ULP in diesel

Submitted: Monday, Mar 28, 2011 at 20:15
ThreadID: 85276 Views:4121 Replies:12 FollowUps:4
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Well, according to my mechanic I'm not the only one who hasn't been entirely focussed during the regular trip to the bowser. I argue that the TV on top of the multi-hose bowser showing footy highlights of Round 1 distracted me, coupled with the hour of the Sunday morning, but the fact remains that I picked up the yellow nozzle instead of the black one to fill my almost empty '08 D4D Prado. Fortunately, the fact that the diesel meter on the bowser wasn't ticking over when I eventually checked alerted me to something being wrong - 36 litres too late though. The bloke who owns the workshop next to the servo was in sweeping up and was good enough to come over and check what I had found, that there was no visible drain plug for the fuel tank. His suggestion was to fill the whole tank up to its 180l capacity with diesel which would give me a 20% ULP content, and which he said would not be a problem by the time all of the fuel mixed together. I did this and then crawled the 2km home at barely above idle, then started checking ExploreOz for similar problems. The feedback I found from other contributors confirmed what I really thought, which was to dump the tankload of fuel. Luckily, my mechanic is only just down the road and was happy to have the car in this morning. He said if the engine was running rough to turn it off and he would come and get it, but all seemed ok so I drove it there. Picked it up this afternoon to be told that he really only needed to drain the rear section of the tank which was accessible after removing the underguard, as the ULP went in first and sat at the bottom of the rear tank. He drained the whole rear section and then pulled out seats and carpet to check the front section via the strategically placed opening for the fuel pump to confirm that none of the ULP had made it over the reservoir wall, so the engine had only drunk diesel. Changed the fuel filter, filled it up with distillate and a gave a full seal of approval. Lucky I didn't follow all of the advice from the Sunday morning workshop owner as my mechanic explained that as soon as the front tank was used up, the engine would have started sucking from the bottom of the rear tank, which was almost pure ULP when emptied, but at best would have been about 40% ULP content. A $300 lesson, but wont be repeated and better than a $7,500 repair job.
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