The Sta-bil works wonders. Seriously. I don't know exactly what's in the stuff, but it works. One of the old rednecks up here turned me on to it.
What happened was that I got a bad tank of gas from a low-volume station that everyone who's "from around here" knows to avoid. A little more than halfway through the tank of gas, the car wouldn't idle, and the computer started throwing multiple false codes. The old man told me to put four ounces of Sta-bil in the tank, fill it up the rest of the way with good gas, and drive the car around for 10 miles or so. Then put a regular dose of Sta-bil in with every fill-up after that.
Well, the old man was right. After ten miles, the engine was running fine, I cleared the codes, and they never came back. After a couple of tanks, I noticed a definite improvement in performance going up the mountains, as well as a roughly 10 percent improvement in fuel economy.
The old man says he stores all his equipment with full tanks of gas, and the Sta-bil keeps it fresh for as long as a year, as well as eliminates the problems caused by the ethanol.
The stuff is pretty expensive. The regular stuff, which is basically a fuel stabilizer / fuel system cleaner that provides decent protection against ethanol, is about $14.00/qt. at Tractor Supply (or about $20.00/qt. most other places around here). That's the one I've been using, and I'd rather drive my car without wheels than without Stabil at this point.
Sta-bil also has another formulation that's specifically designed for systems that
seriously vomit on ethanol, like older tractors and such. It's a bit more expensive at about $30.00/qt. I haven't tried that one, but the farmers up here swear by it -- and believe me, these guys throw nickels around like manhole covers, so if they're paying $30.00/qt. for a fuel treatment, you
know that it works.
http://www.goldeagle.com/brands/stabil/default.aspx
-Rich
