Watered down Gas

I put 30 dollars of gas in my XJ today. Went to pull out of the gas stationed and it stalled out. Started her up again and she ran for a bit and stalled again. Repeated the process till I was able to pull into a lot about 100 feet down the road. I thought my fuel filter was clogged with crap cause I've been running the tank almost empty lately. Then some guy runs up to me and asks if I just got gas from the station down the road. Turns out I wasn't the only one with the problem. He told me to go back there cause there because the police were there. There were about 5 other people whos cars wouldn't start or wouldn't run good. After that and tow home I pulled the fuel line off the filter and got my wiring diagrams out. I jump the pin on the diag connector to let the pump run continuously. After pumping 5 gallons out in a clear container it appears the the gas was watered down alot. I'm waiting for everything to settle out and take a measurement of how much gas is actually in that 5 gallons. Once I get more clear containers I'm gonna pump the rest out. I plan on putting fresh gas in and replacing the filter and running fuel injector cleaner through it.

My question is there anything that you guys suggest doing or is that good enough ?

You need to get it all out, the water will be at the bottom so it should pump first, I'd do 5 gallons at a time, compare the 1st five with the second and third, it should be decreased by the time you get to the 3rd 5 gallons. Don't run the pump dry or it will burn up.. hopefully you either got a refund or some other compensation.

Get ready for alot of this as prices go up, scamming will reach new lows come this summer.

Oh I definately plan on pumping it all out. I was gonna drop the tank at first but my dad who is a mechanic said to pump it out with a small pump. I've got about half of it out. I wanna pump it dry and fill it up with fuel right away so the small filter on the pick up doesn't dry out. I was looking on ideas on what on what else to do. My dad says once I do that I should disconnect the pump and crank the engine with no plugs for a quick sec to get everything out and replace the plugs. Then throw some fuel system cleaner in and hook everything up. Hopefully it will run better then it does now.

Doug

DON'T THROW THAT GAS OUT.

Call your local weights & measures bureau tomorrow; they usually oversee fuel quality or can at least point you in the right direction. Depending on where you live, there may be one office for County as well as one for the State - I'd recommend calling both. If you happened to get contact info for any of the other people who were hit by this, get them to do the same. Get as much of it out of your tank and into containers as you can and hold on to it. It'll be needed for testing.

It's unbelievably difficult to get a station nailed for selling bad gas, but if you dump or dilute the fuel you've already got from them it'll be impossible. I believe that some states also already have price gouging legislation in effect due to the already-high fuel prices; if you're lucky, yours may be one of them and this may be what's needed to get a prosecution going.

I have real short shrift for that sort of thing right now, especially given the (ridiculous) price of fuel these days.

Bad things will happen if that happens to me.

One thing he did not mention was that we have been getting record rains here in the NE since friday nite, I don't know what the ratio of water:gas is before it gets bad but it is *possible* that the tanker truck was sloppy when he filled the ground tanks. We got 1" of rain here this morning between 0530 and 0615, I thought the jeeps in the driveway were going to float away..
We have one station locally that has above ground tanks with sight glasses, they can actually see the water if there is any and drain it out before it even heads for the pumps.

I pumped the rest out in to clear 5 gallon jugs this morning before it rained here again... You can see that the jug that I pumped yesterday, the water all settled to the bottem. I made a mark on the outside with a marker and measured it. From doing calculations it seems that the jug only has about half a gallon of gas in it if that... I plan on keeping all the gas for now. I gotta wait till wednesday to get the police report.

yeah, before starting the lynch mob you may want to find out if they had a delivery durring the rain. the fuel delivery driver could have left the cap off the tank while it was raining and the water could have drained into the tank. this happened at the royal farms my sister used to manage. if thats the case the fuel delivery co. will make it right and refill your tank and pay for any repairs. just make sure you report it and have the recept.

This happens more often than you may expect. A heavy rain may flood the spill containment and if the fill tube cap is loose, missing the gasket or if the collar that fits over the tube leaks, water will find its way in. watering down the gas is very unlikely. In most situations if water is in the fuel and vehicals are damaged because of it the station is responsable and to avoid bad PR will more than likley take care of the cost of repairs. Here in MN. we have had some shippments come from the refinery that have to much ethynol in them and have caused problems, the fuel looks like milky mountain dew. Gas stations should be testing for water in the gas with water paste each time they stick the tank. This is also customary for the delivery driver. Also more modern stations will have monitoring devices that detect water and leaks in the system.

It's not a police matter, it would be a civil lawsuit though because you got the water. Gas stations don't put water is gas, watered down gas is just a term used to mean something cheaper was added like Kerosene.
But even that is from the old days when Kerosene was cheap now days it's more than gas.

langer1 said:

It's not a police matter, it would be a civil lawsuit though because you got the water.

Click to expand...

Correct on the police, but if the station sold contaminated fuel then they are open to criminal prosecution - again, this is usually handled through Weights & Measures in the jurisdiction where this took place.

Also consider this for a moment: gas stations record the amount of fuel in the tanks at regular intervals, and know how many gallons are pumped in between those intervals both at each pump and on aggregate. It's been raining heavily where this has happened, so assuming that some rainwater has made it into the tanks (not saying this is necessarily the case, just hypothesising) it'd be fairly easy to see how many gallons were pumped vs. how many gallons actually remain in the tanks. If there's a difference of more than a few dozen gallons, it's a good indicator that something may have been added to the fuel.

Where things may go easier for the station is if they unknowingly sold diluted fuel - and I'd be willing to bet that if it went to court, they'd make claims as to rainwater getting into the tanks. Given the amount of dilution and number of people affected described above, though, I don't know how that could reasonably happen in a way that they'd be unaware of.

When I lived in MA. a local station was taken to court by a few ppl. for water in the gas. The station owner used "rain" as his defense. The court did not see it his way, they told him he had a responsibility to see that the product he selling was as free of contaminants as possible(within reason) and that his equipment (pumps,tanks, tank covers, etc.) were in good repair and working order.
He lost....the guy was a real scum bag, so I guess it couldn't have happened to a better person.

That just happened here in CT too. First we get raped w/ gas prices, now we're paying $3 a gallon for gas cut w/ water.

Again just to be clear, gas stations don't use water to dilute gas.
You can see why, cars don't run and gas and water don't mix.
That long dip stick every station has tests for water in the tank there is almost always some.
The pickup on the pumps are up off the bottom to prevent picking it up and every so often their service company pumps the water off the bottom.
Extra heavy rain can get ahead of them though.
Hope you got the names of the others because their good about paying to fix your car, they have insurance for that stuff and don't often question it.
The station Manager may give you a hard time but Corporate won't piss with him.