Non ethanol vs stabil???

Toertel wrote: Peter, so your saying for winter layup I should fill her up with non ethanol gas and add stabilizer? If so, which one is the best?

With ethanol, you must use a stabilizer for layup and I suggest one that's made for ethanol. With plain gas, I still recommend a stabilizer but plain old Stabil will work.

Very Cool Cory and welcome to the Site. I too am on Jackson quite a bit and have probably seen that boat on the water a time or two if you bought it locally. I usually boat on the Tussahaw side of the lake so you'll probably run into me somewhere in the future. I changed out the main fuel line to a ethanol approved line a couple years ago. I run blended fuel in the 88' all summer and then drain it dry and refill it with NON ethanol gas and Stabil. Best place to get it close to the lake is at the BP station at Stark Road and Halls Bridge Road.

Congratulations on your wise purchase, BTW.    

Sounds like the PO cared for the boat well.

Ditto the above, but just adding that not storing Egas more than a few weeks is the key. A good plan is to only buy what you will use for the week. When you rebuild carb, look for a ethanol resistant kit.

I'm not familiar myself with the 79 fuel system, the problems ethanol pose are not going to have to do with runability its going to do with the fuel system componants. first off. if it has a fiberglass tank thats going to break down with the introduction of ethanol fuels. aluminum is fine. If it has original or older fuel lines. it may be a good idea to change anyways but another good reason is because fuel hoses had some issues with breaking down from ethanol a lot during the "transition" and a lot of people found out the hard way. anything you buy new now will be able to handle it.
Always a good idea to have an inline Racor as well. will help separate and keep water from reaching fuel pump and carb.

With any boat, introduction of water into the fuel system is always bad, but once ethanol fuels came along it went from bad to horribly bad because of the reaction the ethanol has when it is mixed with water. it has this horrible tendancy to corrode things like carburetor bowls, power valves, metering plates, fuel tanks. I hate the stuff personally, its one of the reasons i bought a diesel truck.
They dont sell ethanol free gas around me either except by the quart in home depot for about $30 a gallon. so. I have been using lucas treatment with every fill up when i have to buy gas. for my boats and stuff. I pulled my carb this season to clean up and it was surprisingly good inside so thats got to say something for the stuff. but otherwise i have no real world data to share about it other than it makes me feel a little better when i use it. i dont know if stabil is meant to do the same as the lucas is or not.

if ethanol fuel is all you can get than thats all you can do i guess, run the conditioner Bought myself a couple cases of this stuff from my supply guy,