Beware of dirty Diesel

[mettisse]

my story starts a week ago when I arranged for my sons Toyota Avensis ( great car) to have a service, we use and have used the same guy for years, and we have the greatest regard and respect for him ( his nickname “ Dave the diesel), he reported that the fuel filter was ok but to pay attention as where we buy our fuel. ( reports of dirty diesel) Two days later, the Avensis won’t start,
Turns out my son had bought fuel from a very well know supermarket chain, filter totally clogged with black slime. Good old Green Flag got it going and now we have had to treat it with chemicals. Prob only once) Ok, job done, but it was something the green flag man said, it was they have a good few calls on exactly this problem and he recommended to stay with premium brands of fuel. Dave the diesel had already alerted us to the problem, we had “ won’t happen to me” mindset, at this point I will say that as far as possible my wife and I only put shell ( ordinary) in our E350 Merc and my Bruiser, you may scoff but I feel they run better on it. At the end of all this is this point, if you buy a mouldy loaf, piece of cheese , the law is behind you, what about this, who checks the fuels? is there any redress for the cost, inconvenience and distress? , of course, how do you prove it? That’s why I think it should be sold up to a standard and the the weights and measures people or trading standards should involved. This is not a rant, more an indignant comment. Best regards to all, Bill Westley

PS the Chemical for the “cure” came from Ernest Doe Agricultural Engineers £54 per litre but it treats 5,000 litres or 70 tankfuls so with 6 diesels
In our family, about 10 times for each vehicle fill up

 

[Chris]

I've been looking at similar treatments from Fuel Doctor. There's a you tube video on it. Quite astonishing. I store fuel in cans which do hang around for a considerable time on occasions. It would seem that you can either inoculate the fuel before storage, or simply dose it before use.

I'm also experimenting with cetane booster in the Hilux at present. So far I don't seem to be getting a real increase in mpg which is what I'd hoped for, but even after two tanks I can say it runs better, starts better and has more get up and go.

 

[Higgy]

We live close to a Tesco.. But my place of work is next to an Esso So its one or the other so to speak when i fill up . But i do notice sometimes I get a strange smell from the exhaust, No Smoke, Not a diesel smell or burning oil or 'Owt' like that.. Its more like a sweet sickly kind of smell, The missus car is the same. But havn't worked out yet if it coincides with the Tesco fill ups.. Il have to Investigate,... But it is an on going Debate between the Supermarket fill ups or the Shell/ BP Fill ups! Which is better for the engine?.... Always an interesting Thread 'tho'..

 

[nick_the_fish]

Out of interest do you want to name and shame the

very well know supermarket chain

@mettisse ?

I got a fill in the Ford Focus a few months ago which i was sure was bad diesel, but assumed that bad diesel was not a problem that could happen in this country so put it down to something else. Be interesting where you got your bad fill from.

 

[Jacob100]

I filled up and got some bacon and baby wipes from Morrisons once. The meat was so full of water I had to drain the pan twice and the wet wipes were dry like sandpaper. Made me wonder how supermarkets cut corners with their fuel. I know most of it comes from the same source and conforms to a minimum standard but I’m convinced they’ve found a way around it.

 

[frank rabbets]

You could put a claim in to the small claims court online. The more detail the better. I doubt the offending supplier would turn up and in that case you will be awarded in your favour.

 

[flint]

It seems that a lot of diesel sold these days is a blend with biodiesel in it. On the pump, it should have a sticker with a B number, a common blend is B20, i.e. 20% biodiesel. Quite a while ago, Morrisons were selling B30 and there was a warning by VW to avoid it as it was causing problems.

 

[Steve Wright]

I don't go for this theory that the premium grades are better ! I used to go to Stanlow oil refinery a few years ago for work and I noticed the tankers queuing up to be filled ans the first one had "Tesco" the next had "morrisons" the next had "Esso" so the point is it all comes from the same place.
But I did have a problem some years ago my wife put about a tenner in on a Sunday and on her way home on the Wednesday the car just stopped and to cut a long story short took it to a diesel place and they drained the tank to find about half a gallon of water, and it turned out that the garage was at the side of a river and the tanks had corided and water had got into the tanks so we took them to task and got them to pay for the work done, the problem is we weren't to know this at the time, but avoid stations at the side of rivers !

 

[mettisse]

I won’t name and shame as there are too many variables , how do you know the car wasn’t already infected, how can you prove anything, it’s just ok to be aware of a problem which I believe will become more commonplace, and for those who don’t believe there is a difference, that’s ok, I have no physical evidence to prove anything either way, just preferences, and that’s ok also.
Best regards to all, Billy Westley

 

[AndyCook]

Higgy

That sweet sicky smell might be the biofuel content
I used to run a 4Runner on high mix of veg oil snd it had a sweet smell

 

[Chris]

The fuel DOES all pretty much come from the same place. Tesco for eg don't have their own refinery. However, each tanker has additives in the fill. These will be anti waxing and anti foaming agents plus the addition of various levels of bio. This I know to be true because I heard it from someone who used to work there filling the tankers. Premium fuel is just the same fuel but with more additives. It's not 'brewed' in a different way.

Now, tanks are a different story. There are supposed to be all sorts of checks and regimes on fuel storage tanks. Water and sludge do build up in them for sure. However, they are not supposed to be able to be sucked up. But as I understand from one believable source, all of that crap and gunge gets all agitated and mixed up during a fuel delivery - it then settles again. So the worst time to buy fuel is just after a delivery. Yes there are supposed to be filters and such, but it seems that some material still gets through.

 

[Higgy]

Higgy

That sweet sicky smell might be the biofuel content
I used to run a 4Runner on high mix of veg oil snd it had a sweet smell

Could be Andy! Its funny how a 25yr old cruiser with a 320,000 on the clock and a nearly new Skoda Fabia Both smell exactly the same( When you put your Nose up the Exhaust).... The Bio Additives could be the right answer..

 

[Jake the Peg]

I recall a couple of years ago watching the Tesco fuel tanker filling up at BP and thought that if they don’t use their own fuel then it must be pretty crap!

My ship I work on is having fuel issues, we think the barge that delivers to us sucked the crap from their tanks, as such we are having to change fuel filters every 100hours, due to no flow through them at all. Inspection of our fuel tanks isn’t pretty just now.
Our last fill up was over £100k and it’s not unusual for me to buy fuel more than once in my trip, pity I’m not getting club card points on these fill ups

 

[flint]

The blending of diesel with bio is becoming a bit of a mixed blessing as far as the environment goes. Demand is so great for used cooking oil (has to be that to claim carbon offset) that the UK imports loads from China, sometimes of debatable quality. The price that can be had for their used cooking oil is greater than that which they can buy virgin palm oil for, so imports of palm oil into China have shot up and more forests are being destroyed to feed the demand.
More (long) reading here if interested:
https://www.nnfcc.co.uk/files/mydocs/UCO Report.pdf

 

[t1pper]

I work in the ag industry and we have been having problems the last 6 months or so with red dirty fuel.
There have been a wide recognition of this fact too.

 

[silvercruiser]

Yep i look after a few oil boilers that are running on gas oil. and the filters have had to be changed more frequently. A black type of sludge.

 

[t1pper]

Yep i look after a few oil boilers that are running on gas oil. and the filters have had to be changed more frequently. A black type of sludge.

Exactly something like a fine coal dust, common rail engines have been the worst affected as the filters are a bit fussier.

 

[Towpack]

Only real problem I've ever had with diesel was back in '09 when there was a spike in pump prices and I started using some local produced BioD which was fine until the quality dropped off and the LC developed a rough unstable idle and poor acceleration. Removed and cut open the fuel filter and found it almost completely blocked. Luckily it did it's job and kept the s***e out of the IP.

Asothers have mentioned above I also prefer to use top branded fuel, usually Shell.

 

[StarCruiser]

With the various vehicles being affected at the same time, there must be something common to all, not just the tanks at the local supermarket. Red diesel gets delivered, ships don’t fill at Tesco’s. My point is that with these many varied users experiencing the same issues, it surely must be the refinery that the problem stems from, must it not? The refinery being the common point?

Just a thought.

 

[flint]

Reading through the paper that I posted above, this caught my eye:

"Within the UK there is routine quality testing completed at refineries, terminals and refuelling stations; in 2016 this equated to 1 fuel quality test, comparing the fuel against the EN590 fuel standard, for every 5.3 million litres of supplied diesel. Although there are clearly robust safeguards put in place to avoid issues with fuel quality, there is the potential for these issues to be missed."