Five Minutes Is Plenty

Run the saw for about five minutes after adding stabilizer; that’s enough to pull treated fuel through the line, filter, and carburetor.

A chainsaw fuel system is short. The moment the engine runs, it starts drawing fuel from the tank through the filter and line and into the carb. The treated mix gets there in seconds. Five minutes just gives you a nice margin so the carburetor bowl has also been flushed out, not just the line.

One thing worth getting right: if the tank is only half full, measure the stabilizer for the fuel you actually have, not what the tank holds when completely full. A little over is fine, but there’s no point sloshing in a full-tank dose for half a tank of gas.

Just let it idle, maybe give it a few revs, and shut it down. If you’re doing this for storage, now is also the time to make sure the saw is running on nice, fresh, properly mixed fuel. Stable gas in the carb beats old gas in the carb.