Diesel Engine
We bought a new Motor Home with a Diesel engine in it. The question I have, we are at a park for the winter and I was wondering if I can run the engine for 15 minutes while parked, with the 50 amp pow...
Forum Discussion
jauguston wrote:
In this area and I am sure in others there are mountain top communication radio systems that have emergency diesel generators that activate if their normal power supply stops. I,in my working years as a crane operator setup several of them. They typically had 5000 gallon fuel tanks. I asked if it was a problem for the diesel fuel to set in the tanks for years without being used. No problem was the answer.
Not always. I work for the CCG as a radio operator and most of our sites have diesel gensets onsite. On our primary radar site both diesel units are stand-by as we have commercial power. That site also has 6000 gallons of storage capacity which gives us about 600 hours of genset runtime (yeah, they're thirsty buggers, but what do you expect out of 50 year old Detroit Diesel 6v71 Screamin' Jimmies?).
Anyway, one year it was decided to replace all the fuel in the tanks with fresh stuff. The old stuff was pumped out and transported to one of the ships. That ship went on patrol, and when it returned to the dock in Victoria, the Captain swore he would NEVER take on fuel from a remote site ever again! They went through their entire inventory of fuel filters, averaging a filter change every 10 hours. The engineers had to resort to cleaning the filters to reuse them!
Now, I don't know if the fuel in those tanks is ever treated as that's not in my paygrade, but I suspect it isn't.
SO, if you are going to let diesel fuel sit, you might want to treat it with something to prevent growth.
Cheers!
Mike
