And of course, she is 3 hours away from home.
Fun Saturday for me, drop the kids off at our friends house. Her husband goes with me for a road trip to drain the tank on my 2005 Dodge Cummins.
My wife works a block of shifts at a hospital 3 hrs away every few weeks or so in a mid sized city. She pulls into a gas station, that happens to have a heavy police presence across the street at a kind of crummy looking motel.
So she's watching at whats going on across the street and just grabs the fuel pump handle and starts fueling. Truck was almost out of diesel, fuel light had been on for 30 miles. At around 20 gallons, she realizes that she's pumping gas instead of diesel.
She calls me immediately, and of course she's crying. I ask her if she started it, and she says no. Ok good. I tell her don't start it, and it will have to get towed and drained. She said theres an auto shop next door to the gas station. Awesome. She goes over there and talks to them. They can't do it until Monday, which is understandable its Saturday, and its going to cost a minimum of $300. I think $300 is pretty reasonable, but I don't like the "minimum" part. I have her start the truck and as quickly as possible, park it away from the pumps. She does this while Im on phone with her, it takes no longer than 15 seconds.
Screw it, Im going go up there and do it myself. My bud goes with me. We take a bunch of tools, a bunch of empty gas cans, and set off. We stop at a store on the way and grab some cheap 1/2" diameter clear vinyl hose, 2 quarts of cheap 2 stroke oil, and a new fuel filter.
We get up there, remove fuel filter from canister, which smelled like gas btw, and replaced lid. I remove the factory drain line from the fuel filter canister, and put the 6ft vinyl hose on the drain. Luckily, the 1/2" house fit perfectly, so that was a good guess.
Ran that hose to a gas can, opened drain valve, and turned the key on. Fuel pump kicked on and started sending the gas into the gas can. We make a half way attempt to run power directly to the fuel pump via the fusebox under hood. It didn't work easily, and switching the key on and off was working very well. So we just forgot that idea. Although, switching the key on and off was also kicking on the grid heater as well. So I was draining the batteries very quickly. But we did bring jumper cables, so we hooked up to the other truck and continued. I did find out, if you leave the key on, and just click the starter, the fuel pump will cycle on again, but the grid heater stays off. So I started doing that way.
Anyway, about an hour to drain the tank. Put new fuel filter in. We brought a couple diesel cans along. Put 10 gallons of diesel back into the truck, along with the 2 quarts of 2 stroke oil and started it up and drove it back to the pumps and filled it as full as I could get it. Went for a 10 mile ride and all was good. Dropped it off at her work, and drove another 3 hours back home.
Temp was 25* F, so it wasn't too cold out.
Oh BTW, the reason for the heavy police presence was because somebody did an armed robbery at that gas station and ran across the street where a officer shot and killed that person. The TV channels were setting up shop in the same parking lot that we were draining the gas. Maybe they got some video of us....haha
Sorry for the book, but I thought somebody on here might find it interesting.
