Drove by a station today that had diesel for $1.69. I nearly ran off the road. Does anyone know of how to test the fuel to tell if it is good or not? I don't know if the station does enough volume to keep it "fresh" nor have I ever filled up there before. I'd rather buy a gallon or 2 & test it before topping off.

 

Well, for starters you could pump a quart of it into a clean glass jar, let it sit and see if there's water or algae in it. Are you sure that price wasn't for off-road diesel?

 

That's what I was thinking. Will water float to the top or sink?

Station is not located where anyone would be buying off-road. It's located in a populated area. I wouldn't think they would advertise on their main sign for off-road. I'll have to check on the way home.

 

Water will sink. Algae will be black specks.

 

Yes, put a sample in a clean jar (mason jars work well, just make sure you can see clear through it.) Swirl it around real fast and watch it. Water will show as clear beads swirling in with the fuel. You can check for other crud too. Also this sounds strange but also give it the sniff test. Fresh diesel will smell like good diesel but stale diesel will not smell the same. I got into the habit of sniffing the nozzle. It saved my butt one time.

Out here on Guam the fuel stations don't follw the standard color coding. THe diesel handle is not green here. I have seen it yellow, black, even red at one station. I went to one station that had diesel and gas at the same pump (differnet hoses), the gas handle was green, the diesel was black. Without thinking or looking at the pump I grabbed the green handle like I amn used to doing in the states. I gave it a sniff and . I looked and I saw I grabbed the wrong handle. The sniff also lets me know if the fuel is stale. If it is stale I go to another station.

 

probably p.u.c. . you have to have a special licence and you pay up at the end of the year or quarterly

 

huh?

 

I can't endorse any of the above methods for anything other than seeing water.

If you really want to know what's coming out of the pump, go to www.avlube.com and get a fuel test kit. They are around $50. Stavely services also does this but is slightly more expensive. The avlube test (performed by predictive maintenance services) will give you cetane index, viscosity, particulate counts, etc.

I tested my 3 local stations and the results were astounding. One of them had 23 million particles per gallon smaller than 20 microns. The next station only had 3 million. Talk about WAY DIRTIER fuel at that first station! Might I also note that the dirty first station was a truck stop that sells TONS of diesel. Just because they are high volume does NOT guarantee good fuel. Buyer beware, some stations maintain their tanks/filters better than others!

 

have you retested the first station? I had a shocking test likek that once but also found out they had filled the tankks that day

 

tested twice. Also confirmed with other owners in town that they had dirty filters after using that station. The lab determined the station was most likely microbe contaminated, although I didn't pay the extra to find out Upon visual inspection of the cimtek filters, they were really rusty. That led me to believe the owner probably hollowed them out and put them back.

 

Still @ $1.69 this morning. I haven't ran any "tests". I didn't see any markings that side off-road. All I noticed was there was a sticker with "2-D" next to "diesel" above the nozzle. I just filled up shortly before noticing this station.

FWIW...station is the Mobil @ I-44 & Big Bend (across from QT).

 

prices for truckers who pay their highway taxes at a later time

on edit: sorry its a oregon thing, i checked into it more. here you pay 13 or 14 cents a mile in taxes for big rigs rather than per gal.