I have a 2003 Honda 400EX/////How long can you leave gas in the tank before you need to worry about draining the bowl of the carburator to prevent the fuel from shellacking inside the carb.. My dealer told me around 2 weeks but that seems fairly quick to drain the carb but I could be completely wrong... So my question is how long can I wait until I need to do drain it....I don't want to have to rebuild a carburator by not doing so......Thanks for you help...

 

after a month it will start shellacing, so draining/treating it after two weeks is a good idea.

treating with StaBil or other good gas treatment will eliminate the need to drain it, but some treat, then
run it a few minutes, and then drain. I just treat.

 

Have been rebuilding carburetors since 1968. Treat gas with Sta-Bil, run for a bit and don't drain. The inside of a drained and dried carb is ugly.

 

The bottle of STA-BIL (from Honda) says, "Fuel treatment for engines stored longer than 60 days". Long term storage-1 oz./2.5 gal. or Infrequent opetation-1 oz./ 10 gal.

60 days seems long to me.

 

60 days is too long. I have stored gas in glass one gallon bottles (not supposed to do that, fool) and seen
a yellow film build up on the glass after 30 days. (Don't store it that way anymore BTW)

Always use the 1 oz/10 gals ratio and have never had any problems. Of course, I run my quads all
winter, too. Use the same ratio in mowers, tillers, two stoke trimmers, ect w/o problems.
Never drain anything. And, keep the gas tanks full all winter.

 

This is going to probably sound like a stupid question but I'm a newbie. If I put stabil in the tank because I think I'm not going to ride for a month or two and my Indiana weather changes(like it does every 5 minutes) and I decide to ride.....will it hurt anything? Or, do I need to drain and put fresh gas in? My guess is that it will not hurt anything to run it with stabil in the tank. Thanks.