For some time now, we have suffered from fuel contamination. At first we did not realise why our filters kept clogging and the engine kept stopping at the most inconvenient places. Suddenly a light went on in the brain and we realised that our diesel was contaminated with diesel bug. Not surprising really as we had not cruised very much for a couple of years due to personal circumstances, so the fuel had just been sitting in the tank.
At first we tried to sort this problem out ourselves. We added Marine 16 fuel treatment, but although this helped briefly, the diesel was soon contaminated again. We pumped out fuel into containers and let the gunk settle before carefully pouring the clean diesel from the top of the containers back into the fuel tank. Again, this was only a temporary solution as the bug grew again. We were loath to lose nearly a full tank of diesel so, as we were not intending to cruise far during the winter, we decided to use the diesel up charging the batteries, heating the water etc; empting the muck that collected in the water trap every time we used the engine.
Finally, when we were down to less than 1/4 tank and what was left was more gunk than diesel, we booked into Claymore Narrowboats to have the diesel tank pumped out and cleaned. They did a wonderful job, getting rid of the contaminated fuel, cleaning out the tank and engine, fitting new filters etc. They then filled us up with over 200 litres of nice fresh diesel and we were ready to cruise again. The engine hasn’t sounded so good for ages.
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