Bad diesel fuel

[judielarry]

New guy on forum. I have a 2005 Coachman motorhome 300 Cummins engine. Has anyone out there purchased any bad diesel fuel for their unit recently. We were on our way to Fla. and we filled up at the Flying J's on our way down. Ran fine for about 850mi. Our last fillup was in Southern Georgia. Motorhome started losing pwr and missing, could not get up to speed only about 35mph. We were only about 3 miles away from our destination. Next morning I changed out the fuel filter thinking that might be the problem. Started the engine and it idled and reved up just fine. After a few days we left and drove about 50mi to another location engine ran good and stayed there for a few weeks. We started back home and drove about 100mi and it started losing pwr and missing again. So i thought the filter was clogging up again and changed it for the 2nd time. Ran good for about another 200mi. Parked for the night and filled the tank and poured in a good dose of Howe's treatment and Lucas fuel injector cleaner. Ran good the rest the way home except for the last few miles. There were a few hills to climb and i put the engine under load going up the hills to see if would lose power and it did but not as much as before. I had changed 4 filters before the trip ended. What recourse would I have to prove that I had gotten bad fuel? One of the counter persons at Napa said I could have gotten fuel that had algae in it, so i added some biocide to shock it. Thanks for any feed back, Larry

[eHoefler]

Sounds like you have an algae problem. Pulling the tank and cleaning is the only way to solve it if it is very serious. Sounds like yours is pretty serious.

[Dave_H_M]

We Cant Wait wrote:
Tom/Barb, that bit about Flying "J" dumping their used oil in their in ground fuel tanks is not true. In all reality they could never do that with the EPA doing spot checks on the in ground fuel at all truck stops to say nothing of the trucks being pulled over at the weigh stations and having their fuel checked for EPA compliance. The story was probably started by a fired employee.

:h Yeah, I don't think black diesel would go over too good.

It would be hard to imagine the commotion it would cause if every rig that fueled there choked down.

[We_Cant_Wait]

Tom/Barb, that bit about Flying "J" dumping their used oil in their in ground fuel tanks is not true. In all reality they could never do that with the EPA doing spot checks on the in ground fuel at all truck stops to say nothing of the trucks being pulled over at the weigh stations and having their fuel checked for EPA compliance. The story was probably started by a fired employee.

[Admin]

Moved from Forum Tech Issues to Tech Issues

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[Grandpere]

Here is a link to an article that may answer your question:
Diesel fuel

[Tom_Barb]

judielarry wrote:
New guy on forum. I have a 2005 Coachman motorhome 300 Cummins engine. Has anyone out there purchased any bad diesel fuel for their unit recently. We were on our way to Fla. and we filled up at the Flying J's on our way down. Ran fine for about 850mi. Our last fillup was in Southern Georgia. Motorhome started losing pwr and missing, could not get up to speed only about 35mph. We were only about 3 miles away from our destination. Next morning I changed out the fuel filter thinking that might be the problem. Started the engine and it idled and reved up just fine. After a few days we left and drove about 50mi to another location engine ran good and stayed there for a few weeks. We started back home and drove about 100mi and it started losing pwr and missing again. So i thought the filter was clogging up again and changed it for the 2nd time. Ran good for about another 200mi. Parked for the night and filled the tank and poured in a good dose of Howe's treatment and Lucas fuel injector cleaner. Ran good the rest the way home except for the last few miles. There were a few hills to climb and i put the engine under load going up the hills to see if would lose power and it did but not as much as before. I had changed 4 filters before the trip ended. What recourse would I have to prove that I had gotten bad fuel? One of the counter persons at Napa said I could have gotten fuel that had algae in it, so i added some biocide to shock it. Thanks for any feed back, Larry

We went thru this from a Flying J in Arkansas, we ended up pulling the tank and flushing it. and we used 5 set of filters to get it to stay clean.

We found that some flying J stations dump their used oil into the diesel tanks. and the hard carbon particles clog your filters.

OBTW you can not have algae until you have water. fuel oil will not grow a plant without water.