Mothballing curiosity question

Of the eight generators I have bought over the years, all of them (from the little 531 up tp the 802) had absolutely clean fuel tanks, with no diesel fuel residue or smell. I am just curious, do they remove these tanks, and wash them out before they go into storage?

No. Not even. Drain them, yes. I have picked up gen sets from long storage, POMCUS, for instance. Set was clean and looked OK. But the tanks are not drained, and washed out.

I got one once with an unknown substance in the fuel tank. It was yellowish and when soaked into a white rag, it was like cracking a highlighter open. I am fairly sure it could have been seen from orbit. This is the same set that was full of kittylitter. Turns out the oil drain valve was a bit leaky.

Then theres the ones that you could eat off of.

There are several ways they stored equipment.
1. From OEM: It is created at factory and what ever they did there. Never saw one, any size. 0.5-840KW including turbines Tac Gens in 47 years GI Joe Land.
2. From DEPOT rebuild or RESET: Here, after testing, they drain the tanks, fluids and are placed in supply storage. When these arrive at a unit sometimes 5´10 years later, one puts in batteries, removes storage protective covers in several things, add fluids, oil, fuel bleed the system, and then run it to look for leaks as things dry out and crack.
3. DEPOT RESET and send out to units: Here the fluids are all there with some fuel in the tank. Any air shipment this is not allowed so every effort to get fuel out is taken. Tank caps are left open to ensure no fumes are present. Capped before ship or storage outside. Batteries are disconnected and taped.
4. They have something called NCOMP. This is at unit level. Equipment not required for day to day ops but required for deployment, are put in a storage state. Equipment dependent and time of expected storage are taken into consideration. Usually clean oil, filters, radiator cooling fluids are checked and topped off, and fuel is at a low level. Batteries can have solar trickle chargers attached to aid in keeping batteries, and these are started on a time basis and checked.
5. Return from a foreign nation from a deployment: Agricultural cleaning. High pressure and sometimes steam cleaning everything, inside and out. Saw them pressure wash laptop computers. This really is great for environment but it usually allows rust to set in as it goes on a boat and salt air starts to play. Bearings get penetrated with water, as does most everything else including boxes inside the control box, K8, I/Os, DCS, GSC, DVRs, you name it. Batteries are disconnected and terminals taped.
6. Regional DEPOTs of equipment: Seen everything from desert to parked under the trees. No protection, nothing just parked there to go to waste.
7. The stuff in POMCUS storage comes out but they spend a few getting it going. These are supposed to be ready to go in like 72 hours with all BII.
8. NTC rotations and drawn equipment. OH. only did 14 rotations. OH. 12 as a Combat Engineer Bn. Maint. Warrant and 1 as a LAR, 1 as a LAR Master Tech/STR, and after that I had to play Action Officer at HQ(#1 LAR for our skill set). OH. My "attach a file" is back. Gotta send a guy in Mexico a reactive load adjustment. Later Dudes and Dudette's

With the recent demise of diesel fuel quality lately, the subject of long term storage has come back to the table.
This L.S.D does not like long term storage, even with additives put in.
So the question is: What is a good way to prep a generator for long term storage these days?
You can drain everything out, but what do you do about the fuel left inside the injectors injection pumps. metering pumps and lines??
One thought I had was to get a 50/50 mix of ATF and treated diesel into everything.
What do you guys think is a good way to store a generator or other diesel engine, long term these days?

Back in the day I used to run alcohol go-karts and av gas stock cars. Both had a similar issue of gumming and seals degrading in the carbs. To prevent this we would disconnect the tank from the carb while running and run the engine off of wd40. This would eventually purge the carb of fuel and help preserve the seals and jets.

Id imagine something similar can be done in this case.

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Ray70 said:

With the recent demise of diesel fuel quality lately, the subject of long term storage has come back to the table.
This L.S.D does not like long term storage, even with additives put in.
So the question is: What is a good way to prep a generator for long term storage these days?
You can drain everything out, but what do you do about the fuel left inside the injectors injection pumps. metering pumps and lines??
One thought I had was to get a 50/50 mix of ATF and treated diesel into everything.
What do you guys think is a good way to store a generator or other diesel engine, long term these days?

Click to expand...

FWIW: I've switched to renewable diesel (HVO, not biodiesel). Purportedly per the manufacturer, it has better storage characteristics, but not 5-10 years good.

All the best, 2PbFeet

Ray70 said:

With the recent demise of diesel fuel quality lately, the subject of long term storage has come back to the table.
This L.S.D does not like long term storage, even with additives put in.
So the question is: What is a good way to prep a generator for long term storage these days?
You can drain everything out, but what do you do about the fuel left inside the injectors injection pumps. metering pumps and lines??
One thought I had was to get a 50/50 mix of ATF and treated diesel into everything.
What do you guys think is a good way to store a generator or other diesel engine, long term these days?

Click to expand...

A lot of diesel farm equipment I deal with gets purged with straight ATF for long sits. Always a good dose in the cylinders as well. It will burn just as well as diesel.

If you really want to go nuts, you can purge the entire crankcase, intake, and exhaust with dry nitrogen and seal it off. Sealing it dry helps prevent condensation when sitting, and displacing O2 with as much nitrogen as possible slows down whatever oxidation is bound to happen on the inside with whatever moisture is left.

Someone in the family used to mothball military ships before retirement. Can't have rust if you don't have oxygen.

You can also store apples for a VERY long time when oxygen is removed. It's called controlled atmosphere (CA) storage. I will probably be servicing orchard coolers until I retire.

Seem a lot of stuff. The storage time is the key. I would ensure you got the water out of the fuel/water separator, and keep the old diesel in there. After the final run wait an hour to get all fuel out of the tank and go from there. The pumps take a moment to bleed off.