Water & Algae in fuel... SMH

This year has been a tough one for our family. It's been full of those "that stuff happens to someone else..." moments. A couple weeks ago, we had another lovely one.

Took the Excursion and our 28' trailer down to Newnan, GA to go pick up some cabinets and marble countertops. Get off I-85 and stop at the Circle K/Shell station to take a leak and get a drink. Figured might as well top off the tank while we're there. I mean, why not? Well, you can probably already see where this is going. :badidea:

Put 17 gallons of "fuel" into the tank. Go inside and handle business, hop in the truck and get ready to go. Moments after turning the key on, the Water in Fuel light comes on. Crap... :cursing:

Immediately pop the hood and open the bowl drain. Sitting there watching brown water pouring from the drain tube under the truck. Double-Crap. After several key cycles, I finally decided I needed to pull the fuel bowl cover. Then things got really interesting.


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Just lovely. Yeah.... I'm screwed. 100 miles away from home with a trailer and I have to deal with this crap.

So I spend the next 40 minutes trying to flush out the fuel system in the parking lot, shaking out the filter as best as I can because you know I don't have a spare filter on hand, and then put it all back together. The truck is running, but it definitely doesn't sound right. Oh well, nothing to do but press on and pray.

Apparently, I should have waited for our prayers to be heard before leaving because a mile down the road... DEAD! I was fortunate enough to find a little piece of an unfinished driveway to pull over on because there was nothing but ditch 18" off the side of the road. Oh yeah, and try maneuvering truck AND trailer with no power brakes or steering. Fun! Get pulled over, crack the bowl again, and start draining. Finally get the fuel bowl where I'm comfortable with the amount of sludge (or lack thereof) and put it all back together. The real problem now is that the fuel rails in the heads are filled with crap. I'm really starting to ask myself why I still don't have a fill return fuel system on my truck, but then I remember... This stuff happens to other people. :doh: I am glad that I just replaced the batteries because I had to crank for a total of almost 4 minutes before I was able to push enough of the garbage THROUGH THE INJECTORS to get to a point where the truck would even fire. Slowly, one injector at a time, the truck came back to life. The rest of the evening went fairly well, managed to get the cabinets and make it back home, although the truck was definitely not running right. At idle I still have a dead miss on 2 of the injectors and every time I start the truck I have to drain the fuel bowl.

The next morning I limped to the shop and proceeded to take some samples from the fuel bowl drain. This is what I ended up with...


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The water/algae in the gallon jug was what I had collected after draining about 1 gallon of fuel from the bowl. This was the day after! This was after we'd driven 100 miles home and then drove to work the next morning! Unbelievable.

So now I have to drop the tank to clean it, replace my injectors (Full Force 238/30's) and am adding a full return fuel system and water separator while the tank is down. Also, while I'm under the hood, a very nice KC Turbo Stage 1 is slipping in between the heads. It's all okay because all this should help clean up under the hood and push the Excursion up from 375 HP to a solid 500 HP.

Given the amount of garbage I pumped into the tank, I don't know if a standalone water separator would have been able to catch everything, but it certainly would have been easier to flush the fuel rails if I'd had a full regulated return system. I might have ended up with a little bit of crud going through the injectors, but I think I'd have been able to dump most of it.


Well, that's my rant for the day. BTW, here's some pics of the Excursion if anyone is interested...


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Hope y'all have a fantastic afternoon!

How long has the fuel been in truck and where did you get?

Quicktrip has a full warrantee on their fuel and will cover all costs related to bad fuel including injectors and what not. Kum and go does as well but I'm not sure how theirs works or what it covers. Might be worth looking to see if cirlce k has the same thing as eitherof its competitors.

What does the SMH in the title stand for?

The fuel came from Circle K/Shell on the North side of I-85 at the Newnan exit. Circle K refused to accept responsibility for the damage caused since the fuel was actually provided by Shell. We've been going around in circles with Shell about this, but they won't do anything unless someone else complains about water in their fuel purchased from the same station. Unfortunately, most people are not astute enough to connect the dots when they have a problem related to contaminated fuel. Ultimately, we've had to contact the USDA to file a complaint since they are the governing body handling all fuel related issues.

To add insult to injury, I took a clean gallon jug, went out to the offending pump (the ONLY pump on the property, by the way) and took a 1 gallon sample. In the bottom of the jug I immediately had sludge. Showed it to the guy running the store and he couldn't have been any less interested. He told us that people have been using that pump all day without a problem.

This is the sample I took from the pump, with the picture taken 60 seconds later in front of the guy running the station!


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The whole thing is ridiculous. It's costing me close to $2500 to fix all the issues caused by this. It's really not even the money. It's that the station gets away with selling crap and nobody cares. We had asked the guy to turn off the pumps until they could get the tanks/filters checked and he really didn't seem to give a crap. I know if this had been a 6.7L, I'd be look at a $10,000 MINIMUM repair to replace the entire fuel system.

Oh well.... :shrug:

Strokersace said:

What does the SMH in the title stand for?

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SMH - Shaking My Head...

Well that sucks for sure. I can't believe that no one else has had a problem with all the crap that was in it.

Halestorm55 said:

Well that sucks for sure. I can't believe that no one else has had a problem with all the crap that was in it.

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Especially with the amount of common rail trucks from Chevy and dodge. Plus the newer fords...


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Wow.. without a doubt there are others with the same issues, and like you say, those with CRs are in worse shape.

I wonder if the pumps even had decent filters on them? Doubt that too.

At least your crankshaft didn't break.

Man that sucks. Makes me not wanna use Circle K nor Shell by my house.

I pumped some wet fuel from kum n go a couple years ago and made the mistake of telling them about it. They denied there was a problem and promptly had the pump serviced. I literally drove by that evening and saw a service truck at the pump I filled from doing something. The next day I called the bureau of standards who is the local entity that oversees fuel quality. They sent out a technician that day but the problem had already been addressed, so the fuel was found to be clean. Moral of the story is call the bureau of standards first and keep some soiled fuel.

So with fuel being such an issue how does everyone decide on where to fill up in your local area.
I try and go to stations with the most diesel traffic, figuring they probably keep up on it but truly don't know.

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greyford1979 said:

Man that sucks. Makes me not wanna use Circle K nor Shell by my house.

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My dad is a mechanic, and has seen multiple cars come through his shop with bad gas in them. 99% of the time, it was purchased at Shell or Kroger (at one point in time Kroger was using shell gas, not sure if that's still the case). Given that diesel is a different story, I still wouldn't fill up at Shell if they were giving it away :shrug:

You have to consider, it's not the fuel that's the problem, it's the station selling it. How often do they check for contamination? How often do they change their filters? What's the turnover rate in the tanks? All considerable factors in getting a bad load of fuel.

Now, here's an interesting one...

Yesterday, the Quick Trip by our shop (Exit 137 on I-85) had a fuel delivery yesterday. The driver filled the Gasoline tank with Diesel and the Diesel tank with Gasoline! Can you imagine for just one minute how much that just cost Quick Trip in lost sales, unusable fuel, and damage settlements? Safe to say that someone just lost their job. I don't know how long it took for someone to realize the mistake, but I'm sure a fair number of vehicles made it through before the pumps were shut down. Even in the best of situations, crap happens. Of course, this is a pretty extreme case involving user error.

Best advice is always fuel from major stations with high turnover and stay away from the little out-of-the-way stations unless you absolutely have to. Also, make sure you have a decent in-line water separator in your fuel system. The factory setup is garbage.

Take care.

In my last truck, 99 7.3, I filled at circle k and died about 1/2 mile from the station. Had another guy not died 100 yards from me, I would a been screwed. Cost them 12k in repairs from ford dealer

Which Newnan exit are we talking about?

Looks like I'll be getting one of these Mr. Funnels to keep in the truck for questionable stops.

PSD POWER007 said:

Which Newnan exit are we talking about?

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It was at the Circle K on I-85, exit 51. Everyone has washed their hands of this and there's not really anything we can do about it at this point. :fustrate:

Halestorm55 said:

Looks like I'll be getting one of these Mr. Funnels to keep in the truck for questionable stops.

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That would take forever to fill lol


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