When the Hurricane went through Houston, the gas stations in Austin all ran out of gas. I went to top off my 2013 Mini hatchback manual w/ 35k miles. with the last five gal of PLAIN REGULAR in town. Three days later, I get a P300, P301, P302 (plug misfires) and some mild bucking with acceleration. I think I got some bad gas or dregs from the bottom of the station’s tank. Stopped driving it until I can fix this, so it is only down one light bar from full.

1. Should I attempt to clean the injectors? if so, what product do you recommend?

2. Should I attempt to drain the gas? If so how?

thanks casey

 

That sucks - sorry to hear that. Do you have the ability to drain or pump out your tank? If not, you will want to add in a few gallons of unleaded super high octane 100+ which we can get locally here at the Sunoco pump ( supposed to be for off road only). As well as something to offset any water that was in your bad fill up. NAPA or whoever is local to you will have something for that. No need to over kill it - a bottle or two will be plenty to get you going again. Plan a single day of long highway driving to work through most of it and fill up with premium before you park it for the night. You can pull plugs to simply clean and reinstall after.
Good luck.

 

If you were to drain the tanks. Please disconnect the battery first and get an old fashioned hand " bulb" pump. Boating stores have these super cheap. Remove access cover under rear seats and fill up a few plastic jerry cans by hand pumping. Will need a few feet of hose and some patience. Once its primed, it will flow out.

 

I've had good luck using Techron to clean the injectors. I had a dirty injector and before taking it out and manually cleaning it. I thought I'd run some Techron fuel system cleaner though it to see if that would work and it did.
Pour it in the fuel tank before you fill it up to help mix it with the gasoline. The code came back once but after second bottle of Techron it hasn't reoccurred.

 

If the fuel is the cause of this I would say it's either due to water or debris, is this a Cooper or Cooper S?

If it's a Cooper I would start with a tank drain, new fuel filter and see what that does for you.

If it's a Cooper S I would also follow that path, but I will say; HPFP systems of any kind don't at all like water ingress, so you could get lucky with just draining the tank and a new filter or this could cause long term problems with the HPFP and injectors.

 

Thanks all for the help on my Cooper Non-S. One thing I was told was that when the gas station tanks were getting low during the hurricane, you could get water pumped out out since it would be on the bottom of the station tanks. After following everyone's advise and lots of surfing, this is my plan.

1. Put can of Techron in it tonight, shake car, then drive for 30 min. If much better, then probably water since Techron will breakup water as well as fix injectors.

2. If no help, then buy the filter, open the filter access under the back seats and replace it. While there, siphon out the bad fuel. Then run several more cans of Techron to try to clean any remaining gunk from injectors. I will update this post with results..Thanks Casey

 

Hi All, well the easy fix did not work. Put can of Techron and pint of alcohol in and ran 50 miles without noticeable change. Still having stumble especially when shifting into higher gear without much rpms. With lots of rpm, no stumbles. Have ordered the gas filter. Checked the spark plugs and found them pretty clean, but with gaps like .049. Way too wide which could cause poor sparking especially under load. Have now just ordered 4 new ones from Pelican. Will try these out and see how it works. Also ordered Blue Driver ODB2 I/F for my iphone so I can read and clear the codes. Will update until success is achieved!!

 

She is working great now! While waiting for the filter, I reset the codes and did not get another bad code. So maybe the techron and alcohol really helped. However, the engine was still stumbling and hesitating at low rpms. I checked my sparkplugs and they had gaps of nearly .050 instead of .039!! I went out and changed them and now it is purring like new. I have just replaced the fuel filter (awful job) and so I should be set for another 50K miles. Thanks to all for your advice. CaseyJay