T&T: Fuel cost in Ensenada

[Dave Cooper]

<John wrote in part: In any case, I bought about 1100 gallons of that cheap
stuff in January when I was in Anacortes. My challenge now is keeping it
fresh until I burn it.>

Time for a sea cruise John ;-)

I sure wouldn't worry about using it before the expiration date. We've used
10 year old diesel, diesel that we got from drained fouled diesel tanks and
other fuel of questionable origin. None of it had a "born on xxxx" date.
Diesel isn't beer.

If you have a high performance diesel that is wringing out gobs of HP then
the fuel quality is more important. Few of those types of engines are in our
trawlers, IMHO.

We are happy to get fuel where we can at a decent price. Our Racor and
Gulfcoast filters clean it up if it is dirty or has water. All of our fuel
makes at least one pass thru them before it gets to our day tank. Then it
makes another pass before going to the main and genset engines. In 5 years
we have never had any water or gunk in our day tank sump using this
procedure. Our 160 HP 7 liter 1925 peak RPM Detroit Diesel runs on just
about any diesel that is clean and water free.

I personally think that too much time is focused on fuel spec's, sort of
like oil specs. Any oil will do unless you are operating an engine near it's
upper limits. Few if any of us operate our engines this way in our trawlers.

Now an electronic 1500 HP 8 liter 3400 rpm twin turbo'd
intercooled/aftercooled diesel might be different. Getting the manufacturers
1000 hours of operation between overhauls requires following the book to a
tee. Crank another few hundred HP out of it and the life drops to my oil
change interval ;-)

As always YMMV......ours certainly does these days ;-)

Cheers


Dave, Nancy & Peter
Swan Song
Roughwater 58
Panama to La Paz Passage '09