Marinette Boat Forum

I recently purchased an 86 32' fly bridge sedan with the 318 Chrysler engines. When looking thru the owners manual I noticed the it recomemded unleaded fuel. You can hardly find unleaded fuel anymore. Do you guys (and gals) use unleaded fuel or add leading additive?

Bill Schneider

You had my brain spinning until I realized you had a typo. You meant the manual specifies leaded fuel. Well, not exactly... here it is from my old manual for a 1988 boat (but the manual was not likely updated from yours.
"...FUEL SYSTEM
It is very important that the gasoline used meets the requirements for your engine. Use of gasoline which does not meet these requirements can result in burned valves and pistons, poor engine performance and shorter engine life.
Regular grade leaded or no lead gasoline is acceptable. Use leaded type where available..."

I can recall no one on the board complaining about unleaded fuel. On the other hand, there's been lots of groaning about ethanol for well known reasons.

Go ahead with unleaded and don't add lead - it's a harmful pollutant and will damage your pocketbook as well.

At one time everyone worried that not using leaded fuels meant the valve seats would be pounded away. That fear never happened, so don't sweat it. And those Mopar rock crushers were designed to run on 86 octane, so the 89 stuff at most marinas is mire than you need.

Jeff

PS: From what I've read, 1975 up Mopar engines have hardened seats for unleaded fuels.

As to the availability of non-ethanol gas, you have, or will, find the marinas with gas docks carry non-ethanol gas, but at a ridiculous price. However, you can find non-ethanol gas at some service stations. Casey's is a chain the admiral and I found carrying that gas last summer while on a car trip out West. We found there are Casey's stations within reasonable driving distance where we could load up a number of gas cans. Their pricing is much, much better than marinas. NOTE - ensure the station has a good usage rate (ie, you don't want to buy from someone whose gas has been sitting a long time!).

Transferring to your boat takes meticulous precautions...
- ensure this wouldn't run afoul of marina's stated policy,
- shut down electrical appliances (no sparking!)
- ventilate engine / gas tank spaces (which would entail running bilge blower(s) [AM I CORRECT ON THAT???])
- close open windows / doors to prevent drifting gas fumes from entering boat interior.
- No spillage!
- When completed, open access to bilge / tank area and do a good sniff test to ensure no fumes! If there are (fumes), investigate, find and correct before anything else!

Bill

https://www.gasbuddy.com/

https://www.pure-gas.org/

Thanks. I realized that I had put unleaded instead of leaded gas after I had posted.

Bill