/view/1738

Good hit Big D! The Ethanol in our gas is a result of the former regimes attempt to prop up corn prices and appease environmentalists. The ethanol is more expensive and takes more energy to make than the straight gas does. It takes more energy to create it than it will produce. It's a losing battle all the way around. It is not eco-friendly in any way shape or form. IMO we should not be putting corn in our tanks but selling it for food but that's another story. The problem with ethanol is not that it's a solvent, that doesn't matter in the least. What it does is when it separates from the gas, (it's not a petroleum product so it will) it mixes with water it forms an acid. That acid is what attacks the fuel system. It’s not so much of a problem in cars because we move enough fuel through them. The fuel from the boat tank, clear case of acid etched aluminum. The fuel hose was burned by the acid.
Marine Sta-bil.

Corn farmer subsidies have a very long history in our country. You could actually blame a large portion of our country's obesity epidemic on corn.

Cheeseburgers for example, are so cheap, because corn farmers are subsidized. High fructose corn syrup is used to make the buns, corn is used to feed the cattle that the meat and cheese come from too.

If corn wasn't subsidized, it wouldn't be so cheap to eat things like cheeseburgers, and healthier food would be more competitive.

Nearly every processed food item (snacks, candy, bread, etc) is made with high fructose corn syrup.

I know it's extremely off-topic, but it's interesting once you start thinking about it.

Oh, that stuff leads to type 2 diabetes as well.

Read the labels of what you eat, and think hard when you decide what to eat, or you'll pay for it later.


You can still get fat eating too much healthy food, but it's a lot harder to do it that way!

Great video and timely topic. The motors on my Hewescraft are both fed with stabilized fuel, I'll never run them without it. I use Mercury brand additives, they're not that much more than Stabil or SeaFoam, and they meet Merc's warranty standards. Replacing my motors would cost well over $15k, so I consider additives cheap insurance. The other thing we can do is not let a large quantity of fuel sit for long periods of time. This is precisely why I burned off 40 gallons of fuel last weekend while at Roosevelt. Even though I top off my tank, and always use additives at fill-up, I still had 30 or so gallons of "stale" fuel in my tank from the initial fill-up. Worried about the possibility of phase separation, and other ethanol related issues, I decided instead to use it and replace with fresh. Unfortunately, it's not the real solution, getting ethanol out of our fuel is, but too many politics (none of which are correct IMO) are involved in that.

hewesfisher wrote: Unfortunately, it's not the real solution, getting ethanol out of our fuel is, but too many politics (none of which are correct IMO) are involved in that.

You hit that one on the head!

Ive noticed Ethanol or "Oxyginated Fuel" does not last long, seems to go flat like a open soda pop? I own alot of 2cycle toys, boats, bikes, and atvs, I only mix what I'm going to use and put in only as much gas in the boat to cover the weekend. After watching the
that video- I get why.

I bought my first boat less than a year ago, and right off the bat noticed that there was a little bit of a hiccup in the acceleration and there was engine ping at WOT. I called around to multiple mechanics and all of them agreed that the acceleration issue was probably my fuel filters starting to clog up, and that the pinging was also ethanol related. They told me that it was fine to use it for a little while, so I figured I would have it tuned up once I was able to de-winterize it. I used Stabil when I filled up from then on, but now I have a question.... When i had my boat winterized I still had almost a half tank of gas in it, I used a whole thing of stabil (almost 2x what was needed) but won't be able to use the boat this year (for military related reasons) so I was going to keep it winterized. By the time my boat is used again it will have been winterized for almost a year and a half!!! Should I take it out to burn off the fuel then re-winterize it? I don't want to spend the money just for a month of fun before I leave, but I don't want any expensive repairs later. Any suggestions????

That's a common question and you'll get different answers depending who you ask. I'm in the camp of filling up my tanks to minimize the amount of air that comes into contact with the gas. If you want to drain the tank you'll need to be sure to get it all out, otherwise you'll end up with a gummy mess after a year and a half sitting idle. I'd put in the Stabil, filler up and be sure to run the engine dry if it has a carb.

PS - Straight off the Stabil site:

Q: How long will STA-BIL Fuel Stabilizer keep fuel fresh?
A: For 12 months when mixed into fresh gasoline. Doubling the dosage will keep fuel fresh for up to 2 years.

My question is ...Just what does the stabilizer do besides replace the water. Unless I'm missing something, the Ethonal is still going to damage neopreme hoses and O-rings. Do they make a aftermarket filter system for my 40 HP Mariner?:rendeer:

It doesn't replace the water, it inhibits corrosion much like antifreeze additives do for your engine coolant. As for the hoses, all boats should be fitted with alcohol resistant fuel lines, they are grey in color. If you have black fuel lines you'd be wise to verify that they are alcohol resistant ASAP, if they aren't change them out. As for water separator/filter systems the majority that I see are mounted to the rear bulkhead above the bilge area. Mount them with a couple of screws and then just cut your fuel line in half and plug them in. Mine has multiple outputs so the kicker gets filtered fuel straight from the tank as well. Replacing the filter is just like removing the oil filter on your automobile, it just spins off.

For any of you who are interested in learning a bit more about alcohol blended gasoline and what you can do to avoid issues with it check out the following link. http://www.fuel-testers.com/ethanol_out ... _fuel.html The site is there to educate the reader regarding fuel additives and what blended fuels can and will do to your motor.

Now that the Washington State legislature has pretty much guaranteed that all pumps have ethanol blended gas, you may want to check your owners manual to see if your outboard is OK with E10. My E-Tec hasn't had any problems in the 4+ years that I've owned it so that is a bit of good news. My kicker however is a 1998 Johnson and last year I needed to re-build the carb and replace a couple of gaskets. I'm guessing that as long as I put E10 in my tank, I'm going to need to replace the rubber parts on my kicker every so often. This fact has put me in the market for a new(er) kicker motor, one whose warranty isn't voided by the use of E10.