I want to ask if there is a chance for a sealed fuel to expire. I read that nitro fuels expire. If i seled it well, can it hold for years?

Depends on the storage conditions and the type container.

Sunlight degrades nitro. Cans don't allow sunlight in. Clear or milky plastic jugs often do.

Heat causes evaporation. Storage in temperature controlled conditions controls that.

When I got back into the hobby awhile back, I pulled out a case of fuel and used 3 of the 4 gallons. That fuel worked perfectly. It was considered to be VERY old by some of the guys. It'd been stored in the closed cardboard box in the house. Why only 3 of 4? One had been partly used. The cap no longer had the plug seal and the contents were "evaporatively condensed" and little remained.

If your jugs are still full, and no sunlight's gotten to it, the fuel should be good.

Ok, thanks man

Over the years I have made many buyouts of folks stuff and it has frequently included remaining fuel even up to eight or ten years old and in every case the unopened fuel was always good and I used it.

Caviets with unopened fuel would be in metal cans if heavy corrosion was evident or in the case of plastic jugs if they had become leakers from the seams which in either case could make the fuel unusable.

If you do end up with fuel that is a problem and you do not wish to use then do not get rid of it. Fuel is very usefull for long completely immersed soaks for engines that are stuck from castor deposits. You will find it very useful for this.

John

I just finished off the last of some old K&B fuel that was stored in a metal shed for decades. The temps over the years went from well below freezing to around 130 degrees or more, no problems at all.

I had about 5 gals that I kept around from flying 25 years ago. It was in a 5 gal gas can. I restarted in the hobby a couple years ago and tryed it and it worked good. It was a darker color than orginally but still worked.

Why chance it? You wouldn't sell me your airplane for 25 bucks would you? (the price of a gallon of glow fuel) Of course a dead stick doesn't mean you have lost your airplane .....but why chance it?

Because its not a big deal and if the fuel has a problem in every single case I have ever experianced it has not been old unopened fuel but instead it was relatively fresh but undeterminate careless uncapping and unknown exposure to the atmosphere.

Call it what you will, perhaps water or maybe loss of a key component more than the others thru evaporation but it does not really matter it will manifest itself if there is a problem in running problems right on the test stand. A simple test run is not likely to result in the loss of an airplane.

Like many of the others I have made buy outs of folks stuff over the years and that has included large quantities of unopened 'old fuel' and never experianced a single bad gallon of unopened fuel. That has constituted a lot of 'free' flying. So no I don,t mind a little time in carefully checking old fuel and on the type engines I intend to use it with.

John

I've seen Glow fuel so old, if you put a match to it on the grond it wouldn't ignite. It was about 10 years old and looked like tea in a jug.