It is very important that you have some fuel stored at your house. It can be as simple as outside in the garden shed next to the lawn mower or off the ground on a couple of bricks with a blue tarp over it all next to the trash cans. If the power goes out, gas stations won’t be able to pump fuel from their underground tanks. So what you have on hand may be all you have for a while.
One of the best ways to store fuel it is in the old, trusted Jerry can. I’ll go through the pros and cons of using this container which I have discovered over the years. But let’s just start here with the pros:
Low cost, easy to budget, pay as you go
Easily handled by one person (less than 35 lb. filled, see below)
Transportable
Even Mad Max loves them
Finding Old Ones, Buying New
The formerly-great state of California has screwed up modern gasoline storage cans with impossible-to-use vapor locking spouts. They were imposed by obvious idiots and designed by the inbred cousins of those same idiots. They are a disaster so don’t even try to use them.
Your best bet is to find some older style metal cans at a garage sale. You need to use a flashlight to look inside for rust or equally bad, that the coating is flaking off. If you see either, take a hard pass no matter the price since it will a) contaminate your engine and then b) leak.1 If there is no metal spin-on top or the gasket is a shambles (look for cracks around the edge) then no problem, you can buy replacements of both on eBay. For the gaskets you must buy nitrile gaskets which won’t dissolve under gasoline which is a solvent2.
If you want to buy new cans and not mess with used things here are two good options:
On the left, steel cans from The Tank Source
On the right, off-road fuel jugs you can get a farm supply places and even Wal-Mart. They have various warnings on stickers which you can, and should, simply peel off and ignore.
Not Everyone is Hulk Hogan
Fuel is lighter than water at 6 lb. per gallon (water is just over 8) so you’re shifting over 30 lb. with a full container. Keep this in mind when architecting your storage solution and include some smaller 2 or 3 gallon jugs. And remember that fuel transfer is messy and stinky so put yourself in the shoes of others who aren’t as practiced or as strong. Maintaining a massive inventory is pointless if it is impossible to use. A good way to test this is to ask a (trusted) neighbor to come over and fill up your car with minimal coaching.
I had an old friend who liked to 4 wheel in his Jeep. He kept most of his fire extinguishers on the outer edges of his roll cage so that if he had an accident, other people could grab them to put out the fire. (There’s another entire blog post on this type of asymmetric thinking.)
Outside Protection
Since rust never sleeps you need to get ahead of that game with the metal cans. I coat the bottom and first couple inches with spray on truck bed liner. You can buy this in the paint section at the hardware store:
Inside Protection
Gasoline will go bad over time. It is a blend of different petrochemicals and each plays its role in running an engine. There are small, light molecules mixed in that help your engine get started before the heavier molecules take over to keep the combustion going. Just like a soda going flat because the carbon dioxide bubbles out over time, the light molecules in gasoline also bubble out and reduce the energetics of the mix.
There are two additives you can use to preserve gasoline: Stabil and Pri-G. These are available at hardware and automotive part stores. Follow the directions on the bottle and wash your hands afterwards. I have been using Stabil for over 10 years and I add 2x the recommended amount to give me a 24 month shelf time, then I mark the can to be used in 18 months just for safety. With this approach I’ve never had a batch go bad but just to be safe I top up half a tank of gas in the car with the stabilized fuel.
The Stabil bottle includes a measuring vestibule on the side (circled) which will help.
As mentioned before, use twice the suggested amount of stabilizer for certainty. I don’t try to remember things like this so I note them somewhere for future reference. This also directs others who use my gear (like you, reading this right now).
Minimizing the Mess of Fuel Transfer
I’ll cover this in Part 2.
Dan D.
“Sometimes life isn’t falling apart, its falling into place.” – J. McQuery
However if the price drops to ~$5 then buy it for the spare screw on lid and flex spout. Because you want spares of both.
Great line from my Monster Garage episode: “You spilled gasoline all over the floorpan!” “It’s ok, we cleaned it up with acetone.” Yes, we all survived.