How fast does gas go stale

As gasoline begins to deteriorate, it becomes more solid and forms a gummy substance. If the gum enters your engine, it can easily clog the lines and wreak some havoc on the internal components. Looking for a quick way to determine if your gas has gone bad? Expired gas tends to be darker in color and gives off a sour smell. A quick sniff test should help you figure out if your gas is past its prime.

Of course, you can make your life easier by properly storing and labeling your gas! We all want to do what we can to make our fuel last as long as possible. When in question, check the color of the gas compared to fresh fuel.

As gasoline ages, it tends to darken in color. Contact the experts at Hy-per Lube for additional insight into how long gas lasts, and use our store locator to find the store nearest you with our line of high-end, stress-tested lubricants, coolant treatments and fuel system cleaners. English — Download PDF. Box Holly, MI Canadian Visitors Enter Here.

Does Gasoline Go Bad? Posted on: Feb 1 By: admin We get this question all the time on our tech support lines and on Facebook. Does Gasoline Expire?

The Dangers of Using Old Gas Old gas does not become contaminated necessarily, but rather loses its combustible properties and volatile compounds. If you're driving less, or not at all, gasoline sitting in your fuel tank could be getting old and stale, and degrading.

Using old fuel in your car can sap engine power, causing hesitation and stalling. The worst case is that your car might not start. Of course, when venturing out to fill up your car, follow our safety guidelines for pumping gas during the pandemic, and for any other task you might need to tackle, such as grocery shopping. As gas breaks down, you can tell whether you have bad gas just by the way it smells. Brannon points out that brown, gummy gas represents an extreme scenario.

And it's not advisable for the average consumer to go around smelling gasoline. Even so, running into a performance problem because of old gas in your car could easily happen during this pandemic.

If you're already a low-mile driver, and the gas sitting in your tank was aging prior to the pandemic, then you could easily hit the three-month age mark.

Find out whether top-tier gasoline is worth the extra price , and use CR's test-based tips to get the best fuel economy now. Make sure you put the stabilizer in right before you add fuel so that it mixes in properly with the gasoline, he says.

Also, moisture can get into the tank over time because gas tanks sweat, and moisture will cause the gasoline to break down even quicker, says Brannon from AAA. Brannon adds that filling up your tank all the way limits the amount of oxygen inside the tank "for the gas to evaporate into. But gasoline can in fact degrade over time, which leads to a number of problems, ranging from hard starting to rough running to no starting at all.

So, does gas go bad? Yes it can. Here's Why Gas Goes Bad Unlike crude oil, gasoline is a highly refined product brewed to a certain chemical composition with very specific characteristics. One characteristic of gas is volatility, a term used to describe how easily and under what conditions the gas vaporizes so it can be efficiently burned in your car's engine.

The most highly volatile components in gasoline also tend to evaporate over time. As they do, the remaining fuel's volatility and ability to combust properly will degrade. The less volatile the fuel, the less effectively it burns in your engine. The result is diminished engine performance.

Your engine may still start and run, but it probably won't run as well. The good news: Once the old gas has been consumed and the tank is topped off with fresh fuel, the problem should cure itself. Evaporation of volatile compounds can be limited by making sure the gas cap is secured tightly. For the same reason, be sure all portable gas containers are sealed tightly as well. A More Serious Problem: Oxidation Hydrocarbons in the gas react with oxygen to produce new compounds that eventually change the chemical composition of the fuel.

This leads to gum and varnish deposits in the fuel system. These deposits and impurities can clog up gas lines and filters, as well as the small orifices in a carburetor and the even smaller orifices in a fuel injector.

Removing these deposits can be expensive and your vehicle may not run at all or run very poorly until they are removed. Water Contamination Condensation can form inside your gas tank and lines from heat cycling. Fuels such as E85, which have a high concentration of ethanol alcohol, may be even more susceptible to water contamination, as ethanol likes to draw moisture out of the surrounding air.

Water contamination can be a problem at gas stations with light traffic due to a slightly different kind of heat cycling. The underground storage tanks experience increases and decreases in temperature.