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What's this crud in the bottom of my day tank?


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It is as brown as it looks and some of it is thick. This is below the height of the take off pipe, and the diesel above it is nice and clear. I had drained a bit of diesel from the tank before the filter and, after settling, it did have some water drops in the bottom and some dirt, but the rest was nice and clear. I have removed the day tank for cleaning..

 

Is this just a lot of crud, which seems odd as the tank is only 6 years old, or is it diesel bug?

 

Casp'

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I found something similar at the bottom of my tank. I'm not sure whether this was the diesel bug,

It hadn't affected the running of the engine, but I reckoned it was only a question of time so I drained and cleaned the tank, fitted a water separator and I regularly dose the diesel.

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Edited by koukouvagia
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It "am-de-diesel-bug" -

Do what the post above says - SSL diesel parts -

https://www.ssldieselparts.co.uk/

sell ('cos they're nice and good value) and you can at least isolate the crud in the aglomerator before it messes up your lovely engine (provided that you change the paper filter once a year (or better). Even if it's not the bug, there's always crud hanging around...

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I am not too sure what it is but I do know engines won't run on it and it needs to come out. My tank has a 6 inch dia. inspection plate and when I removed it the inside was awful, took days to clean it. I have always used fuel additive and I am not sure if this was causing the fuel to absorb too much water. Apparently some additives encourage the mixing of water/fuel so the water gets burnt off - please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Anyway 1) try to get into the tank to clean it. 2) if you can then be careful about using nappies to clean it, I did and some (all?) have some sort of silica gel or something in them, this can escape if you tear the fabric and then you have another problem, slimy goo in the tank as well. In my case I have decided to check the tank by shining a torch in it every year. The advice about filling it right up to avoid condensation is perhaps flawed, argue this at your leisure but If I ever get another boat it will have a big removable panel on the fuel tank. My engine stopped just before I entered the Escaut and was a sod to get it running again.

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Looks to me like the corrosion and deposits resulting from long term condensation accumulating in the tank.

 

Looks exactly the same as the crud I found in the tank of a boater I rescued a month or two ago, which had led to their engine refusing to run.

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I'm reluctant to declare it 'diesel bug' as anything and everything found in the bottom of a diesel tank gets declared such, and I remain to be convinced even 10% of cases so stated really are diesel bug.

 

Is there a reliable way of positively diagnosing/identitfying diesel bug, instead of taking the default advice of "treat it anyway, what harm can it do?"?

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Marine 16 did/do sell a test kit that you could use. It has a sort of blotting paper rectangle in a bottle cap. You dip the blotting paper thing into the diesel and incubate it. Then count the blobs of microbes, yeasts and moulds.

 

Here is a report I produced for Canal Boat (but unpublished) several years old. Marine 16 got a bit miffed when I put the report on my website but I think my concisions are fair. I am still unclear about how one avoids contamination when taking a sample form a filter/water trap as per the instructions but for this particular topic it should be fine. http://www.tb-training.co.uk/M16.htm

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Marine 16 did/do sell a test kit that you could use. It has a sort of blotting paper rectangle in a bottle cap. You dip the blotting paper thing into the diesel and incubate it. Then count the blobs of microbes, yeasts and moulds.

 

Here is a report I produced for Canal Boat (but unpublished) several years old. Marine 16 got a bit miffed when I put the report on my website but I think my concisions are fair. I am still unclear about how one avoids contamination when taking a sample form a filter/water trap as per the instructions but for this particular topic it should be fine. http://www.tb-training.co.uk/M16.htm

 

Thanks Tony. That testing procedure looks a right faff!

 

I'm also wondering if the M16 test kit can effectively test a sample of the crud in Casp's photo, as opposed to a sample of fuel.

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It should be able to if he has sufficient fuel in it to fill the test kit. The accuracy of the result will depend upon much contamination was transferred to the sample from the funnel etc.

 

I doubt kpukouvagia's sample could be tested but sampling the fuel as it went into the funnel should have been enough.

 

 

Edited by Tony Brooks
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This was in the day tank, which I have now removed to clean out. I plan to cut off the bottom so I can get inside and give it a good clean. I'll then weld a new bottom on with a lower section with a drain in for future use.

 

I haven't looked in the main fuel tank, but that has the take off pipe quite high so it would take an awful lot of crud to reach that. For the past 2 years I have not pumped fuel from the main tank, I've just tipped fuel directly into the day tank from jerry cans. I started doing this as the water seperator started getting a lot of water in it and I wondered if it was from the main tank, but this crud now makes it look like it was the day tank getting water in. It's a shame we can't have the tank breather inside to stop the cold air getting in..

 

One question: is cleaning the tank sufficient to remove what ever it is, crud I can clean but is it good enough to just clean it thoroughly if it were bug?

 

Oh, also should add that the fuel from the top looked perfectly fine, nice and clear. Would bug normally make all the fuel go cloudy, or does it tend to sit at the bottom.

 

Thanks.

Edited by casper ghost
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Thank you for that, very interesting, though, as you state, I doubt it would tell me anything useful.

 

It would/should give you an indication of how much bug you have in the tank - we all have some.

 

As far as you "stuff" is concerned. I have some photos that belong to RCR showing a very similar thing except the mousse they found was brownish rather than pink. It also blocked filters with a clean looking waxy film. They sent it away for analysis and the report suggested it was a reaction to do with certain fuel additives.

 

That report plus a quick conversation to an Eber. rep at a London Boat Show suggested to me it may well have been a reaction between an emulsifying agent and too much water. This is why I now use Fuelset during the early and mid summer, then noting and overwinter with Marine 16. I spring I pump the bottom of the tank to get rid of any water marine 16 has driven out of the fuel.

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It would/should give you an indication of how much bug you have in the tank - we all have some.

 

As far as you "stuff" is concerned. I have some photos that belong to RCR showing a very similar thing except the mousse they found was brownish rather than pink. It also blocked filters with a clean looking waxy film. They sent it away for analysis and the report suggested it was a reaction to do with certain fuel additives.

 

That report plus a quick conversation to an Eber. rep at a London Boat Show suggested to me it may well have been a reaction between an emulsifying agent and too much water. This is why I now use Fuelset during the early and mid summer, then noting and overwinter with Marine 16. I spring I pump the bottom of the tank to get rid of any water marine 16 has driven out of the fuel.

My stuff is brown, think it's just the photo makes it look pink. I guess we will all end up using some sort of additive before long. he low drain i'll fit should help..

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I think Tony could be right, 'a reaction between emulsifying agent and too much water', Its difficult to work out the proportions of additive to use so I probably used too much, I also suspect a leaky deck filler, result, a pinky mess with a lot of gloop at the bottom, I don't think it was a bacterial growth. I have fixed the deck fitting and cleaned the tank and will inspect it at least once a year, no additive in it this year and I'll see how it goes but I will never get into that situation again 'cos it was a right messy pain in the butt.

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Coincidentally I have investigated my tank content over the weekend.

 

I used a pela pump to reach the bottom. I have a one litre bottle full of rubbish. The bottom third appears to be brown sludge containing solids, possibly rust. On top of that there is an opaque dark red liquid and on top of that clean diesel.

 

I can't do photos because I'm on a phone at the moment. I have decided to give the boat a list so rubbish will migrate towards the fuel filler and keep the tank topped up. I,ll investigate again in the spring.

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I suspect that many/most boats have a shocking mess at the bottom of the tank and that below the pick up level of the fuel pipe it is a real mess, mine certainly was and the engine ran perfectly, until it just stopped. I pumped out the junk with a bilge pump lowered into the tank but what was left was still very nasty. I have not got a drain plug in the tank and even if there was it would not have cleared the real sludge out. I am now happy to take the boat on bouncy rivers and tidal sections but if I had to take a narrowboat (or anything else for that matter) from - say - Sharpness to Bristol I would want a container of fresh fuel and the engine running on that, swapping filters would not work if the tank is full of muck. I'm not being alarmist but we have been on some of the very big rivers in Holland etc. and if I had known what was building up in the tank I would never have risked it.

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