E350 Contaminated diesel Silvertown East London

[NickP330]

I was driving along last Monday in my lovely E350 Coupe when it went into limp mode and the orange engine warning light came on.

I took it into my local Mercedes garage, who carried out a diagnostics test.

Mercedes phoned me on the Tuesday to inform me that the diagnostics and subsequent dismantling of the exhaust system had revealed that the cause of the problem was that the innards of the catalytic converter had melted.

They went on to say that following further tests and sampling of the fuel tank contents their mechanic had confirmed that the fuel in the tank was contaminated diesel and that this was the cause of the damage to the cat.

I didn't believe them, so i went in today to see them and they showed me the fuel sample and the cat and sure enough the innards of the cat has melted and the fuel sample is distinctly orangier in colour than diesel and it smells of petrol.

They have advised me that the replacement cat, dpf and associated other components, sensors, tank drain and line cleaning bill is estimated at £3k.

I have checked my last fuel bill and i filled up at a major high street retailer with 55 litres of diesel on the Thursday, which is a full tank. I am going to write to this retailer next and notify them of this issue and of course attempt to get some compensation for this.

I would like to hear from anyone who has suffered this same issue and if they have any advice on this as this is a new and unexpected problem to me with expensive consequences.

many thanks

Nick

 

[Mr Filipov]

Which retailer was it?

 

[yorkshire1]

By all means write, but myself I,d be round there sharpish,if their fuel was contaminated others will have been too and youre more likely to get a straight story from the cashiers than a letter denying any responsibility from head office 2 weeks from now!!

If youve got youre fuel receipt and car mileage as of now itll be hard for them to deny

 

[range rover]

Was it a supermarket pump? I heard that a certain supermarket over here is the final destination for seized laundered fuel. I have no proof, but I have seen an unmarked tanker offloading at said establishment, it has to go somewhere I suppose, but it certainly is NOT going in my car.

 

[om613]

I don't believe your Garage either.

Diesel with petrol contamination doesn't cause a colour change.

Nor would petrol contamination 'melt' a cat's ceramic substrate, as the lowered cetane value won't cause higher EGTs!

 

[Xtractorfan]

You need to get a sample of the fuel from your car and one from the filling station. Dont just go asking the fuel station for a sample, fill a gallon can, then compare it with what is in your car... You will need to get it tested, which can be expensive.
Then you would have to prove that you had no other fuel in your tank when you filled up..soooo.. big problems there holding the garage to account.
as said dont take what the mechanic tells you as gospel, he cannot identify bad fuel just by its colour or smell. And it takes a lot of heat to melt the internals of a cat.

 

[NickP330]

Hi
Many thanks for your comments. I wrote to the retailer on Friday, (I don't think i would be allowed to name them) putting all the documentation together, receipts and Mercedes diagnosis etc and wait for a reply. I will also call them on Monday morning, to see if i can actually speak to them. I think that i will also go down to the filling station tomorrow and have a word with the cashier, see if he has anything to say, but suspect he would probably deny it even if it was true. I know it was definitely from this station as i bought 55 liters of Diesel, which is almost a full tank from empty in my coupe. the last fuel i bought before that was again another full tank on 6th October. The sample that i have received smells to me like its at least a 50/50 mix diesel/petrol, maybe more petrol? If i am able i will post the pictures of the CAT and the fuel. Many thanks for your comments

 

[NickP330]

By all means write, but myself I,d be round there sharpish,if their fuel was contaminated others will have been too and youre more likely to get a straight story from the cashiers than a letter denying any responsibility from head office 2 weeks from now!!

If youve got youre fuel receipt and car mileage as of now itll be hard for them to deny

Hi yes i have the receipt fortunately and it says diesel on it.... phew... 55 liters ... i will go and see the cashier tomorrow.

 

[Alex M Grieve]

I have known diesel cars which have been miss-fuelled with petrol (90% +) complete significant distances without suffering harm.

"Cross overs", where the fuel delivery to the filling station puts petrol into the diesel tank, are not unknown.

So, petrol could have got into the OPs car, even if fuelled from a pump labelled diesel and with a receipt to indicate it was diesel, but the damage sustained here is not consistent with gasoline being the culprit.

 

[John Laidlaw]

As Alex says cross overs are still common, although the newer road delivery tankers have been fitted with cross over fill protection so the instances are less .

 

[umblecumbuz]

Strange one.

As has been said, it looks as though contaminated fuel is not the cause of your troubles.

To come off successful here, it would not be enough even to prove that this particular retailer sold you contaminated fuel. You would also have to prove that the fuel was the cause of the melted cat. Any doubt thrown at this, and you are on a loser.

I wish you success, but with experts bent on finding flaws in your conclusions - and that has already been done by several helpful posters here who are on your side and not adversarial, as those employed by the fuel retailer would be - it could be a long hard road to a dead end.

Umble

 

[KennyN]

Just playing the devils advocate here :

It took five days of driving for the problem to become evident , in that time how many miles did you cover as i would have thought if there was a contaminated fuel issue it would have been noticeable sooner than that.

Who is to say that someone didn`t put the wrong fuel in the car after the initial diesel fill-up.

If there was a genuine case of contaminated diesel then i am sure the garage would have had loads of complaints which will be out there somewhere on social media so best try to locate them to back up your complaint.

Kenny

 

[NickP330]

An interesting development.....

Dear all, many thanks for all your comments, which I took on board and has led me to a somewhat interesting development with this problem.
After writing to the high street fuel retailer and receiving a fairly comprehensive response, which comprised an analysis of the fuel tank fills, which tanker and when, it became clearer to me that I would not have been alone with this issue as they sell 4000 litres a day out of the tank that served me.
Further, after reading some of your comments and thinking about the car doing 4-5 days on that tank of fuel without issue during those days, I further suspected that something in this story from the Mercedes dealer was not quite right.
I therefore arranged for my car to be collected from the Merc dealer by transporter and taken to a garage that I know nearer to home with 2 ex BMW mechanics that I have known for 20 years. When the car arrived, I opened the fuel flap, pushed a screwdriver in to release the non - return flap, and couldn’t smell petrol.??? hmmm

A few days later, once the mechanics had got around to looking at the car, they phoned me and said that the fuel in the tank was just diesel, they had opened the lines and taken a sample and compared this with some diesel that they had purchased from across the road. I went to the garage, and viewed this personally as I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, we opened the lines under the car and took another sample and tried to ignite it on the floor with a lighter, but nothing….. it was just diesel.

The damage to the catalytic converter is as the Merc dealer says and the picture was my car, but the mechanics said that this was just normal wear and tear of the Cat and they didn’t consider this serious or immediately worthy of replacement. He also said, as I suppose he would as he likes BMW’s that it could be poor manufacture of the cat.

The guys put the exhaust back together, closed up the fuel lines and cleared the fault code, and I took the car back about 10 days ago and have been running it since on the same tank of fuel + another tank of diesel without the fault repeating itself…. The car runs perfectly, well for a diesel tractor it runs perfectly…no lights on the dash, no limp mode, just as normal.

Anyone any ideas? should I write to Mercedes directly ? or should I write to the dealer? as it smacks to me of a deliberate attempt by the Merc dealer to do £3000.00 of unnecessary work to my car. I cant believe it myself, as although somewhat relieved that my car is fine, I do feel like Mercedes has tried to take my trousers down and I am wondering how many other punters has this happened to and would they challenge it >

 

[M80]

Were there still any fault codes to be read at your BMW garage? After all they did clear the fault code so knowing it could be useful for diagnostic.

It sounds like MB owe you for flat bed transportation and inconvenience.

 

[Headhurts]

That sounds awful and surprises me as main dealerships are normally so busy that they don't need to do this sort of thing.

It's a good job you had the sense and connections to resolve the matter in a less costly way, not sure that I would have been smart enough.

Imagine if you had just said go ahead and paid for the repairs.

A letter to the dealer principle should get you some satisfaction, I hope this is resolved to your satisfaction.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Steve@Avantgarde]

It would be interesting to see the fault code print out from STAR when your car was at the main dealer. Perhaps you could ask for a copy and post it here?

 

[NickP330]

Fault Codes

Were there still any fault codes to be read at your BMW garage? After all they did clear the fault code so knowing it could be useful for diagnostic.

It sounds like MB owe you for flat bed transportation and inconvenience.

Hi, yes, the stored fault code as read by the BMW mechanics was as follows, 15FD00 Lower Limit value of component B28/DPF pressure sensor has not been reached.

 

[NickP330]

Were there still any fault codes to be read at your BMW garage? After all they did clear the fault code so knowing it could be useful for diagnostic.

It sounds like MB owe you for flat bed transportation and inconvenience.

just noticed, you have a K1200rs, i had a blue one for about 5 years, aka the flying brick... great bike..