Re: Re: winterizing engines: to drain or not to drain....
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Posted by Gerald on October 12, 1998 at 07:09:18:
In Reply to: Re: winterizing engines: to drain or not to drain.... posted by Tom on October 12, 1998 at 00:02:41:
: My personal preference is to leave a small amount of gas in the tank and then start the engine and let it run long enough to charge the battery every week or so. Keep adding a small amount of fresh gas from time to time so that the tank does not run dry. If you do let the tractor sit over the winter, KEEP THE BATTERY CHARGED. A battery will go dead from just sitting and a dead battery CAN FREEZE AND BUST in severe cold. Also, when an engine sits idle during cold weather, condensation will allow water to accumulate in the cylinders. There are different opinions on how to deal with this. Some say to add Marvel Mystery Oil or automatic transmission fluid to the gas and run the engine until it runs out of gas. If you use this method, you will probably have to run the engine with the choke partially on to keep it running on the gas/oil mixture. Others say to remove the spark plugs and squirt oil into the cylinders. The idea is the same, to provide an oil film on the cylinders. Personally, I hate to forget about my toys all winter long. Starting them once in a while gives me a "fix" to help me through the cold weather. Unless you get the engine up to full operating temperature each run you probably rust the cylinders worse with those unloaded battery charging runs than by ignoring it. Remember that water is a part of the combustion products and so there's always some in the cylinder that's just fired just waiting to condense. My dad always said that leaving the car outside the garage and then putting it away at bedtime was probably harder on it for wear than running it all day from that effect. And the last cylinder that just took on a full fuel load after the ignition switch was turned off has fuel to condense, wash the oil off the cylinder walls and then dillute the oil in the crankcase. You need to get an engine hot to boil off the water and fuel condensed in the crankcase. Care for the battery is useful for having a battery come spring. Things like cleaning, charging, and probably shallow cycling are of benefit. Deep cycling is not really good even for a deep cycle battery. Setting and slowly self discharging is worst for the battery because the sulfate crystals that form as the natural result of discharge get time to grow large and they hardly ever are removed by charging once large. Gerald
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