In all my 40 yrs of playing with small engines I've never damaged one from running out all the gas in them, the few seconds of lean is just going to clean the top end a bit.
Ditto. Lean running conditions are only dangerous when it is under load for an extended period of time.
The point is that brief moments of lean running are harmless. All engines experience them. Running lean only becomes an issue because the piston in particular can't shed heat fast enough as there is not enough evaporative cooling from the fuel. It's an accumulative effect. Combine that with the load factor where barely any air or fuel is being used at idle so not much heat is being generated in the first place. Where you tend to see melted pistons and seizures is during higher sustained loads - big hot booms for long periods of time.
My winterizing procedure for every small engine I've ever owned was to run it dry...
