A Relief

We have for a few months now believed that we had a gathering problem that would need rectifying on Naughty-Cal. She seemed to have developed somewhat of a smoking habit which appeared to be getting gradually worse and was a tad embarrassing to say the least.

At low revs we were all but shrouded by a cloud of acrid smoke. We had of course feared the worse and expected some major repair bills upon the way.

With the promise of cold weather on the horizon we decided at the weekend to refill the diesel tank. It was about half full according to the gauge so we figured about 100 litres would refill it. The gauge is a little pessimistic and has more in it then it says. 90 litres later and we were brimmed again.

Within a couple of minutes of running we both noticed that the dirty acrid exhaust smell had disappeared. A few minutes later and the smoke was also starting to clear. Not completely but it was noticeably better.

All of our problem we now believe has been down to a dodgy batch of fuel. What a relief!

We have had this before but it was many years ago now and we had forgotten all about it. It seems that the big green lump is a bit fussy about it's quality of fuel.

With the old stuff watered down with fresh good fuel by less than 50% it seems to be much happier. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will get the chance to burn some of this fuel off and then we will refill again and see if the smoking situation improves further. Fingers crossed.