I have a 750 Magna and a GS500. I took the gas tank off the Magna in the fall to work on some scrapes and paint it.
I stored the gas with stabilizer in one of these plastic gas cans for about 5 months. When i re-installed the tank this week and filled it
with the stored gas, the bike started on full choke but wouldn't idle at all without choke. I suspect it was contaminated gas so I drained tank and put in
fresh with Sea-Foam. After about half an hour bike will idle but still has way to go. The GS500 sat same length of time with gas in the tank and is fine.
I am wondering if anyone has experienced similar problems with these plastic gas cans.
Thanks Ken
Stabilizer only last so long, but it should've been find over winter. Maybe your stabilizer went bad before you put it in the gas. What did you do to your bikes before you parked them? I'd say chances are better that there was some gas still in the carb and it gunked it up over winter. I doubt it was the plastic cans that caused the problem, unless you left it outside in the rain and water eventually seeped in, something along those lines.
+1...gummed up carbs on the Magna. You pulled the tank, but did not mention if you drained the carb float bowls.
X2 on the carbs. Give them a good cleaning to rule them out as a possibility and go from there. I use plastic gas cans all the time with out issue. What I do for starage is I add fuel stabalizer and fill the tank to the top. I then turn off the petcock and drain the carb bowls. This way the carbs dont sit with fuel in them and the fuel that is in the tank is ready to use for spring. This seems to work for me. Good luck.
Thanks guys, I think you're right on. I drained the carbs on my GS500, very easy, but not on the Magna, very hard. What I have done in the past is to shut petcock and run it till it quits. I can't remember doing that last fall. Good news is that the more it runs the better it is.
Ken
If I cant drain the bowls I also turn the petcock off and run her till she dies. Glad that its getting better.
Cheers.