So I got a tank of gas at the BP next to my house. After a few miles or so my throttle response went to crap and a rattle noise began to come from the engine. Took the Fit home, hard to start and sounds like crap. I think it might be a bad batch of gas. Car had 515 miles on it and I have not abused it in any way. Any one heard or experienced anything like this? Think it might be something else? The Fit goes back to the Dealer on Mon.

 

siphon the gas out of the tank and put some fresh gas in it. you should be able to get a siphon for cheap from an auto parts store.

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if that works, return the bad gas to the station

 

That sounds horrible. It's really hard to say what's wrong with it from your description... but bad gas might be the culprit. I hope your GE feels better soon!

 

I thought about taking the old gas out and adding new but the engine sounds really bad. Think it would be best to have the dealership take a look at things. With only that little miles on the car I want to make sure nothing got messed up. I live north of Atlanta and the gas shortage here really sucks so you have to get it when and were its available. Thanks for the replies.

 

Slowira, keep the receipts and ask for paperwork on everything dealer comes up with. If it is a bad gas you are not the only one with problems!
Gas tank is too far to siphon gas out of it and chances are it is not just liquid form but some solids too! Dealer will remove and flush a gas tank, change the fuel filter and in tank pick up screen/filter. Just make sure they collect a sample of the "bad gas" in a sterile container and send it to be tested! Visible dirt/grit is a plus for the judge as evidence, too! They might even replace injectors if they deem them a problem after re-testing the car.
One thing they might not look into is catalytic converter. Insist they take it down and inspect it. Also have them do a smog check pre-test (check emission, but does not send report to DMV) to make sure car is passing emission afterwards. If cat is damaged in the process you will find out the hard way 4-5 years from now when you are required to take in for the first smog check. Even then you are OK because federal emission warranty is up to 80K and manufacturer has to pay for the replacement of your cat (done on my Passat at 79K miles!).
You will end up with a bill from a dealer no doubt, but you can take the gas station to the small claims court and collect!
Frequently gas station holding tanks crack and start leaking gas into the soil. You are the smallest problem they will have in that case. Environmentalist and local government will get on their case. They can even shut them down permanently if they do not respond. If gas was bad to the point where soil/dirt is in the sample contact a civic center in jurisdiction and watch the show.

It is a pain I know. It will take some time and money out of your pocket, but you can get it back.

Been there - done that!

Ivan

 

Ivan,
Thanks for the great info, I will have the dealer look at it all. I will be going back to BP with my receipt and that sample of gas for a refund. I am sure warranty will cover everything since I just got the Fit on the 15th. Great info. Thanks again.

 

You are very welcome.
Be careful with warranty. Honda will cover it if it was caused by vehicle malfunction.

When my CRX died on a fwy in '92 and Honda diagnosed it with an igniter failure they refused at first to cover a cat! Problem is that when ignition failed to ignite spark plugs properly unburnt gas was saturating red hot cat melting it in the process. I summoned factory rep to the dealership beside Service Manager and insisted they provide me with a reasoning proving no relationship between the igniter and a cat. Needless to say the response was not to me, but to the service department to replace the cat. What I am trying to say is that times are getting tougher by the minute and they try to get out of covering things even when it is obvious they should.

I doubt Honda will cover it because gas station provided you with bad gas! Nobody willingly pays for anything if they can even remotely blame somebody else for it. You can try, but I think gas station and BP will need to cover it. And gas refund? They better give you a free gas card for a while! LOL!
BTW, if things get stuck you can alway contact local media with the story. It is an ugly way to get things done, but when you are stuck with a bill you should not be paying for anything goes. Nobody likes bad publicity! They are saying any kind of publicity is better than no publicity, but it is very rare!

Ivan

 

If it is bad gas then I dont think warranty will cover but Ivan's advice is pretty spot on if it soil in the gas.

 

Thanks for all the great advise. I will contact BP and also work with Honda to get my Fit fixed and if I need to I will contact the local media. I will just have to stay positive and get the ball rolling on Monday.

 

Pardon my ignorance, but I have never heard of "bad gas". I never thought gas sold at gas station can be "bad", unless you mean adultered w/ water or something. If that's the case, you should tell the police because that's a criminal act!

Suppose there's such as a thing as bad gas. How do you tell it's bad? By chemical analysis? I am not trying to be sarcastic, but I do want to know how to protect myself from bad gas if it ever happens to me or my loved one.

 

If you ever pull into a gas station and see one of those big gas delivery trucks filling the station's tanks leave and go somewhere else for your fill up. The act of filling those storage tanks can stir up any sediment that may be on the bottom of the tanks that could make it into your gas tank when you fill up.

 

you didnt put diesel in it did you?
i friend of mine put diesel in his GF's car & it froze up like that.

 

Yes, water is possible, especially with gas that has ethanol in it - the water dissolves into the alcohol.

Personally I think ethanol-ized gas IS bad gas.. Lower mpg, for one thing..

 

This is the best advice yet. This happend to a friend of mine and it cost him $400 to get his car fixed. He eventually got his money back but it took a long time. I will never get gas if I see a tanker truck there, go some where else.

 

I have always had problems with BP gas. I avoid BP stations like the plague.

 

My immediate reaction to this was: WATER! I have a co-worker who recently had a car stall and get towed to dealer only to find the gas station was watering-down the gas illegally.

 

Water contamination was also my first thought. Ciburri mentioned that a leaking storage tank might leach dirt (soil) into the stored gas, but while that might be happening, the surrounding soil would likely also hold ground water in high water-table land. Water contamination in that case would be guaranteed. The pumping of gas into car after car would create a small amount of vacuum, siphoning ground water into the crack or hole in the tank.

 

P.s. to Slowira-

If I were in your place, I would also take the car to the dealer (hopefully a good one with good mechanics). I hope that in your case, a warranty issue with the CAR is found to be the cause, because contaminated gasoline and the damage from it will not be covered under the Honda warranty.

If the gas is the problem, your bill from the dealer is going to be higher than the usual limits on small claims court cases. I don't know about GA, but in CA the ceiling on small claims court claims is $500. With all of the analysis procedures that are likely to be done, your cost at the dealer will greatly exceed $500.00. You can still legally get compensation from the gas station, but it will take a case brought before a higher court than small claims- your claim won't be SMALL.

Best of luck to you!! Please let us know how this turns out.

 

I agree. I never went back to the one station i got bad gas from once for just that reason. im sure most "bad gas" is an underground tank issue.

i know you can siphon most of that gas out. there are siphons with 6ft plus lines out there. im sure it will be fine afterwards if it was just a water issue. you might have to raise the fit up though because its tank is pretty low and you will need to counteract some of that head. i guess dropping th tank would be a safer bet though

 

I agree- with the right pump setup, you should be able to get most of the gas out of a Fit. The term "siphon" is wrong for gas removal from the Fit. Only a pump will work because the tank is so low and so far away from the filler.

A small amount of water contamination is pretty common all over the country, and a small amount of water won't hurt your engine. But how small is "small"? In the colder parts of the northern U.S. and all over Canada, water in the gas tank can turn to ice and block the filter screen in the gas tank. The designs of fuel tanks, filters and pumps of modern cars reduce the possible harm from ice in the fuel, but cars & trucks made several decades ago occasionally had severe problems in their fuel systems during the winter cold.