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Gas in the Diesel!

Marc72

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Feb 2, 2016
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Sitting on the couch last night watching the news. The wife and I weren't really paying attention, but she happened to catch the tail end of a story. Apparently the Racetrac where we had just filled up our truck with Diesel had accidentally filled their diesel tanks with gasoline. It happened the Friday before Labor Day and they didn't catch it until Monday. We filled up (100 gallons) on Saturday. Dept. of Agriculture says it's about a 50/50 mix.

The story: http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/204042844-story

Apparently a tow truck has already lost it's motor due to the mixup. I've probably run about 20 gallons of the **** through the motor. And have about 80 gallons in the tanks. Last night I was thinking that we'd drain, change the filters, and rock on. From my research this morning, people are talking about changing injectors, pumps, lines, and turbos. It also sounds like it's around $25 a gallon to dispose of the contaminated fuel!

Thankfully, Racetrac has acknowledged the issue and is dealing with it on a case by case basis. I have to call them on Monday to see when I'm getting my check! Fortunately, the truck was already scheduled to go in to the shop on Tuesday to have the vacuum pump replaced. "Hey guys, can I add just one more little thing to the list!?" :rolf:

What would you guys do?
 
What kind of truck do you have that has a 100 gallon tank? Holy crap that would hurt my feelings to fill up. Is it running weird?
 
It's an 08 F250 PowerSmoke. It has it's 25 gallon stock and an 80 gallon aux tank in the bed. I got tired of filling up every two hours while we were towing.
 
I put gas in a 7.3 once, drove it 2,3 miles and it started knocking like hell, drained the tank, changed the filter and it's ran great since, probably 50 thousand miles ago.
 
the question is how low was main tank when you filled up? if not real low and there 50/50 mix you may just have to drain drag up tank. :dunno:
 
The big tank had about 20 gallons in it. So we put just about 60 gallons of bad fuel in it. The truck tank was just about full. The good news is that the 80 gallon tank doesn't get pumped into the truck tank until the truck tank gets down to 3/4. We drove to the Gulches and back. So, the truck tank is at 3/4 and the big tank is at 3/4. So my best guess is that we used about 5 gallons of clean fuel and 15-20 of the contaminated stuff.

At a minimum, I'm going to insist they pay for pumping it out, disposing of the bad stuff, both filters, and replacing the fuel from both tanks. The truck was going to Ford on Tuesday anyway, so I'll see what they have to say about it. I'd guess that's close to 3K right there....
 
Why would it cost $25 a gallon to dispose of it? I have had to drain fuel tanks that had mixed fuel and just put it in the waste oil tank. The company that picks it up doesn't care about fuel being in it. I call bs on that part.

I would call a wrecker and make them pay that bill in addition to whatever the dealer charges you.
 
This happened to a duramax of mine when it was brand new. I stopped at a BP station and a friend offered to buy the tank of fuel and fill it up for me, I said hell yeah. Apparently BP uses black handles for deisle instead of green. He just stuck his card in and picked up the green handle and started pumping, he pumped 30 gallons or so of gas into the truck while it was running.

I came back out of the store and jumped in the truck, as soon as I put it in gear it just shut down and would not crank back up. It never made and weird noises or anything, just shut down.

We hailed it back home and drained all the gas and changed the fuel filter and it fired right up. It ran just fine, that was 80k miles ago.

I think you will be fine if you just drain the tank and change the filter, I changed my fuel filter twice just for good measure.
 
I suppose it's probably dependent on where you are. When we owned a shop up North, our waste oil company would actually take samples. I forget the numbers, but if it had too much fuel in it, the cost went through the roof to dispose of it. We actually had to keep a separate tank for getting rid of gas! :dunno: Good idea on the tow truck! Thanks!
 
J.A.B said:
This happened to a duramax of mine when it was brand new. I stopped at a BP station and a friend offered to buy the tank of fuel and fill it up for me, I said hell yeah. Apparently BP uses black handles for deisle instead of green. He just stuck his card in and picked up the green handle and started pumping, he pumped 30 gallons or so of gas into the truck while it was running.

I came back out of the store and jumped in the truck, as soon as I put it in gear it just shut down and would not crank back up. It never made and weird noises or anything, just shut down.

We hailed it back home and drained all the gas and changed the fuel filter and it fired right up. It ran just fine, that was 80k miles ago.

I think you will be fine if you just drain the tank and change the filter, I changed my fuel filter twice just for good measure.

Thank you Sir! There's hope I guess!
 
J.A.B said:
This happened to a duramax of mine when it was brand new. I stopped at a BP station and a friend offered to buy the tank of fuel and fill it up for me, I said hell yeah. Apparently BP uses black handles for deisle instead of green. He just stuck his card in and picked up the green handle and started pumping, he pumped 30 gallons or so of gas into the truck while it was running.

I came back out of the store and jumped in the truck, as soon as I put it in gear it just shut down and would not crank back up. It never made and weird noises or anything, just shut down.

We hailed it back home and drained all the gas and changed the fuel filter and it fired right up. It ran just fine, that was 80k miles ago.

I think you will be fine if you just drain the tank and change the filter, I changed my fuel filter twice just for good measure.




That's exactly how mine happened, another person with the green handle. I never noticed it before but I definitely do now.
 
Marc72 said:
I suppose it's probably dependent on where you are. When we owned a shop up North, our waste oil company would actually take samples. I forget the numbers, but if it had too much fuel in it, the cost went through the roof to dispose of it. We actually had to keep a separate tank for getting rid of gas! :dunno: Good idea on the tow truck! Thanks!

We burned all the contaminated fuel that came out of mine through a chevy luv truck for a few months....

It smoked like hell !
 
poolman said:
That's exactly how mine happened, another person with the green handle. I never noticed it before but I definitely do now.

I almost did it once... There was a blue, black, yellow, and green handle! I was like "C'mon! WTF! Seriously!"
 
Where are you from? That will burn in a multi fuel just fine. I just happen to have some empty 55 drums and would be happy to dispose of it for you.
 
J.A.B said:
Apparently BP uses black handles for deisle instead of green. He just stuck his card in and picked up the green handle and started pumping, he pumped 30 gallons or so of gas into the truck while it was running.

When I worked for Ford the gas stations putting gas in the diesel tanks would happen about once or twice per year. We could always tell it happened by the flood of Powerstrokes coming in. We would ask the customers where they filled up and they would all say the same station. We had a standard estimate to throw at them when they came in.

The BP green gas handles were the second most common cause of contaminated diesels.

Draggbody filled up with gas by accident once on our way out of town. He realized it before he even started the engine. He just got some 5 gallon buckets, a new fuel filter, and disconnected his fuel line and kept turning the key and pumping the fuel out of the tank into the buckets in the gas station parking lot. He filled back up with diesel and has been going ever since. That was probably about 12 years ago. Not sure how many miles.
 
patooyee said:
When I worked for Ford the gas stations putting gas in the diesel tanks would happen about once or twice per year. We could always tell it happened by the flood of Powerstrokes coming in. We would ask the customers where they filled up and they would all say the same station. We had a standard estimate to throw at them when they came in.

What did you guys usually end up doing?
 

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