Fungus in Diesel
Having been in the transport industry for more years than I care to remember, I have become aware of a problem that I had always just put down to "sludge!"
My 300GD had new fuel, air and oil filters fitted about 400 miles ago, the old ones were in a terrible mess, yet I almost broke down on Sunday due to the new filters becoming so blocked that the engine was starved of fuel. I only just made it home.
On investigation I have discovered that the fuel tank is severely infected with a fungus that thrives on diesel and it is this fungus that causes the sludge. Even steam cleaning the tank and flushing the system won't eliminate the fungus, which aparently can even be picked up from an infected nozzle at a filling station. Even if it doesn't get so bad that it blocks the fuel filter, it would appear that it can cause corrosion, lack of power and poor fuel consuption.
There is loads of information about this on the web, here are a couple of links
http://www.pfs-pros.com/page15.html
http://www.aidworkers.net/logistics/page.php?id=8
Tha car is now in the garage to have the fuel tank removed and steam cleaned, fuel system cleaned out etc. Then I'm going to get an anti fungicide product to try and kill off any residual spores. I just hope that the injectors etc haven't been damaged.
Has anyone else experienced this problem?
Colin
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Hi Peter
Sounds exactly like it, I put new filters in last week and they were completely ruined. I had to take the tank off and there was at least an inch of black gunk in the bottom of the tank, it had bocked the fuel guage mechanism, so that didn't work, the filter in the tank was knackered and the fuel lines were full of it.
The inside of the tank was steam cleaned, fuel lines and injectors cleaned and another set of filters. Then half filled the tank and added fungicide to try and get rid of any residual fungus.
What a difference in the car now!
I didn't realise how BIG a problem it was until I looked it up on the web.
If you have the same problem, steam cleaning alone doesn't get rid of all the spores from the fungus but you will find a very noticable difference in your cars pulling ability and fuel consumption, I don't know how the fuel was getting through at all on mine.
let me know how you get on ... Colin