Bad Diesel

server_girl

Hey...

today I brought my car in for a service, it's a 2 litre TDI engine... I had a very empty take leaving home so filled up on the way.... when they went to change my fuel filter they were alarmed at the very strong smell of petrol... so they took a dip of my tank and discovered that there was a mixture of crap in my tank... there was about 60% petrol (yes petrol) about 38% diesel, approx 1% oil and something they described as a cutting agent..... whatever that is..

they were also quite alarmed that the car was still running, and as it had done about 100 miles on this fuel they reckoned it was ok to continue as the car was running fine & wouldn't do any damage to car - they wanted £170 to drain the tank... (brought car up north for service)...

anyone know anything dodgy diesel and why it would be mixed like this? I haven't notified the garage yet, was planning on ringing the manager tomorrow. Should i report this and if so, to who? could it do damage to my car? The garage were recommending that i reported it as it was illegal. Could be a lot of hassle. I have a sample of the fuel in a water bottle and you can clearly see the 4 separate layers of liquids.

any thoughts?

Mr Benevolent

I'd suggest reporting it to the head office of the petrol station (if they have one). If it's a 2L TDI then yes, petrol can do a lot of damage to your engine, they're very sensitive. There's at least one guy on Boards (Hammertime?) who can tell you exactly what to do, he'll probably be along shortly.

skibbers

Just serviced my car which didnt start cos had contaminated diesel in it. Costed me 2,500..

tomcollins97

I would suggest reporting to the Gardai and Customs. Head office could be a waste of time, depending on what chain the garage is with. Was the garage in the North or South?

Sticky Fingers

It is possible that you put a small amount of petrol in yourself into the car ? I used to work with a large oil co, this used to happen all the time. It is quite easy to do BTW, if you are hassled or in a hurry !!!
If there was diesel in the car already and you put petrol in with it, it will run for a short time. It is also quite possible that the wrong fuel was put into the tanks during a fuel delivery. This is called a crossover. There are strict procedures to follow during a fuel delivery, but these things still happen. Try and find out if there were other people who had the same problem, if this is the case, the Oil Cos will foot the bill. Lastly, it is also possible that it is illegally washed fuel as well.

trad

Strange that they were able to give you a breakdown of the fuel in your tank. It would usually take a lab to determine that.

As to washed diesel, petrol is dearer than diesel so it would not make financial sense to use it to launder diesel.

It seems to me that either you accidently put petrol into your car instead of diesel or the fuel tank in the garage where you filled up was contaminated. Sounds like your garage was on the ball.

stevenmu

Could they have been cleaning out the different tanks and then decided to sell the dregs instead of paying to dump them? Might explain the oil and cutting agent.

trad

stevenmu wrote: »

Could they have been cleaning out the different tanks and then decided to sell the dregs instead of paying to dump them? Might explain the oil and cutting agent.

Could be, but how do you explain the garage's ability to identify the components of the tank contents?

robtri

customs is the only way to go....

mind you I can't get over the petrol part....
why put petrol in? as it costs the petrol station operator more than diesel

No offence OP, but are you sure you filled up with Diesel??
I have seen it many many times, people putting petrol into diesel cars....
it would make more sense....

Bogger77

if the OP had, as they stated, had an empty tank before filling, it means that the fuel they put in must be pretty much at the ratio mentioned.
So fuel musta been contaminated coming out of the nozzle.

When I bought my diesel car up north, the garage owner suggest that I didn't purchase any fuel between there and well south of the border!

stevenmu

trad wrote: »

Could be, but how do you explain the garage's ability to identify the components of the tank contents?

Well the OP describes the components being separately visible in a container, I suppose petrol and diesel could be distinguished by smell and oil by colour/consistency. Not sure about the cutting agent, maybe by smell as well, or possibly by testing it as a cutting agent and seeing that it worked.

That's just guessing though, it would be interesting to know for sure, perhaps they've even come across this before.

Darsad

Its a well known fact that there is still a lot of laundered fuel been sold from branded garages around the border counties. Op I guarantee if you present your bottle along with an estimate or invoice for the repairs to your car to the manager where you purchased the fuel you will be refunded , they dont want the hassle or attention. However in saying that I know for a fact that a lot of these guys are been forced to sell this crap fuel or mix in their tanks by unsavoury heavies who drop little hints or threats.

kierank01

Sticky Fingers wrote: »

. It is also quite possible that the wrong fuel was put into the tanks during a fuel delivery. This is called a crossover. There are strict procedures to follow during a fuel delivery, but these things still happen.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have different nozzles on the tanks that carry diesel, so that you can't pump petrol into a diesel tank, or visa versa.

This could also be done on the pumps in the forecourts.

I know that it would be expensive, but it would be a one off cost, and would save a lot of hassle in the long run.

EPM

kierank01 wrote: »

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have different nozzles on the tanks that carry diesel, so that you can't pump petrol into a diesel tank, or visa versa.

This could also be done on the pumps in the forecourts.

I know that it would be expensive, but it would be a one off cost, and would save a lot of hassle in the long run.

Ford do it nowadays

biomech

does diesel and petrol not mix??? how were the garage able to dtermine the exact ratio??

the merchant

server_girl wrote: »

...as it had done about 100 miles on this fuel they reckoned it was ok to continue as the car was running fine & wouldn't do any damage to car - they wanted £170 to drain the tank... (brought car up north for service)...

All sounds a bit suspect to me

1. They let you drive with such a high % of petrol - any mechanic knows that's a no no in a modern diesel engine.
2. They wanted £170 to drain the tank :eek:

Sounds to me like your northern garage may have been taking the proverbial, charging you £170 to relieve you of 60 or so litres of good clean juice.

biomech

the merchant wrote: »

All sounds a bit suspect to me

1. They let you drive with such a high % of petrol - any mechanic knows that's a no no in a modern diesel engine.
2. They wanted £170 to drain the tank :eek:

Sounds to me like your northern garage may have been taking the proverbial, charging you £170 to relieve you of 60 or so litres of good clean juice.

ya bit suspect alright... all that and a filling station that cut diesel with a more expensive liquid... id like to see a picture of the bottle with the different layers?? although that could be easily faked..
if this happened to me i would have got my reciept, gone to the cops with sample and reciept and lets say a report from garage explaining problems found with car.. ... you would be shown on cctv filling your car with a time co-relating to the reciept.. (from the correct pump of course) and the cops would take it from there id imagine..then and only then would i end up on here talking about it..

mickdw

the merchant wrote: »

All sounds a bit suspect to me

1. They let you drive with such a high % of petrol - any mechanic knows that's a no no in a modern diesel engine.
2. They wanted £170 to drain the tank :eek:

Sounds to me like your northern garage may have been taking the proverbial, charging you £170 to relieve you of 60 or so litres of good clean juice.

I think you might be on the money there.

Why didnt op fill a can of fuel at same service station on the way home to check?

Absurdum

server_girl wrote: »

when they went to change my fuel filter they were alarmed at the very strong smell of petrol...

wouldn't there be a reasonably strong smell of petrol in pretty much every garage out there, since they're (and their overalls are) going to be in close contact with the stuff throughout their working day?

ianobrien

From a pure chemistry perspective, Petrol & Diesel are just blends of different fractions of crude oil. They are both totally miscible in each other (ie the mix) Both Diesel and Petrol come from the same starting material, Crude oil.

I spent some time working in a lab in an Oil refinery (a long time ago) and taking a guess, one way of telling the diesel content of a mixture would be to do a fractional distillation in a fuel oil lab.

I'd say that the mechanic was talking through his a$$ with the whole "layers" crap - If there is a small layer at the bottom, that's possibly water, as water and organics don't mix.

Damien360

ianobrien wrote: »

From a pure chemistry perspective, Petrol & Diesel are just blends of different fractions of crude oil. They are both totally miscible in each other (ie the mix) Both Diesel and Petrol come from the same starting material, Crude oil.

I spent some time working in a lab in an Oil refinery (a long time ago) and taking a guess, one way of telling the diesel content of a mixture would be to do a fractional distillation in a fuel oil lab.

I'd say that the mechanic was talking through his a$$ with the whole "layers" crap - If there is a small layer at the bottom, that's possibly water, as water and organics don't mix.

Right on the button there. I was once shown a sample from the tank of a transit in my ford garage. It was in a coke bottle. 2 distinct layers. Water was their educated guess. Cutting agent my arse.

Laundering diesel involves using acids to strip out the green dye from the diesel. As they are not careful, you get a water layer with high acid content. It will not wreak your engine straight away. Floating solids in the fuel on the otherhand block injectors and you will find that out by the time you use that tank of fuel.

Customs don't give a monkeys about the acid content of the diesel or its quality. They do not even test for it (they use some of my companys equipment and I visit the site regularly). The only thing they look for is the presence of the marker in the fuel. They test the fractions for identification purposes only, i.e. kerosene, petrol or diesel.

OP you are being conned. If you want the content tested you may have to try a public analyst lab (public body often on hospital sites but not the hospital lab). They may not be able to test it but may be able to get it in to the testing chain and get it to the State lab where customs testing is based. Would'nt hold my breath though.

paddy2008

biomech wrote: »

does diesel and petrol not mix??? how were the garage able to dtermine the exact ratio??

yes diesel, petrol and oil do mix! diesel and water wont mix!

phelixoflaherty

Happened to girlfriend once. Filled up with petrol just after lad had serviced the pumps.
He had switched the petrol and diesel filler hoses by mistake

server_girl

hey...

wow... bad diesel is a hot topic... so here's what i did today to try and get the bottom of this, i like many of you was in disbelief that my car could actually be running smoothly with that mixture of crap in the tank, what motivation would the garage have to add a more expensive substance to diesel??? perhaps as one of you suggested that it was an error in the garage fills where petrol ended up in diesel tanks and rather than paying to get it rectified they added oil/cutting agents to it so it'd work OK... anyways....... firstly, i spoke to a family member who's been involved in the motor trade for over 50 yrs... so had a fair idea of what's whats... but wouldn't necessarily be familar with the complexities of modern day car engines, he used to rally yrs ago and would have rebuilt many engines over the yrs....

basically all the comments you guys posted are valid and pretty much on the track we took to try and get to the bottom it all. Just to clarify, the garage up north weren't able to do actual lab tests on the sample, they were only using cop on to suggest what the 4 different layers represented based on looks, density, colour and smells.... we decided we couldn't go straight to cops, the garage owners or customs and excise without proper 100% proof. my family consultants' (!!) initial and instinctive thought was that they took the sample from the fuel filter and not from the tank, and whatever was taken out of the fuel filter had been there for some considerable time as it just wasn't possible for my car to have driven 250 miles with out any smoke, spluttering or misfiring... and was still going

rang the garage up north to confirm that the sample was indeed taken from the fuel filter and not the tank, asked the garage if it was at all possible that the fuel filter would have the ability to seperate liquids for different densities, i.e. not diesel - they said no... but to us it was the only logical explanation for the contaminated fuel. I opened the fuel cap on the car and really couldn't get a smell of petrol. Went back to the garage and bought 2 litres of diesel from the exact same pump and let it settle... it was perfectly clear, straight forward diesel - no crap in it. (popped this into the car afterwards.) So basically, the only explanation is that the previous owner of the car must have put petrol in it at some stage, realised before too much damage was done, got it drained (or had so little in it that they mixed with enough diesel to provide enough lubrication) but never got the fuel filter changed afterwards... all very interesting. Have learnt a lot about diesel and petrol in the last 24 hrs - thanks so much for everyone's input, we were all on the right tracks!!

And yes, they do recommend adding up to 1/3 petrol to your diesel in the winter to stop it gelling. Interestingly the do seperate from each other when left to settle, but when shaken they do mix) Even when i rang the garage this morning, the service manager said if it was his car he'd have paid to get it pumped, and if i had, it'd now appears that it would have been a total waste of money & a perfectly good tank of diesel!!

I have the sample still in a plastic bottle, I'll photograph it in daylight tomorrow and post it up for all those curious minds out there

Mr Benevolent

And yes, they do recommend adding up to 1/3 petrol to your diesel in the winter to stop it gelling.

Avoid doing this in your particular car, the pumps and injectors have very tight tolerances and need 100% diesel to keep some parts lubricated properly. It might've been true 10 years ago but not now.

Did the garage not take a sample from the tank as well?

Marlow

server_girl wrote: »

And yes, they do recommend adding up to 1/3 petrol to your diesel in the winter to stop it gelling.

Not quite 1/3, but yes, a cup of petrol will help stopping the gelling in the winter.

In Sweden most people drive petrol cars because of this and all trucks have tank heaters to deal with gelling. It's always been common to use a bit of petrol at home in Denmark to stop gelling in the winter, however I'm not sure how good common rail diesels take that.

As for your theory on the filter, that sounds very reasonable. The fuel in the filter can have been there for a long time alright.

/M

server_girl

Nope, apparently not - seemingly in modern day cars it's quite hard to take sample from the tank due to location and bends in pipes on the way down to tank. I learnt in my research today that even customs and excise are having issues getting samples, and quite a lot of the fuel filters now have little drain valves on the bottom of them that customs use for samples...

yeah, i believe (also discovered in my research today) that the pump duce engines (which mine is) are particularly sensitive to bad fuel... which was one of the reasons we reckoned the fuel in the tank was OK

server_girl

Marlow wrote: »

Not quite 1/3, but yes, a cup of petrol will help stopping the gelling in the winter.

In Sweden most people drive petrol cars because of this and all trucks have tank heaters to deal with gelling. It's always been common to use a bit of petrol at home in Denmark to stop gelling in the winter, however I'm not sure how good common rail diesels take that.


/M

I discovered today that my fuel filter actually has a heater and a cooler in it to ensure the fuel is perfect temperature for the injectors, then the fuel not used by the injectors is fed back to the fuel pump where temperature is re-regulated!! There are 4 in/outlets on my fuel filter... all very complex and precise.

Marlow

server_girl wrote: »

I learnt in my research today that even customs and excise are having issues getting samples, and quite a lot of the fuel filters now have little drain valves on the bottom of them that customs use for samples...

Customs and excise have other means to identify dodgy fuel being used. I've heard (hear/say), that swiping the exhaust already gives them a good idea.

Obviously if you're running heating oil, that would also be perfumed.

To use the drain valve for getting samples is pointless, because the fuel in there could have been there for a long time or a combination of different fills.

/M

ianobrien

The sulphur content of "ordinary" diesel is 50ppm (parts per million), and the diesel goes through a scrubber in the refinary to remove excess sulphur. The sulphur content is measured as all road diesel here as it has to have a sulphur content of not more than 50ppm.

Green diesel doesn't go through the scrubber (as it's not meant for the road) and the sulphur content is typically 350 to 500ppm.

All the customs has to do is test for sulphur content. If the sample has more than 50ppm sulphur, the vehicle has some portion of green diesel in the tank.

(measuring SO content in the exhaust fumes would also indicate if the fuel has a high sulphur content, but wouldn't be definate confirmation)

server_girl

Fuel Sample.jpg

And the sample...

So the garage reckoned the dark thin layer at the top was some sort of cutting agent.
The next layer, the largest was the petrol, 3rd thin layer was oil and the last layer diesel.