Bad fuel????

[Mat7783]

The left is fresh fuel, the right is daring from my tank of just purchased bus.your thoughts please!!!

[EastCoastCB]

I'd be pissed at whoever in Tampa sold ya that bus.
That fuel looks awful.

[banman]

I had 50gal of that in my bus -- 2 years old, maybe a little older...
Does it smell more like varnish or solvent?

I added a biocide and cetane booster to my ol' fuel and ran it. It ran fine, I added fresh fuel as soon as I could drive it to a station.

The really big thing is dirt and water. Swirl your ol' cup and see if you see water droplets in it.

If you've never seen water in fuel before -- add a table spoon of water to your cup of good fuel and let it set. Then swirl the cup a bit -- it'll be kinda like one of them ol' lava lamps.

I would drain off a gallon or two or more depending on the size of your tank. Mine's 100 gallons so I figured 4+ gallons was less than an inch deep...

I also have a water separator before my fuel filter (probably all buses do) which can catch and drain water too.

Have you already replaced the fuel filters?
And I'm assuming the engine runs or you most likely woulda mentioned that..

[Mat7783]

I drained 25 gallons from tank as I put 30 gallons in it to get home. It is a 60 gallon tank and I am putting about 18 gallons of fresh fuel in it and star tron treatment to see if it cleans everything up.

[Mat7783]

Does not seem to have water in fuel as far as I can tell. Just looks dirty?

[Mat7783]

Hey David: yes I replaced both filters which look like they had rust or varnish look. They look awful which is why I drained 25 gallons of fuel. It does have more of a varnish smell not as strong as diesel. If I add star tron and fresh fuel, it should clean it out

[banman]

I've been driving mine around a bit -- short trips, mostly to confirm repairs but also to burn though some of that old fuel and dilute it with more fresh fuel.

Mine starts easily with no smoke clouds.

[BlackJohn]

Originally Posted by Mat7783

The left is fresh fuel, the right is daring from my tank of just purchased bus.your thoughts please!!!

The fuel on the right looks to be off road diesel, or dyed. No taxes paid on it when buying.


John

[Truthseeker4449]

Originally Posted by Mat7783

The left is fresh fuel, the right is daring from my tank of just purchased bus.your thoughts please!!!

Weird how the fresh fuel is yellow not blue. The color difference is however concerning. Perhaps the inside of the tank is breaking down? Your filters did not look pretty and could be a sign of a problem further up the system.

[bus-bro]

I don't think that color is so bad. The one on the right is what diesel used to look like. The on on the left might be what ultra-low sulfur diesel looks like now. They also add, in a lot of places, 5% bio-diesel. I hear that bio-diesel can go bad with age.

As I don't drive mine much I treat it with a biocide. Other than that I don't worry about the age of diesel.

[EastCoastCB]

Originally Posted by BlackJohn

The fuel on the right looks to be off road diesel, or dyed. No taxes paid on it when buying.


John

idk man. Ours is RED.

[banman]

Originally Posted by BlackJohn

The fuel on the right looks to be off road diesel, or dyed. No taxes paid on it when buying.


John

Originally Posted by EastCoastCB

idk man. Ours is RED.

Correct -- that ain't red dye -- that's "varnish".

[Booyah45828]

Originally Posted by Mat7783

The left is fresh fuel, the right is daring from my tank of just purchased bus.your thoughts please!!!

Diesel fuel will turn bad, but not as quickly as gasoline. All the bad diesel I've seen is from stuff that's sat for decades.

Or it can go bad if exposed to a lot of water. but that will still take a year or so for it to happen.

Did you ever figure out if it was rust for sure on your filters? Thinking back, that could have been algae or some other bio issue caked on them.

Whatever it is, it needs treated because you're going to keep having issues if you don't.

[Native]

Both samples look basically clear at any rate. I agree that it needs to be treated or you will continue to have a problem. I hope you saved the old filters. If it is rust in them, you can spray some Ospho on a sample of it and it will turn black.

[Elliot Naess]

I wouldn't worry about it.
Sure, pour in a bottle of treatment, but don't lose sleep over it.
Buy three of both filters and change them twice in a short time of driving. Keep the third of each in the bus with a filter wrench and a gallon of fresh fuel.

The only time Millicent has had fuel trouble after sitting parked all winter... there was actual bright green "moss" in the primary filter.

And when I bought the Albatross bus, she had sat a year or so at the dealer -- yet drove away just fine.

What goes wrong with gasoline is that the "light ends" (chemical term) -- the most volatile component of the gasoline -- evaporate. This makes it difficult for the spark to ignite the gasoline.
It is almost as if the gasoline becomes diesel, or that gasoline is diesel with highly explosive fumes added.
Thus, diesel does not deteriorate the way gasoline does.

[Ranchorossa]

I'd try the fuel on the right. Looks like a Manhattan. Could be off road stuff. I used a lot of in in my generator. Run it and see how it goes. If it starts running bad, shut it off, drain it new filter and you're good to go.

[Dragonpop]

If it were my bus and questionable fuel I would dose it with PRI-D. It’s what the Tennessee Valley Authority used to bring back a huge amount of stored fuel for their backup generator. They had it tested in a lab and got a report back saying it was starting to separate. They didn’t want to spend the money for that much fuel so they talked to the people at Petroleum Research Institute and were advised to dose with PRI-D which they did and the next lab report came back stating factory fresh fuel.