URGENT ADVICE REQUESTED: bad fuel question

obrut · 04-21-2004, 11:32 PM

Greetings all

Me and my car are hopping on a boat noon tomorrow to sail to Tasmania to compete in a 5 day Tarmac Rally (see www.targa.org.au ).

About 3 days ago the car (911 RS replica with 2.7 MFI engine, GE80 cams, 10.5:1) started running crazy - particularly just randomly turning itself off (sometimes starting right up on the key and sometimes not)

My mech has just pulled the fuel lines and some sort of silver gunk is everywhere. I was on dead empty a few days ago and put 10 litres of regular unleaded from a no name petrol station then drove 10 minutes (in which car started turning itself off) to a BP and filled the tank (60 litres) with premium unleaded (98RON).

Does this sound like bad fuel to you? What could the silver gunk be? It is unlikely that someone would have had access to the car to put anything in the tank (eg. the old sugar trick)

Any advice appreciated. Its night here now and I'm off to help pull the fuel tank/strainer etc out of the car - hopefully when I return tomorrow morning I will be greeted with posts of wisdom.

Adam · Adam's Garage

Bummer! Be careful using additives this close to the race event, Ryan.

I don't know what Targa allows, but you'd be shattered if they disqualified you for an "illegal" additive - even if it was legitmately used to clean the fuel system.

Talk to a scrutineer or closely check out the regs before you pour.

I really hope it's something simple, man. Hey, are you in Melbourne?

obrut · 04-21-2004, 11:48 PM

Hey Adam

They do sample for T Tas - but we don't compete 'til Tuesday so I've got a little time up my sleeve to run the car throught some fuel. Do not need this now though - I ran the car at E Creek on Firday and its a rocket.

Ryan

ps. I'm still in Sydney - we have a Tassie ferry running from here now.

pps: I have also just found out that the guy that won the classic competition last year (in a Datto 1600) is running a different car IN MY CLASS - bugger!

Langers · 04-22-2004, 12:06 AM

You sure Howard & Gary haven't done the old sugar trick?

J/K

Sorry, no post of wisdom here, but Ash is involved in the installation of underground tanks for service stations, perhaps he would be able to shed some light on what the silver substance is.

Hope you get it sorted!

masraum · 04-22-2004, 05:26 AM

Good luck!

obrut · 04-22-2004, 02:15 PM

Morning all

Drained the tank last night and flushed all the lines. The stuff that came out was definately in 2 immiscible parts - nice blue fuel on the bottom and horrible murky grey ***** on top. The grey stuff burnt with a bright yellow flame - I think petrol is meant to burn blue...

Currently running a fresh tank of fuel (from a station/brand indep of the last 2) and a bottle cleaner through everything. Drove home last night and into work this morning and all appears well - car has mucho grunt and is not randomly stalling. The theory is the gunk floated on top of the fuel and mixed/sloshed into the fuel pickup under braking - who knows???

Before we started flushing, we did another dyno run yesterday and the grey crap-o-fuel shaved 10 rear well hp from the car.

So, it does look like it was a bad dose of fuel.

I'm on the boat at lunchtime - see you in 2 weeks!!!