Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:11:11 -0500
Reply-To: Matt Roberds <mattroberds@COX.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Matt Roberds <mattroberds@COX.NET>
Subject: Re: Don't Buy Gas In Lynchburg, VA! Follow Up
In-Reply-To: <20070416185729.TSNU17445.fed1rmmtai106.cox.net@fed1rmimpi05.cox.net>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> From: Jeff Stewart <fonman4277@EARTHLINK.NET>
> Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:39:11 -0100
>
> Fired up the van, and a fairly large cloud of blueish-white smoke came
> out-I've never seen this engine blow smoke of any color. Took it out for
> a test drive and all was OK for 2 blocks, then stumbling, loss of power
> and backfiring. Turned around to head for home and it started to run OK
> again. So, I kept driving, and now it's intermittent runs fine-looses
> power,runs fine again.
I agree with the other posters that you ought to check over your
ignition, fuel injection, and other potential causes of stumbling.
Having said that, I had a somewhat similar experience with bad gas in the
'89 Ch@vy I used to drive, except I did it to myself. :) I was
resurrecting my grandmother's '74 Bug and had drained a couple of
gallons of old nasty gas from its tank. It didn't have a lot of rust
flakes in it, but all the volatile components were gone - it had that
stale gas smell to it. I figured I would wait until the Ch@vy was
pretty empty, pour a half a gallon or so of the old gas into the tank,
and then fill up the rest of the way (about 12 gallons IIRC) with premium
unleaded. If that worked, I would wait until that tank was almost gone,
then do it again.
I did this, and the engine (2.8L V6, fuel injected) ran OK for a few
miles, but then it got Very Unhappy. It bucked, stalled, blew a little
smoke, etc, but not 100% of the time. I bought a couple of bottles of
Heet and dumped those in the tank. Then I would limp back and forth to
school (about 20 miles a day) in the car until I had burned a gallon or
two of fuel, and go fill up again with premium unleaded, trying to dilute
out the bad gas some more. After the Heet and the first couple of two-
gallon fill-ups, it started to settle down, and by the time I had done a
whole tank's worth of two-gallon fill-ups, it was pretty much running
normally.
I don't think I did any long-term damage to the cat. When I did that,
the car probably had 70,000 miles on it, and I drove it until it had
about 140,000 miles with no further trouble with the fuel system - it
didn't lose power or get crappy mileage. I finally gave the rest of the
old gas to a guy I knew who was going to have a big bonfire at a
campout, and he used it as starter. (Don't try this at home, but I
dribbled a little bit of the old gas into an aluminum pan and threw a
match into it, and it did burn. It just didn't like to burn under
pressure inside an engine.)
One of the important lessons I learned was to not fool around with bad
gas if I could help it. Since then, when I'm trying to get something
running that's been sitting for a long time, I almost always drain
whatever gas is in it and put in fresh. You can go nuts thinking that
the engine is hosed when all you really need is $20 worth of fresh gas.
This practice has been made simpler in recent times by the appearance
of hazmat collection days in many cities. They figured out that
charging people money to dispose of small quantities of hazardous
materials resulted in those materials being silently dumped in the
regular garbage, so many bigger cities now have a couple of days a year
when they collect the stuff at no charge.
Matt Roberds
| 
