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"Sticky Diesel" stops several canal boats


Alan de Enfield

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14 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Petrol dissolved and cleaned my fuel guard washable filter today, unfortunately I have a tank and lines to sort out. I can see me draining it and cutting a hatch to gain access.

 

I had this in one of my Tractors last Winter - it looks like 'Beef Dripping' a mix of almost solid 'white' grease and a smaller quantity of the liquid / jellified brown grease.

 

But of course there will be an expert now 'pop-up' saying it didn't happen, or if it did it only happens to a very small minority of boaters !!

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16 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I had this in one of my Tractors last Winter - it looks like 'Beef Dripping' a mix of almost solid 'white' grease and a smaller quantity of the liquid / jellified brown grease.

 

But of course there will be an expert now 'pop-up' saying it didn't happen, or if it did it only happens to a very small minority of boaters !!

What was the cure?

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25 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I had this in one of my Tractors last Winter - it looks like 'Beef Dripping' a mix of almost solid 'white' grease and a smaller quantity of the liquid / jellified brown grease.

 

But of course there will be an expert now 'pop-up' saying it didn't happen, or if it did it only happens to a very small minority of boaters !!

So true Alan, what's annoying is I have HVO in the tank! Not as much as I thought I should have however and a very tight diesel filler cap! Still if someone has "borrowed" some of the diesel they might get a surprise when it turns sticky and blocks filters!

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19 minutes ago, Loddon said:

What was the cure?

 

Clean out the filters and pipe work (the tank seemed OK) get it warmed up, start the engine and put it away in the tractor shed instead of leaving it out in the yard.

 

It is simply low temperatures and a combination of having 'Summer' grade diesel in the system instead of running it down and adding 'Winter' grade diesel.

 

I wonder if this new 'Enviro-veggy' diesel is available in Summer & Winter grades ? (I do not know the answer to this question)

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19 minutes ago, peterboat said:

So true Alan, what's annoying is I have HVO in the tank! Not as much as I thought I should have however and a very tight diesel filler cap! Still if someone has "borrowed" some of the diesel they might get a surprise when it turns sticky and blocks filters!

 

This is worrying, so has the HVO done this?  Do you have 100% HVO in the tank or a mixture of HVO and Deisel?

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13 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

This is worrying, so has the HVO done this?  Do you have 100% HVO in the tank or a mixture of HVO and Deisel?

HVO and diesel, as you know I haven't had a engine for a number of years, the whispergen dipped diesel, so not much use there, now its the genny so again not much use again hence the purchase of HVO, it lasts longer much longer. Of course I should have drained the original diesel out, but there wasn't that much in there so just topped it up with HVO. 

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23 minutes ago, peterboat said:

HVO and diesel, as you know I haven't had a engine for a number of years, the whispergen dipped diesel, so not much use there, now its the genny so again not much use again hence the purchase of HVO, it lasts longer much longer. Of course I should have drained the original diesel out, but there wasn't that much in there so just topped it up with HVO. 

I suspect and hope its the old diesel that is giving the trouble.

When I moved to HVO I sucked all the diesel out first and gave it away.  Sadly can't get HVO at the moment so running on diesel again and the engine sounds a bit rough again.  Hope to get some HVO soon, thought I would just mix it in, but after your trouble maybe I will suck it out and give it away again 😀

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3 minutes ago, CapitalD said:

Can anyone suggest any way to get rid of >100 L of sticky diesel?  It works fine for diesel heating.

 

Find a garage or simiilar that uses a diesel heater?   A few years ago we had to get some bad diesel pumped out and it cost more to get the old stuff taken away than the new stuff putting in..

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I tried that but I have been told that tightened environmental regulations has killed off the 'burn anything' type of heater.  Local scrap yards are also paying for disposal now.

 

I got a quote for disposal that was more than the cost of clean diesel from a forecourt. 

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27 minutes ago, CapitalD said:

I tried that but I have been told that tightened environmental regulations has killed off the 'burn anything' type of heater.  Local scrap yards are also paying for disposal now.

 

I got a quote for disposal that was more than the cost of clean diesel from a forecourt. 

Where there’s muck there’s brass!!!

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I have disposed of some (25 litres at a time)  mixed with engine oil at the local civic amenity site, just tell them it's oil.

Also on my old mooring we needed to clear some banks of nettles they burn very well when soaked in diesel 😱

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5 hours ago, dmr said:

 

Find a garage or simiilar that uses a diesel heater?   A few years ago we had to get some bad diesel pumped out and it cost more to get the old stuff taken away than the new stuff putting in..

 

 

Yes the garage that looks after my van has a mahoosive blown air diesel heater that will run on virtually anything from paraffin upwards. It runs most of the time on the old engine oil removed from cars during for servicing. 

 

 

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15 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

Yes the garage that looks after my van has a mahoosive blown air diesel heater that will run on virtually anything from paraffin upwards. It runs most of the time on the old engine oil removed from cars during for servicing. 

 

 

Many years ago when I was a mobile mechanic I took all the engine oil that I drained from customers cars to a garage in Liss in Hampshire who had the same set up. They also had a very fair minded MOT merchant too.

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30 minutes ago, Stilllearning said:

Many years ago when I was a mobile mechanic I took all the engine oil that I drained from customers cars to a garage in Liss in Hampshire who had the same set up. They also had a very fair minded MOT merchant too.

 

I daren't think what polluting crap comes out of the chimneys of these things! 

 

 

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19 hours ago, peterboat said:

I have found this in my fuel guard filter today ! The separate washable filter was clogged solid, I had to wash it with petrol to get the sticky residue off, we had a bit of a frost last night. 

So is this a fault of HVO caused by cold weather? Or is it ''bug'' ?

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I've just spent the last couple on days working on a narrowboat that was in the early throes of the sticky diesel phenomenon: bad enough to stop the engine and prevent a restart but not, I'm delighted to say, so far advanced that the pump and injectors had been damaged. A couple of takeaways from earlier parts of this thread that I would endorse are that a) beef dripping is a quite brilliant description (if you are of a certain age) – see pic and b) diesel and petrol are excellent go-to solvents, certainly in the early stages of the problem. 

 

It was the usual story of the fuel having been in the tank for a year or more and a significant drop in temperature heralding a Scottish winter. The worst manifestation of the problem was in the water separator filter (an ideal breeding ground with its very own wee fuel/water interface – and suffering from totally neglect in this instance) and from there it had clearly migrated along the fuel lines to the engine filter, the electric feed pump and the line as far as the common rail, this being an Isuzu engine.

 

The picture shows the water separator filter and the two components of the gunge on the filter and in the bowl are beef dripping poured into a pot to cool to a T! On removing the 'beef' bit there was evidence of a hard material forming a glaze in the bottom of the bowl and my concern was that something very similar might have been going on with the internals of the common rail or the insides of the injectors. Fortunately, once we'd removed all the fuel, cleaned the tank, fuel lines, filters and electric feed pump (which was badly clogged and needed to be removed and shown the airline) and then treated the new fuel with Marine 16 at shock treatment concentration levels+ (if it's good enough for the RNLI it's good enough for me) the engine was prepared to fire up and for the last couple of hours has been running as sweet as a nut. 

 

The boat is now undertaking the two hour night time run that was forcibly postponed from Thursday evening. I suspect that if the owner had come to the boat in, say, a month's time it could have been a very different story and an expensive trip to a diesel specialist with CR pump and injectors.

 

Needless to say, the owner will now change his filters regularly, and drain off the water at frequent intervals. He's already ordered his own supply of Marine 16 and is even talking of popping down to the Scottish Canals diesel pump to top up with HVO which, much to everyones surprise, is now SC's preferred fuel for their own vehicles, plant and equipment and they are also selling it to boaters.

 

Me, I shall stick with HVO and husband it with great care in the hope that it eventually returns to the £0.88/litre price it was a year or so ago when I bought it. Currently purchased retail from SC, it's getting up towards 3x that price and I know from a conversation with their buyer yesterday that they are only marking it up by £0.11/litre.

 

Sticky Diesel Image:beef dripping.docx

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1 hour ago, MartynG said:

So is this a fault of HVO caused by cold weather? Or is it ''bug'' ?

I have no idea? It was frosty but the only thing that cleans it off is petrol. The actual diesel doesn't feel sticky at all, I might siphon some off and try it through the genny and see what happens?

3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

To save opening the Word Document  - YUM YUM !

Dripping.jpg

 

That looks like mine did!

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17 minutes ago, Up-Side-Down said:

I've just spent the last couple on days working on a narrowboat that was in the early throes of the sticky diesel phenomenon: bad enough to stop the engine and prevent a restart but not, I'm delighted to say, so far advanced that the pump and injectors had been damaged. A couple of takeaways from earlier parts of this thread that I would endorse are that a) beef dripping is a quite brilliant description (if you are of a certain age) – see pic and b) diesel and petrol are excellent go-to solvents, certainly in the early stages of the problem. 

 

It was the usual story of the fuel having been in the tank for a year or more and a significant drop in temperature heralding a Scottish winter. The worst manifestation of the problem was in the water separator filter (an ideal breeding ground with its very own wee fuel/water interface – and suffering from totally neglect in this instance) and from there it had clearly migrated along the fuel lines to the engine filter, the electric feed pump and the line as far as the common rail, this being an Isuzu engine.

 

The picture shows the water separator filter and the two components of the gunge on the filter and in the bowl are beef dripping poured into a pot to cool to a T! On removing the 'beef' bit there was evidence of a hard material forming a glaze in the bottom of the bowl and my concern was that something very similar might have been going on with the internals of the common rail or the insides of the injectors. Fortunately, once we'd removed all the fuel, cleaned the tank, fuel lines, filters and electric feed pump (which was badly clogged and needed to be removed and shown the airline) and then treated the new fuel with Marine 16 at shock treatment concentration levels+ (if it's good enough for the RNLI it's good enough for me) the engine was prepared to fire up and for the last couple of hours has been running as sweet as a nut. 

 

The boat is now undertaking the two hour night time run that was forcibly postponed from Thursday evening. I suspect that if the owner had come to the boat in, say, a month's time it could have been a very different story and an expensive trip to a diesel specialist with CR pump and injectors.

 

Needless to say, the owner will now change his filters regularly, and drain off the water at frequent intervals. He's already ordered his own supply of Marine 16 and is even talking of popping down to the Scottish Canals diesel pump to top up with HVO which, much to everyones surprise, is now SC's preferred fuel for their own vehicles, plant and equipment and they are also selling it to boaters.

 

Me, I shall stick with HVO and husband it with great care in the hope that it eventually returns to the £0.88/litre price it was a year or so ago when I bought it. Currently purchased retail from SC, it's getting up towards 3x that price and I know from a conversation with their buyer yesterday that they are only marking it up by £0.11/litre.

 

Sticky Diesel Image:beef dripping.docx 985 kB · 1 download

My fuel has had very little use no engine, just the whispergen and now the generator. The funny thing is I suspect that some has been stolen, I put a load of HVO in it before summer now I have about 8 inches in there and I have hardly ran the genny fingers crossed they have the same problems as me

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8 minutes ago, peterboat said:

I have no idea? It was frosty but the only thing that cleans it off is petrol. The actual diesel doesn't feel sticky at all, I might siphon some off and try it through the genny and see what happens?

That looks like mine did!

I thought it might going on your apt description. I had hoped to add to the sum of knowledge and demonstrate that the activities of the IWA Sustainable Boating Group are not purely theoretical!!

 

For those interested, having put together a reasonable analysis of the propulsion side of sustainable boating, we're now concentrating on sustainability in relation to the domestic side of boating: not something that we're going crack in a couple of months ......... more like a couple of years I suspect! I'd be the first to acknowledge that an awful lot of really good stuff comes out of this forum and certainly provides me with a very solid and useful steer.

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30 minutes ago, Up-Side-Down said:

 

 

The picture shows the water separator filter and the two components of the gunge on the filter and in the bowl are beef dripping poured into a pot to cool to a T! On removing the 'beef' bit there was evidence of a hard material forming a glaze in the bottom of the bowl and my concern was that something very similar might have been going on with the internals of the common rail or the insides of the injectors. Fortunately, once we'd removed all the fuel, cleaned the tank, fuel lines, filters and electric feed pump (which was badly clogged and needed to be removed and shown the airline) and then treated the new fuel with Marine 16 at shock treatment concentration levels+ (if it's good enough for the RNLI it's good enough for me) the engine was prepared to fire up and for the last couple of hours has been running as sweet as a nut. 

 

The boat is now undertaking the two hour night time run that was forcibly postponed from Thursday evening. I suspect that if the owner had come to the boat in, say, a month's time it could have been a very different story and an expensive trip to a diesel specialist with CR pump and injectors.

 

Needless to say, the owner will now change his filters regularly, and drain off the water at frequent intervals. He's already ordered his own supply of Marine 16 and is even talking of popping down to the Scottish Canals diesel pump to top up with HVO which, much to everyones surprise, is now SC's preferred fuel for their own vehicles, plant and equipment and they are also selling it to boaters.

So is this diesel bug or something else ? 

Seems like the equivalent of cooking oil changing to solid fat at at a certain temperature?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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31 minutes ago, MartynG said:

So is this diesel bug or something else ? 

Seems like the equivalent of cooking oil changing to solid fat at at a certain temperature?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have an awful lot of black grunge at the bottom of my tank! I suspect I will be cutting a hatch  in it to clean it out! I will post pictures if it happens 

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