Laying Up a Classic for Winter? Protect the Fuel System with Millers Tank Safe
You’ve tucked the classic away for winter, pulled the garage door shut, and you won’t see it again until spring. But while it sits there, something is quietly going to work on the one part of the car you can’t see – the inside of the fuel tank and the carburettor.
Modern petrol was never designed to sit still. Leave it in a tank for months – or years – and it turns from friend to foe. For anyone who lays a classic up over winter, stores a project long-term, or only takes the car out a handful of weekends a year, protecting the fuel system is one of the cheapest and most important jobs you can do. That is exactly what Millers Tank Safe is made for.
Why modern petrol is hard on a parked classic
Today’s pump fuel is a world away from what most classics were designed to run on. The big change is ethanol – the “E5” and “E10” you now see on the pump. Ethanol is hygroscopic, which is a fancy way of saying it pulls moisture out of the air. In a car that is driven regularly that trace of water gets burned off and never causes trouble. In a car that is parked, it has nowhere to go.
Over a long lay-up, that leads to a familiar list of problems:
- Water gathering in the bottom of the tank, where it sits against bare steel and starts rust forming.
- Ethanol and moisture attacking the metals classics are full of – steel tanks, and the brass, zinc and pot-metal in older carburettors and fuel pumps.
- The petrol itself oxidising and dropping out gum and varnish that blocks fine carburettor jets and clogs float bowls.
- That stale-fuel smell, and a car that will not start cleanly come spring.
None of this happens when the car is used regularly. It is the standing that does the damage. (If you want the full story on ethanol and older engines, we cover it in E10 petrol problems for older engines.)
Carburettor cars are the most at risk
If your classic runs carbs – and most do – it is right at the sharp end of this. A carburettor is full of small passages, fine jets and soft metals, and it is open to the air. As fuel evaporates from the float bowl it leaves behind sticky residue and, over time, the tell-tale white or green corrosion on brass and alloy. A blocked jet or a corroded needle-and-seat means a strip-down and a rebuild – or an expensive trip to a specialist – before the car will run right again.
Fuel-injected classics and modern classics benefit too, but it is the carburettor crowd who have the most to lose from a winter of neglect.
What Millers Tank Safe actually does
Tank Safe is a petrol additive built specifically for storage and lay-up. It does two important things:
- Anti-corrosion protection – it protects the tank, fuel lines and carburettor against the rust and corrosion that moisture and ethanol cause.
- Vapour Phase Inhibition (VPI) – this is the clever part. Tank Safe does not only protect the metal that sits under the fuel; it releases corrosion inhibitors into the vapour space above the fuel, protecting the top of the tank and the surfaces the petrol never actually touches. That is the area most storage products miss.
It also helps keep carburettors clean, and it is fully compatible with all types of petrol – leaded, unleaded and modern oxygenated (ethanol) fuels – so it suits everything from a pre-war veteran to a 1990s modern classic.
How to use it
It could not be simpler, and the time to do it is before the car goes away, not after:
- Add Tank Safe to the fuel before you lay the car up. One 250ml bottle treats around 50 litres of fuel.
- Fill the tank up. A full tank leaves less air space for condensation to form – the fuller the tank, the better.
- Run the engine for a few minutes after adding it, so treated fuel is drawn all the way through the lines and into the carburettor – the part you most want protected.
- For maximum effect, temporarily block any open fuel breathers so the vapour-phase inhibitors stay where they are doing good.
Who should be using it
If any of these sound like you, Tank Safe belongs in your winter routine:
- Anyone laying a classic up for the winter months.
- Cars kept in long-term or dry storage, and restoration projects that sit for months or years between stints.
- Seasonal and weekend cars that only cover a few miles a year.
- Classic motorcycles, which suffer exactly the same tank and carb problems.
Cheap insurance for a car you care about
A rusted-through tank or a seized-up carburettor is a miserable – and pricey – way to start the driving season. A bottle of Tank Safe is a few euro of insurance against exactly that. For a car that is going to sit, it is one of the smartest things you can put in the tank.
If your classic is in regular use rather than storage, and your concern is ethanol and lost performance while you are actually driving it, take a look at Millers VSPe Power Plus and the rest of our Fuel Treatments & Additives – but for the car that is about to be parked, Tank Safe is the one to reach for.
