Bleach in diesel tank

[CarlF]

Once in 40 years - can't beat yourself up too bad.

I've always been a bit confused about what Startron does - does it emulsify the water or do something else? If the former, I think I'd just let the Racor remove any last water rather than pushing it through your injectors in an emulsified form.

I had a friend who believes his injectors were ruined afer treating his fuel with Starbrite Water Absorber which is an emulsifier. He thinks he had quite a bit of water in the fuel so even when emulsified it was too much for the injectors.

 

[Dougcole]

Thanks all for the replies. And by the way, I didn't say it was the only dumb thing I have done to the boat in 40 years, just the dumbest and most recent!



Yes, I did get the water tank sanitized. I was getting some bad taste from the water which did not go away after I sanitized the tanks, turns out it was the under sink water filter which needed to be changed.


I have put about 8 hours on both motors since I did this, both are running fine and I'm not getting any water (or other unpleasantness) in the racors. So far, so good on the tank as well.


Motors are Yanmar 4HLA-Stp, not too temperamental and not common rail.


I'm 50/50 on Startron. I trust Shelby who owns the fuel and tank company I worked with, he repaired my port side tank four years ago and did a great job. He swears by Startron and does not sell it. His company cleans 20 or 30 tanks a week, so he sees a lot of bad fuel, but then again he is not a chemist. Internet tests on it are all over the place, some good some say it does nothing. In this case I felt like the risk was low, and that it might help, so I used it. I don't plan on using it all the time.


There was not much water in my tanks, we had just gotten back from 7 weeks in the Bahamas on the boat and were down well below 1/2 full since our last refill and there was no water in the racors. The bleach may have added a little bit of water, but I think we got them really dry when we flushed them.



Of course, pumping 50 gallons of diesel out then paying someone to throw it away has been made even more painful now that diesel is $5.25 a gallon, but at least I have peace of mind. Right?

 

[HopCar]

You may be on to something. Bleach is a lot cheaper than Biobor and does the same thing.

 

[catalinajack]

As a side note, I question the design choice to put the fuel and water fills on my boat immediately adjacent to each other. I'm sure it made some sense from a plumbing design standpoint, but I feel like if they were at different locations in the deck, maybe by a dozen feet or so, there would be less likelihood of making this kind of mistake. Inside the boat, the fuel and water tanks are separated fore and aft buy quite a bit. They did put the pumpout quite a bit farther aft even though it's almost in the same fore/aft location as the water tank. Bit of a head-scratcher, probably just not something they thought of.

My boat has the caps (water, fuel, and pump-out) about six feet apart. The pump-out cap is chromed. Fearing a brain freeze as happened to the OP, I painted the fuel cap "red" (red-dyed diesel) and the water cap white. That doesn't guarantee no mistakes but I figure the red will stand out and be a helpful reminder should my mind wander which has been known to happen.

 

[RickyD]

My boat has the caps (water, fuel, and pump-out) about six feet apart. The pump-out cap is chromed. Fearing a brain freeze as happened to the OP, I painted the fuel cap "red" (red-dyed diesel) and the water cap white. That doesn't guarantee no mistakes but I figure the red will stand out and be a helpful reminder should my mind wander which has been known to happen.

Fortunately for this dumb a$$ boat owner, the diesel fills are on the port side and the water and waste are on the starboard. I can only pump out my fresh water tanks or pour fresh water into my holding tanks. Oh, or put holding tank chemistry into my fresh water. Luckily when I made the mistake I figured it out before I tried to drink anything.