Water in the diesel tank - what a twonk.

CPD

CPD

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Following Dougie's fine example, tho in the marina with no maydaying involved, I find myself in a situation where there is without doubt some water in the diesel tank.

On New Years eve on arrival at Shotley, I filled the main tank and also 2 jerries. Yesteday was the first time since that we popped up to the boat, and to my horror noticed the filler cap sitting alongside the perfectly horizontal filler hole. So all the rain and snow that we have had since New Year ............

The batteries were also flat so after a period of charging, I started her up and ran her for a while which I now realise, given the water issue, may have been a mistake.

Wll draining the tank and disposing of the fuel be all that is required, or just drain a fair portion, or does the tank need to be completely emptied then dried and somehow treated or, or, or ??. Suppliers of useful information may freely suggest alternatives to twonk,
 
Bad luck. I sympathise. don't know the answer to your question but if you have good access to the tank and an access hatch in the tank, it will pay you to give it a 100% go. Without tempting fate, I was really pleased to be able to remove all the diesel from my tank and give it a total clean out but then I have two large access hatches and it was pretty easy.
 
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Alan.
I got a guy who works in the marina (Ipswich Haven) to empty the tank filtering off the bad fuel.
Trouble was that mine had salt water in it and that kept throwing my very sensative sensors. eventually gave up a got rid of the fuel....well I think he should have done by now as Burton Waters were getting a bit arsy about diesel in containers in their store cupboard...
He did eventually use some special stuff that attracted everything in the tank (once nearly emptied) and made a nice cake which he removed. apparently I had bug in their too....which i was a bit pissed about as the boat aint that old and i use soltron or similar.....

I will try to find out what the stuff was.

Empty tank.
clean it.
start again.
Oh a clear the lines to the pre filters and engines of course....
 
PM Doug
I think he had his fuel cleaned rather than disposed of.

The water will be sitting in the bottom of the tank.
If you engine ran o.k. then the water fuel interface is below the level of your fuel pickup.
If you can access the tank from the top via the filler pipe or an access plate then you can insert a pipe to the bottom of the tank and pump / suck out the water.
The best thing to use would be one of those tank things that are sold for getting oil out of the sump of engines that are not fitted with a sump pump.
Once you are getting clean fuel out you should be o.k.
You must do this as soon as you can as the fuel bug will be growing on the fuel water interface.
You should also avoid shaking the tank contents up.

Doug's problem was that his engine management systems detected a small amount of water in the fuel and shut the engine down.
I don't think the the engines in most yachts are that sophisticated.
 
If you have run the engine won't the water end up in the separator - assuming you have one. If so then running a few times and emptying the bowl each time might get rid of it. You'll have to keep an eye on the separator even if you take the worst off with a vacuum thingy as Clive suggests.

Just 2p worth. Hard luck Alan.
 
Old tricks

.
For a time in a past life I did long distance driving of heavy trucks from Queensland Central coast to Western Australian mining towns in the North West.

Needless to say 'some' or the refuelling stops were doubtful to say the least, but one cunning old trucker got thru' had few if ant fuel problems.

I was lucky enough to be right behind him on a return trip and radioed to say he was pulling over at the next stop to re fuel and have a feed, so I decided to join him.

As I pulled in I saw him tip the remaining contents of a drink bottler into his main tank, then something from a small box and drop it in, he then produced what I thought was a long rag filter and fed it into the tank before filling.

Turns out the liquid was metho', the solid was two moth balls and the sock was chamois leather sewn into shape to maximise the surface area.

Now he reckons the metho' mixes with any remaining moisture and the moth balls kill any fuel bugs and the chamois traps any water in the new fuel.

To this day I never added moth balls or metho' but I did the wife to double sew 2 fill size chamois sheets together and was amased at some of the rubbish it trapped. We carry two on board these days to save time when filling the twin tanks on board.

Hope this helps.

Avagoodweekend......:)

.
 
Suggest you siphon it all out Al, and remove the inspection hatch to thoroughly clean the tank. After all, you don't know when it was last cleaned anyway. A Pela 6000 will get it out 6 litres a t a time :-) You ought to have one of those to do your oil changes anyway.....
You will also need to purge the whole fuel delivery system from separator to injectors.
If you don't get it all out, and you need the engine when it gets rough - well you can picture the failure mode I am sure.
I had a look, and you tank capacity is around 80 litres. Or around 65 quids worth. A shame, but not the end of the world. You can decant and filter it at leisure when you have done all the cleaning in the system.
 
Sorry to hear that Alan.

If you have just run the engine up, I doubt that any more than fuel in the filters has been used. As others have said, check the separator if you have one, and if clear, work backwards from there.
 
Recently had the same problem with a V8 petrol.
Went on various websites, thoughts varied from IPA, (moisture remover avaiable from chemical specialists online) to Wynnes dry fuel (Halfords etc). The dry fuel can/should be added to keep moisure and condensation at bay, through out the winter months.

As mentioned take a loss on the cost of the fuel or a punt with the dry fuel and your water trap.
 
if you are taling about diesel, your in luck as diesel floots on water...

years ago a friend of mine filled up his diesel tank with about 200 liters of clear water using the wrong filling hole. this was on a 32' power boat with twin diesel engines.

so what we did was we unbold the fuel line what goes to the engine's and pumped the water out with the bilge pumps till we had diesel. no we didn't pump it right out over the side!

then we reconnected the fuel line and bleeded the filters / engines etc. that's all.
 
Thanks for the advice chaps. I haven't had the chance to get to the boat to have a decent look, however I am fairly sure I dont have a water seperator. At the moment, the modus operandi in my head is as follows :

- Suck the fuel out of the tank with an oil sucker thing.
- Look for an access hatch into the tank and remove.
- Clean tank internally (doubtful on this one due to baffles etc - any ideas ??)
- Disconnect one by one all pipework from tank to filters/pumps and injectors.
- Clean each pipe internally (lint free cloth dragged through if poss tho open to suggestions)
- If internal cleaning not possible then pump through copious quantities of fresh diesel.
- In any case, pump through each section with clean diesel when cleaned.
- Re-attach pipework.
- Fill tank with fresh (+soltron I think it is called) making careful use of the filler cap.
- Bleed all way through.
- Start her up and run for a good few hours.

Does that sound about right ?
 
What about sucking the water from the bottom of the tank - keep going till you suck diesel,
then fit a water trap - best to have one anyway; bleed etc then run for some time checking the water trap??
 
CPD said:
On New Years eve on arrival at Shotley, I filled the main tank and also 2 jerries. Yesteday was the first time since that we popped up to the boat, and to my horror noticed the filler cap sitting alongside the perfectly horizontal filler hole......,
Click to expand...

Do you still have pretty much a full main tank ? .... just make sure that the absent filler cap wasn't the result of some tea-leaf helping themselves to your diesel.
 
Off to have an initial look-see on Wednesday, hoping that there WILL in fact be a drain/seperator somewhere and shall report thereafter.
 
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