Summer fuel at minus 42

Shouldn’t you be in the south (southern US) by now?!!!!!

Back in the day, the boss says to me, wrap the tank, put in the battery heaters, and check the coolant before taking your trip.

Coolant was easy to check: - 60, good. Battery heaters, easy enough, accessible through the cab, good. Wrap the tank? "I don't wanna, I have to crawl under the truck, I'll get dirty, it's cold waaa!"

Shoulda, woulda, coulda: Would have been much easier to put the tank wrap/heater on in a relatively warm +10 on a packed snow yard, with a nice warm shop to retreat to every so often at Los Anchorage rather than building the Rube Goldberg tent over the truck and dealing with space heaters, additives, etc for the better part of a day when the fuel gelled at -35 just outside of Glenallen.

Although my commercial truck / equipment days are long past (and they were minimal to begin with) for my diesel pickup, I'm pretty aggressive about getting winter blend as soon as available...even though it's nowhere near as critical as in times past.

ShinerBock wrote:

4x4ord wrote:
^^^^ Cat C15.

What grade of oil are you using? The C15 has a HEUI pump which reliant on engine oil to pump unlike the common rail fuel pump in your truck. Cat recommends 5W30 or 5w40 for those temps because 15W is too thick.

15w40 seems to work fine so long as the truck is plugged in when it cold. It's not that often the truck gets used in weather colder than minus 10 C. When the fuel gelled the engine was warmed up to 150 degrees. Changing the filters got it started again but the fuel vacuum guage continued running in the red. I didn't take it onto the road. The job I had for it can wait for warmer weather.

4x4ord wrote:
^^^^ Cat C15.

What grade of oil are you using? The C15 has a HEUI pump which reliant on engine oil to pump unlike the common rail fuel pump in your truck. Cat recommends 5W30 or 5w40 for those temps because 15W is too thick.

Current temperature is only -22F........ Wow :E

We’ve never had a problem with our farm summer blend gelling during our Texas winters.

^^^^ Cat C15.

What kind of engine do you have in that Peterbilt? I would wager that the aluminum fuel tanks on the Pete will transfer cold temps better than than the plastic ones in your truck. That is one reason why some of the old truckers used to have wraps for their fuel tanks.