stupid cold, and bad winter blend = gellin.

mikmaze

mikmaze

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getting ready to head for home last night, started the truck to get ready to head for home, it was plugged in, but wanted to get the heat going. walked away and heard it, burble, then quit. yup,truck gelled the fuel 3 hrs of messing with it, 3 bottles of diesel 911 with 2 1/2 bottle in the tank, one in the fass filter, no luck. I gave up. Sent my friends home, and I stayed over to battle truck and cold in the am light of a warming day instead of dark and growing colder. Ended up draining fuel, 2 gallons at a time, heating on stove, then returning to tank. Wrapped fuel filter with 6 feet of heat trace, another 6 feet around water separator. 84 watts of heat combined. wrapped both with insulation, secured with zip ties and duct tape. Plugged heat trace in to inverter and let it run, 15 minutes without a burble, so rolled the dice and headed for home. Made it, but I am shot. worried I would have needed a tow, 220 miles would have been EXPENSIVE !

hear from a friend that a LOT of gelling this year due to a chitty winter blend, sux.
 
That sounds terrible.! My lbz has only gelled once in my 7 years of owning it. I replace filters religiously, I've had to to replace 3 in the last 2 months. I get my fuel from multiple places and no matter what fuel quality seems chitty!!! I replaced one 5 miles from home last week in -5° weather it sucked.
 
I've tried multiple products, haven't found one that works best yet.
 
Sucks to hear. I like Stanadyne since I've been using it. Haven't heard of any gelling issues from anyone who uses it.

Do you have the tow/roadside package on your insurance? Cheaper than AAA, for me anyway. Had my old truck breakdown bad enough that I couldn't fix it in Richmond. I paid less than $100 after insurance to get it towed home
 
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I've gelled 3 times this year and had only gelled once in the past 10+ of owning a diesel. It has been extremely cold but with an entire quart of power service in every tank when it is bitter cold I still gel up. 911 works really well for me but it is getting old pouring that poison in my tank.
 
50/50 blend equals no gelling at most temps.

I'd run a half tank of straight #1 or kerosene to clean it out with a good lubricity additive.

I don't play around with wanting to get 100,000,000 miles out of injectors when my hands are numb. #1 is a cure all.
 
zfaylor said:
I've gelled 3 times this year and had only gelled once in the past 10+ of owning a diesel. It has been extremely cold but with an entire quart of power service in every tank when it is bitter cold I still gel up. 911 works really well for me but it is getting old pouring that poison in my tank.
Click to expand...


911 is like this, you have a headache at home, what do you do? Take some Tylenol, or call the police?
Because of it's high content of ethyl ester (alcohol) it works great wicking up water and re-liquefying already gelled fuel. However it's for emergencies only, like you messed up and a plow truck has #2 fuel in it, and you have a $6,000 contract that needs to get done. It is very common misconception when people maintain fuel with 911 that could really negatively impact your fuel system components.
Just last year I did a set of injectors in a Cat 3126. Owner says he uses 911 religiously, and this shouldn't happen at 3500hr or whatever, typical, "well Caterpillar doesn't build a good product anymore". So I have to explain yadda yadda.
Nevertheless, Howes gets my vote as the best fuel additive. All big fleets that operate in the winter months run it, and swear by it. Best lubrication and anti gel properties. They just don't have the advertising Power Service has.


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Stanadyne is another great product on the market, it's drawback is that it's not available at all discount auto parts stores.


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good friend of mine was running stanadyne in his tank, enough to treak 100 gallons....... 240 miles from home he was running around looking for 911, replacement fass filter..... howes, I am not sure on, seen it, used it, just haven't tried it yet in the extreme cold. n I had wondered about kerosene, as I saw a pump for K1 while looking for 911
 
Where do you buy your fuel? Is it winter mix?

I'll go out on a limb and say that we get many colder days than you, never had a truck gel up on winter mix. Maybe you had a bout of temps that are out of range for the local winter mix.
 
I was up in NY when it happened, - 14 degrees when it all happened. all the stations around here have winter blend, you can tell when the switch over, fuel mpg goes to hell due to its lower btu content. I would imagine in Maine, you have an even thinner winter blend.
 
Been in -20 and never gelled up with Howes. But I use it liberally at the colder temps. Power Service gelled on me at zero that was a looonnnggg morning. But like stated earlier blend or #1 helps a lot.
 
DionysiosA76 said:
911 is like this, you have a headache at home, what do you do? Take some Tylenol, or call the police?
Because of it's high content of ethyl ester (alcohol) it works great wicking up water and re-liquefying already gelled fuel. However it's for emergencies only, like you messed up and a plow truck has #2 fuel in it, and you have a $6,000 contract that needs to get done. It is very common misconception when people maintain fuel with 911 that could really negatively impact your fuel system components.
Just last year I did a set of injectors in a Cat 3126. Owner says he uses 911 religiously, and this shouldn't happen at 3500hr or whatever, typical, "well Caterpillar doesn't build a good product anymore". So I have to explain yadda yadda.
Nevertheless, Howes gets my vote as the best fuel additive. All big fleets that operate in the winter months run it, and swear by it. Best lubrication and anti gel properties. They just don't have the advertising Power Service has.


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Click to expand...

Agree with you 100% and meant to say i am tired of pouring 911 into a gelled tank. I am a howes guy myself and use it in all of my own stuff but the company ride gets whatever the company provides which tends to be power service. An entire quart of power service in one tank wont even keep it from gelling. I have since been pouring howes in on my dollar with these dam single digit temps we've seen for a week straight now.

The quads and semis all get kerosene mixed in and still tend to gel. Tells me we must have some sort of bio blend in the tank. The owner claims it isn't but I have yet to have an issue with fuel in my personal truck from any of the stations.
 
I preached this subject a lot last winter. Had weeks of -15 to -20 weather. Never in my life had I seen so many stranded diesels on the side of the road. Every single one of them were either not using any cold weather supplement, or they were using Power Service.

Power Service is not working as well with the ULSD as it once did. There is a document floating around somewhere on the different cold weather characteristics of ULSD vs LSD(I'm sure I have a copy). The gel points were equivalent... however the cloud point of ULSD was considerably higher. Combine that with common rail injection's finer fuel filtration and you are down. For some reason PS's formula was negatively impacted with the fuel change.

I have not seen anybody have issues with Howes, Stanadyne, or Opti-Lube. I prefer Opti-Lube, but you can't find that on the shelf. I noticed my local Napa started carrying Stanadyne.
 
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even withthe fuel issues, I am not ready to be done with winter, I like this one more than many past, as I now own a snowmobile! power to weight is a blast on these things ! even if my sled only made 100 hp, my truck would have to have 2800 just to compare.... think my sled was rated at 143 stock hp.
 
Howes here as well. $10.99 a jug here at Rural King, and I tend to get pretty liberal with it when I know its getting cold. Double or even triple dose is worth not having to spend hours rescuing a truck.
 
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