I need to make one correction to my post earlier today about Wednesday......the gentleman who came out to pump out the bad fuel was Russ from Space Coast Oil. Mike from Trident referred me to Russ.
Russ showed up promptly at 9 am as promised with three 50 gallon barrels to put the bad fuel in. It took about 30 minutes to pump out the 100 gallons of half and half. Once that was done, and I had transferred $150 to him for his services, I began pouring the new diesel into the tank. This tank has NEVER been empty since I have owned the Newell. I think the lowest level of fuel was around 45 gallons. Today I started from scratch, but that's really a good thing. I learned two important things as a result of this mishap.....1) I don't have fungus in my tank, which is a b**ch to get rid of, and 2) If I had any water in my fuel it is no longer there.....any water there may have been has been removed by Russ!
After pouring in the 12 gallons of good diesel I had, I drove over to Race Trac to get 15 more gallons. That was the easy part.....holding those 5 gallon gas cans for up to 10 minutes turns your arms into wet noodles. I had to ask TLE to come out for the last 3 to help hold them. My wife is the most amazing partner anyone could ever have. Whenever I need help outside she drops whatever she is going and comes to my rescue over and over again, and this time was no exception.
Finally the fuel was in...around 27 gallons. Now it was time to re-prime the filters with good diesel, and then turn over the big Detroit Diesel. This is the part I had been concerned about. I went inside to turn over the engine, and she purred to life instantly, and ran silky smooth. I let her run for about 10 minutes to be sure there would be no repeat of the day before, and there was not. Once I was sure we were good to go we finished putting our stuff inside and out, including the T-Bird....we were on our way over to the same Race Trac around Noon to fill up the tank all the way. In total we put in 166 gallons, so there must have still been around 14 gallons floating around in there somewhere as our tank is 180 gallons. At any rate, the total cost to refill was $632....so we have paid the rent twice this month. The good news is based our "written in Jello" travel plans we won't have to fill up again until April sometime.
I'll recap the rest of Thursday tomorrow morning with my usual blog post.
Thanks for stopping by!
Happy Thanksgiving!
1 week ago