Well, we finally did it -- sold the Neoplan. I'm very glad to no longer be paying storage and insurance on a bus I'm not using, and even more glad it will no longer be rotting away in a storage yard, but I would be lying if I said I was not very, very sad to be driving away from it.
In a somewhat related vein, the last thing we had to do before handing it over was to throw away 160+ gallons of stale diesel and re-fill the tank. I would never have believed it had I not experienced it first-hand; our 17kw Kubota-powered generator ran just fine without a hiccup on the very same fuel, but the big Detroit just would not make power on the stuff that had been sitting in the tank for three and a half years. Detroits, so I believed, would run on almost anything (and many have run away on their own lube oil), but ours, it seems, was picky about its diet.
Full story of the sale and the fuel issues are in this blog post:
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/2016/08/farewell-odyssey-and-thanks-for-epic.html (http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com/2016/08/farewell-odyssey-and-thanks-for-epic.html)
I will continue to lurk here from time to time, and I am always happy to lend my expertise to fellow bus nuts. I don't think they'll throw me off the board for being busless. Some day, when the boat becomes too much to handle for our tired old bones, we'll go back to living in a coach conversion, although I am thinking our next one will be more along the lines of a Sprinter than a parlor coach.
Y'all know where to find me, over on my blog.
-Sean
http://OurOdyssey.BlogSpot.com (http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com)
Congratulations Sean
I'm sure the mixed emotions will change with time
Melbo
Add fuel conditioner to it
Quote from: chessie4905 on August 07, 2016, 05:33:59 PM
Add fuel conditioner to it
Tried; did not help. And it's too late, now -- the bad fuel is long gone.
-Sean
upside/ price for fuel is much less now.
I would have gladly taken the bad fuel. Excellent fire starter
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sean, was there any indication of filter clogging or other algae symptoms? Or just loss of power?
Pumped a full tank of bad premium gasoline last year in western NY. Bus ran like crap on 50 octane. Waste of almost $200.
The bio mixed fuel of today just goes bad in a few years,the fuel of days past could set for 20 years and never go bad.There is nothing you can put in the bio/mixed to save it Sean did the only thing you can do with the stuff is dump it
Quote from: robertglines1 on August 07, 2016, 07:05:43 PM
upside/ price for fuel is much less now.
Small consolation... I probably paid over $500 for what I threw away, and they charged me $40 to take it, to boot. We dropped $300 on fresh fuel, which, thankfully, the buyer reimbursed.
Quote from: Scott Bennett on August 07, 2016, 07:20:57 PM
I would have gladly taken the bad fuel. Excellent fire starter
And I would have been happy to give it to you, or anyone else. But we were under the gun, at almost $250 per day to be hanging around in Virginia, so we did not have time to cherry-pick a solution. The joint that took it was the closest place, and given that we had to limp in on the bad fuel, our other options were limited.
There is also a distinct possibility that only the bottom-most part of the tank was bad, where the dip-tube was located. The lack of generator issues would point in this direction -- the generator dip tube is significantly higher in the tank (by design, so that the genny can't run the tank empty). Also, the first 55-gallon drum seemed more cloudy than the next two. So we might have got away with pumping out, say, 50 gallons, and trying again. But again, that would mean a possible second trip to the truck shop, with a second disposal charge, and perhaps a whole other day on the ground in Lottsburg. So just replacing the whole lot at the same time was the most expedient and possibly the least expensive option.
Quote from: Oonrahnjay on August 08, 2016, 05:24:32 AM
Sean, was there any indication of filter clogging or other algae symptoms? Or just loss of power?
There were some brown deposits in the filter housing, and the fuel was "cloudy" and dull yellow when compared to fresh fuel, with a bit more neon green tinge to it. But the filter was not plugged -- the Davco let's you see visually as the filter starts to clog. The fuel appearance was one of the factors that led us to suspect stale fuel to begin with, and you may remember we dumped a bunch of biocide in the tank two months ago when we first had the problem of the engine not running at all (turned out to be a bad check valve in the Davco).
Quote from: luvrbus on August 08, 2016, 06:22:38 AM
The bio mixed fuel of today just goes bad in a few years,the fuel of days past could set for 20 years and never go bad.There is nothing you can put in the bio/mixed to save it Sean did the only thing you can do with the stuff is dump it
I think Clifford is right... modern ULSD additive packages are incompatible with long shelf life.
-Sean
It's too late now, but if there were drain plugs on the bottom of the tanks, it might have been better to drain the bottom until the color improved. On Eagles, at least, there are some. The danger is not getting it back in quickly enough (or fumbling it and losing it). A protected drain valve with a hose might be handy for some.
Quote from: DoubleEagle on August 08, 2016, 10:26:13 AM
It's too late now, but if there were drain plugs on the bottom of the tanks, it might have been better to drain the bottom until the color improved. On Eagles, at least, there are some. The danger is not getting it back in quickly enough (or fumbling it and losing it). A protected drain valve with a hose might be handy for some.
What's not to like about diesel fuel running down your arms soaking your shirt and back trying to get the plug back in :o :o BTDT
Keeps the horse flies off you though.
JC
Quote from: DoubleEagle on August 08, 2016, 10:26:13 AM
It's too late now, but if there were drain plugs on the bottom of the tanks, it might have been better to drain the bottom until the color improved. On Eagles, at least, there are some. The danger is not getting it back in quickly enough (or fumbling it and losing it). A protected drain valve with a hose might be handy for some.
I thought of installing a Fumoto valve in my fuel tank's drain port, but then I realized it would be almost the lowest point of the whole bus. Not a good idea! Imagine it getting knocked off and losing all your fuel onto the road while you're driving.
John
Quote from: lostagain on August 08, 2016, 12:24:50 PM
Keeps the horse flies off you though.
JC
Around here it will get you a cold shower outside with Dawn (the soap) famous words "you are not coming in the house with diesel fuel all over you"
Wow! now this is bringing back memories, I seem to remember now what its like upstairs barely.
Its normally "if" a good Friday, small packs of club crackers and the little mustard pacs on the stairs
HOW Suweeet itt is
Quote from: DoubleEagle on August 08, 2016, 10:26:13 AM
It's too late now, but if there were drain plugs on the bottom of the tanks, it might have been better to drain the bottom until the color improved. On Eagles, at least, there are some. The danger is not getting it back in quickly enough (or fumbling it and losing it). A protected drain valve with a hose might be handy for some.
The tank has a drain plug. But there's really no way to get to it without a pit or a lift, and even if I could reach the plug, at best I could get a shallow pan under it. That's why we bought the transfer pump -- much easier to get to the fuel, even at the bottom of the tank.
-Sean
Sean what engine(S) do have in Vector?
Dave5Cs
Quote from: Dave5Cs on August 08, 2016, 04:21:29 PM
Sean what engine(S) do have in Vector?
Dave5Cs
It's a marinized version of a Komat'su 6D108, an excavator engine. Fully mechanical -- once it's running, you can throw the batteries overboard and keep going.
-Sean
Good engines and you can also dredge for gold at the same time. Keep the blog coming we love it.
Dave5Cs
Quote from: luvrbus on August 08, 2016, 12:59:00 PM
Around here it will get you a cold shower outside with Dawn (the soap) famous words "you are not coming in the house with diesel fuel all over you"
There must be a woman out there named Dawn that loves the smell of Diesel fuel.... ;D
Good thing you said "the soap". I was starting to wonder about you with Dawn... Haha. Old cowboy fly repellent for horses is mostly diesel fuel, some Deet, and some lemon or orange juice. Works good. You can't shoe them without it.
JC
I wish I knew that a diesel bath could get me out of the house when I was married 😆
Did that have an electronic engine?
Btw, gear oil will get you a shower too!
Sean, I hope you didn't "dispose" of that diesel. A little filtering(polishing) and it is good again. I would have taken it off your hands for FREE!!!
I should have used diesel as a mosquito repellent on my recent Guatemala trip. I used 98.5% deet, but forgot to remove my watch one day---melted the buttons into the case of the watch and made the "crystal" so cloudy I can't read it.
---But I am ZIKA free!!
Quote from: pabusnut on August 09, 2016, 10:24:38 AM
Sean, I hope you didn't "dispose" of that diesel. A little filtering(polishing) and it is good again. I would have taken it off your hands for FREE!!!
Is there a secret to polishing Bio Fuel I tried it and didn't have any results,I went through a case of filters
I should have used diesel as a mosquito repellent on my recent Guatemala trip. I used 98.5% deet, but forgot to remove my watch one day---melted the buttons into the case of the watch and made the "crystal" so cloudy I can't read it.
---But I am ZIKA free!!
Quote from: pabusnut on August 09, 2016, 10:24:38 AM
Sean, I hope you didn't "dispose" of that diesel.
Yes, as I wrote extensively in an earlier reply, above, we threw it away, as the least expensive option. I don't know what the truck shop plans to do with it; a heating oil customer can probably use it. But putting it in with waste motor oil is the most likely answer; diesel is actually a welcome addition to waste oil because it thins the sludge and makes everything easier for the waste oil processor. What I know is that the $40 they charged me for the privilege is pure profit -- I pumped it all out myself in their parking lot, and I even had to drag the 55-gallon drums over to the bus. All they had to do was move 'em back to the shop's waste oil area, probably a five-minute job with a drum dolly.
Quote
A little filtering(polishing) and it is good again.
This is actually incorrect, Steve. Not every kind of fuel problem can be fixed with polishing; I've always known that, but now I also have first-hand experience to back it up. We polished the fuel to 10 microns with no improvement. Polishing fixes two kinds of problems; particulate contamination, and non-emulsified water. Our problem may well have been water, but if so it was already emulsified. If the problem had been particulate contamination, we would not have even noticed until the filter media was more obstructed.
Quote
I would have taken it off your hands for FREE!!!
Well, yes, and so would many others. Hell, if I was keeping the bus I would have kept it myself and run it through the generator and/or diesel boiler. The problem with "free" is that there is really no such thing. For it to have been "free" for me, you'd have had to arrive in Lottsburg, Virginia with a suction transfer pump, at 8am on Wednesday, August 3rd. And that would have been after me making the announcement at 5pm on Tuesday the 2nd. BTW, I did think about making such an announcement, here and some other places, but Lottsburg is a long way from anywhere, and the odds that anyone at all could have done it are slim. My guess is that you would have been among the "oh drat, can't make it" crowd... ;)
-Sean
Sean,
You are probably right--none us here could have responded that quickly.--And August 3rd was my wedding anniversary and the same day we listed our house for sale, so I personally could not have made it.
Sorry for yanking your chain--but my VW diesel will run on virtually any kind of crappy fuel you can get in the tank.
Steve