Yep, I’m not a pro under the hood, so I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something, but it seems so cut and dry.
Right, my wife’s car was under warranty as well. For a split second I was irritated that the dealership was billing me since it was under warranty. But then I thought, makes sense, not Toyota’s fault if I dump water in my tank. But it’s not my fault either if that water is labeled and sold as 87 octane gasoline.
Good luck with it. Let us know how it turns out. Send pictures if you make signs to put on the gas pumps! Ha
Perhaps if you paid an attorney to send them a letter from his/her office it’d have more weight?
That and/or the hassle of a visit to small claims. I really hope they just do the right thing and just reimburse me. It is a smallish town company with a handful of stations, hopefully good-will matters to them.
Of course I won’t be buying gas from them again…
Water will not dissolve in gas, it settles to the bottom of the gas tank, so it’s entirely plausible that a bubble of water got delivered to only one car.
Diesel, on the other hand does dissolve in gasoline, so diesel contaminated gasoline will be pumped to every car that is being filled from that tank of contaminated gas.
Unfortunately, diesel contaminated gas is also gas contaminated diesel and doesn’t run well in diesel engines either. You might be able to burn it in a turbine engine or a furnace.
Picked up my car, other than a pretty rough cold start it seems to be fine. But can anyone help me with this puzzle.
I got the sample of gas that they took out of my tank. It is about 1/3 gas and 1/3 what I would assume is water (clear liquid at least), but… The “water” is on the top? Isn’t that wrong?
My gas sample looks a lot like this… Am I looking at Ethanol separation?
Someone above said the connections make it impossible to feed diesel into a standard gasoline underground tank. I cannot dispute that because it was my brother who worked in a gas station for 25 years, not me.
But, what about at the distribution center? Is it possible to put diesel into a tanker truck in the wrong place? I realize that is a weird thought, but if it has been proven in the news article that diesel was given to gasoline vehicles it could have happened anywhere in the supply chain. No?
The more I have read, I’m pretty sure that is what I’m looking at. This happens when water meets E10 gas. And it happens with less water the colder it is. Still seems to indicate to me water in the source gas?
I’d be skeptical of this page. It looks like other bullcrap sites I’ve been fooled into visiting. Not saying it’s wrong, but verify it.
Looking at this sample, that’s the first thing I’d think. I’ve never mixed water and E10 just to see what happens; I would have expected the water layer to be the clear one and on the bottom. However, we can definitely agree there should NOT be two layers of material taken from your gas tank.
Seems like it is a legit thing http://nationalpetroleum.net/Ethanol-Water-Phase-Separation-facts.pdf
One question I have is how did I get 4 miles before it killed my car? Any thoughts on that.
There was enough good gas in the lines to get you that far.
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As I mentioned before I know almost nothing about engines… Is that possible that there is enough gas in the system to drive that far? Seems like I keep reading accounts of the cars dying on the gas station lot when they get bad gas, Just trying ti anticipate any objections that the gas station company might make.
My wife’s car made it home (around 4 miles). The next morning it didn’t start. I assume the mixture settled and separated overnight. In her case, the water was on the bottom, I guess, since it wouldn’t start and we had to get it towed.
Water is on the bottom. The color means nothing.
Bad gas get your costs reimbursed.
Yeah I figured out that it was probably an Ethanol/water mix on the bottom.