As the mowing season winds down and temperatures start to plunge, packing away your lawnmower is usually the final task on the fall yard work checklist. However, simply wheeling your mower into the shed or garage with a half-full tank of gasoline is a costly mistake.

Stagnant, untreated gas is the single biggest cause of small-engine failure, leading to gummed-up carburetors, rusted fuel lines, and an expensive repair bill — or a completely dead engine when spring rolls around.

Before you store your equipment for the cold months ahead, here is why untreated fuel ruins your mower during seasonal storage, and the simple one-step solution that keeps your engine protected.

Most gasoline purchased at the pump contains up to 10 percent ethanol, which works fine when you are burning through a tank every week. The problem arises when that ethanol-blended fuel sits idle in a lawn mower tank for more than 30 days.

Ethanol is hygroscopic, aggressively drawing moisture from the air into the fuel, a process accelerated by temperature fluctuations that cause tank condensation.

Over a few weeks, this trapped water triggers "phase separation," causing a heavy, acidic water-ethanol mixture to sink to the tank's bottom where the carburetor line feeds.

This slurry corrodes metal, destroys rubber seals, and leaves a gummy varnish that clogs the carburetor's microscopic jets. Because of this, next spring the engine will refuse to combust, even with a perfect spark, or it will stall immediately.

To keep your mower's fuel system pristine over the off-season, you have two choices: treat a full tank with a high-quality fuel stabilizer, or drain the fuel system completely.

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