Well, I went to pick my niece up at Detroit Metro airport yesterday and filled up with Sunoco 94 Octane nearby. AT the very first light, the car stalled when trying to engage the clutch. The car ran worse and worse as we drove back to Windsor, missing and stalling whenever I tried to accelerate too hard. When I got home I put some Octane Booster in it and took it for a spin and it felt a little better. However, trying to start it this morning was a nightmare. It would start than immediately stall or start dieseling. Clouds of blue smoke were coming out the exhaust and it blew an engine fault code. After 20 minutes it finally settled down but would stutter bad under acceleration. I called Chad and of course he offered to help if I drove it over to DT. When I got it there, we checked the fault code and it showed that the number 3 plug was misfiring. We pulled the plugs and could smell kerosene on the tips, yes, you heard me, kerosene. #3 plug was fried. So we had to siphon all of the fuel out of the gas tank (which btw is no easy task.) After 3 hours we got everything back together in the boot, new Denso Iridiums installed and some new gas in the tank. Mo' immediately started running better and seemed almost back to normal after the 25 mile trip home to Canada. I stopped at Murray's Auto and threw a bottle of Lucas Injector Cleaner in the tank as well. Here's hoping no permanent damage was done. I will be calling the gas station and Sunoco tomorrow to raise hell. Thank you, Chad, again for dropping everything on a Sunday to help a brother out. There is no place better than Detroit Tuned!!

 

Chad is awesome. What luck that you got your Mo' right over to him so he could diagnose the problem. Let us know what reaction you get from the Sunoco people.

 

Glad to see Chad could help. He's a great guy and goes the extra mile for his customers. I guess you'd call it good business sense.

 

It can happen at any gas station. I recently got a bit of bad gas at a Chevron station near my place causing some nasty pops and bangs for a couple minutes, then it smoothed out, and everything has been fine since.

 

*UPDATE*

I have spoken with the manager of the gas station as well as filed a complaint with the Mich. Dept. of Agriculture. Two other people have already filed complaints and MDA has taken a sample of the fuel. The gas bar manager has been very apologetic and promised restitution. My car seems to be running normally again. <fingers crossed>

 

Yikes! Sunoco has become one of my favorites too... I guess you never know what you're getting. I heard about a gas station recently that put diesel fuel into an unleaded tank and a bunch of it's customers cars got all screwed up. The autoblog post is here:

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/10/11/d...t-gas-station/