Contaminated Fuel

[Optimistic Paranoid]

One of my guilty pleasures is watching YouTube videos posted by an attorney named Steve Lehto. He just posted one on contaminated fuel, and the importance of always getting a receipt when you fuel up, EVEN IF YOU PAY WITH A CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD. It's a 10 minute video, and you can see it here:

I've never bothered to get a receipt in the past, guess I'll start doing that now.

How many of you guys get receipts when you fill up?

 

[Dave]

I believe @Jonathan Hanson had the misfortune of filling up his fuel tank at a mom and pop place and then suffering a break down due to contaminated fuel. On the way to Overland Expo, which was a major pain.

I definitely see the wisdom in keeping receipts although my ATM or credit card transactions should be able to prove where and when I fueled up.

 

[bvanderberg]

I think I will too. I never got bad fuel, but it worries me enough that I drive farther to find, and pay more to get Chevron or another big name brand. I know that's no guarantee, but it gives me a little peace of mind.

This costs nothing, takes almost no time, and might just help. Shrug

 

[TangoBlue]

One of my guilty pleasures is watching YouTube videos posted by an attorney named Steve Lehto. He just posted one on contaminated fuel, and the importance of always getting a receipt when you fuel up, EVEN IF YOU PAY WITH A CREDIT OR DEBIT CARD. It's a 10 minute video, and you can see it here:

I've never bothered to get a receipt in the past, guess I'll start doing that now.

How many of you guys get receipts when you fill up?

Interesting video. I don't - for the same reasons @Dave mentioned.

Somewhat related to that, from a tracking and vehicle management aspect, I also use a vehicle fuel/maintenance tracking app on my phone called "Fuelio". Pretty neat - put in the required information and it downloads the location via GPS and spits out an incredible amount of details including graphs.

 

[BushHead]

I've always kept mine.. because when you get 3 or 4 miles down the road and the cops pull you for stealing gas, you don't have to wait for cc records or the station camera to prove it was someone else. Happens often around here.

 

[Bryanseye]

I've always kept mine.. because when you get 3 or 4 miles down the road and the cops pull you for stealing gas, you don't have to wait for cc records or the station camera to prove it was someone else. Happens often around here.

I havent seen anything but prepay pumps in at least a decade. I wondered if any still existed.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

I will mention that in my younger days, my uncle had an ARCO station and I worked for him for a few summers - this was long before self-service arrived. We had barely finished killing off the dinosaurs.

Anyway, I used to have to "stick" the tanks every day. This was a long wooden ruler, and we had a chart that converted tank inches into gallons. We would compare that figure with the counter on the pump. It was supposed to be an early warning system that would show us if the tank was leaking. More importantly, we would smear several inches of water finding paste on the bottom of the stick. This would turn a different color in the presence of water, and tell you how many inches of water you had in the tank.

There was ALWAYS water in the tank. But the tank pickup was located 4 inches or so off the bottom, so an inch or two of water would sit harmlessly in the bottom. When it got too high, a maintenance guy from the company would come and pump the water out with special gear.

The point to this rambling is that when a tanker truck delivered new gas, it would stir this water up, and it would take several minutes after they finished for the water to settle back to the bottom.

For that reason, I never stop for fuel if I see a tanker delivering fuel to the station.

 

[Bryanseye]

I will mention that in my younger days, my uncle had an ARCO station and I worked for him for a few summers - this was long before self-service arrived. We had barely finished killing off the dinosaurs.

Anyway, I used to have to "stick" the tanks every day. This was a long wooden ruler, and we had a chart that converted tank inches into gallons. We would compare that figure with the counter on the pump. It was supposed to be an early warning system that would show us if the tank was leaking. More importantly, we would smear several inches of water finding paste on the bottom of the stick. This would turn a different color in the presence of water, and tell you how many inches of water you had in the tank.

There was ALWAYS water in the tank. But the tank pickup was located 4 inches or so off the bottom, so an inch or two of water would sit harmlessly in the bottom. When it got too high, a maintenance guy from the company would come and pump the water out with special gear.

The point to this rambling is that when a tanker truck delivered new gas, it would stir this water up, and it would take several minutes after they finished for the water to settle back to the bottom.

For that reason, I never stop for fuel if I see a tanker delivering fuel to the station.

The ethanol should help dry out those tanks now.

 

[TangoBlue]

 

[Gallowbraid]

I have a friend that lived for a little over the year out of his Subaru Forester as he explored the country. About 2 months into his nomad experience his then brand new Forester stalled and refused to start. Ended up being contaminated gas from an Exxon station. He contacted the station and they referred him to the appropriate corporate arm of Exxon. Exxon paid the repair bill (which was quite a bit as his tank had to be pulled which involves disassembling the interior of the car) along with his hotel and food bills during the multi-day repair period. The receipt and the diagnosis in writing from the Subaru dealer was all Exxon wanted to see. If I remember correctly he didn't have his receipt and Exxon accepted his debit card statement showing a charge from that station.

 

[Dave]

I have a friend that lived for a little over the year out of his Subaru Forester as he explored the country. About 2 months into his nomad experience his then brand new Forester stalled and refused to start. Ended up being contaminated gas from an Exxon station. He contacted the station and they referred him to the appropriate corporate arm of Exxon. Exxon paid the repair bill (which was quite a bit as his tank had to be pulled which involves disassembling the interior of the car) along with his hotel and food bills during the multi-day repair period. The receipt and the diagnosis in writing from the Subaru dealer was all Exxon wanted to see. If I remember correctly he didn't have his receipt and Exxon accepted his debit card statement showing a charge from that station.

That's a nice ending, and nice to know about Exxon.

 

[Jonathan Hanson]

As Dave said, we did indeed get a load of fuel so contaminated with water that the Tacoma didn't make it out of the station before it died (water goes straight to the bottom of the tank). Fortunately, as has been stressed here, we had full documentation, and the station later paid us back for the fuel, and picked up the mechanic's tab for removing and draining the tank.

 

[03humpalot]

Several years ago i bought a used TJ and hit the road from Arkansas to Idaho. Somewhere during that time i noticed the jeep started stuttering if the tank got below 1/2. I shook it off and kept pushing. I fueled up again and limped it about 40 miles to the outskirts of Green River Utah to find that they were having their 125th "Watermelon festival" and every shop (including napa) were closed for 4 days. Every hotel room was booked, so i ended up camping in the jeep on the outskirts of town, waiting 4 days and dropping the full fuel tank to install a new fuel pump with the local shadetree mechanic. I lived on the worst "Mexican pizza" ive ever tried and a case of full power Coors. The TJ had plastic tanks and the tank was FULL of what i assumed were rust particles the size of coffee grounds. Cleaned tank, reinstalled new pump, donated 18 gallons of contaminated fuel to a local mechanic that did not have a shop and had just moved there and got back on the road. When the Chinese eventually EMP us i plan on taking to the road to burn down every fuel station i stopped at on the trip in a post apocalyptic road trip version of the Jay and Silent Bob internet beatdown.

 

[Dave]

Several years ago i bought a used TJ and hit the road from Arkansas to Idaho. Somewhere during that time i noticed the jeep started stuttering if the tank got below 1/2. I shook it off and kept pushing. I fueled up again and limped it about 40 miles to the outskirts of Green River Utah to find that they were having their 125th "Watermelon festival" and every shop (including napa) were closed for 4 days. Every hotel room was booked, so i ended up camping in the jeep on the outskirts of town, waiting 4 days and dropping the full fuel tank to install a new fuel pump with the local shadetree mechanic. I lived on the worst "Mexican pizza" ive ever tried and a case of full power Coors. The TJ had plastic tanks and the tank was FULL of what i assumed were rust particles the size of coffee grounds. Cleaned tank, reinstalled new pump, donated 18 gallons of contaminated fuel to a local mechanic that did not have a shop and had just moved there and got back on the road. When the Chinese eventually EMP us i plan on taking to the road to burn down every fuel station i stopped at on the trip in a post apocalyptic road trip version of the Jay and Silent Bob internet beatdown.