Path: scolex!sco!uunet!uunet!caen!hellgate.utah.edu!dog.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!crash!bang!bam From: bam@bang.uucp (Bret A. Marquis) Newsgroups: rec.aviation Subject: Misfueled with Jet-A! Message-ID: <1991Oct12.025554.4223@bang.uucp> Date: Fri, 11 Oct 91 19:55:54 PDT Organization: Marquis Co., San Diego Lines: 151 The following post was posted on AVSIG. The aviation special interest group on Compuserve. Reposted here with permission of the author. ------------------ Sb: #197556-#Misfueled with Jet A! Fm: Mike Busch [SMX CA] 76702,476 (76702.476@Compuserve.COM) Well, brother John let the cat out of the bag just a little. It's ironic that AVSIG recently had a heated discussion on the subject of misfueling piston aircraft with jet fuel. Today it happened to me. I flew the 310 from SMX to SQL (San Carlos, CA) because I had to attend a business meeting 15 minutes drive from the SQL airport. I have had occasion to fly into SQL quite frequently during the past few months, and it has been my practice not to purchase fuel there. The reason is that SQL's runway is very short (2600-foot runway) relative to a 310's takeoff requirements, and consequently I like to take off as light as possible so that my performance margin is reasonable. My usual practice, therefore, is to depart SQL light, hop across the bay to Hayward, and refuel the airplane there. Today, however, the meeting was going to run late and SMX was forecast to go below ILS minimums by 9 pm. Consequently, I didn't want to take the extra time to go to HWD for fuel, and decided that this time I'd take on enough fuel at SQL to make the return flight to SMX with generous IFR reserves. I called the Chevron dealer (Golden Gate) on their unicom several times but nobody answered my calls. Out of frustration, I called the Texaco dealer, told him I needed about 50 gallons of avgas (25 gallons in each tip tank), and he said he'd be right over. A few minutes later, he strolled over and I reconfirmed my order to top the tip tanks with avgas. He headed over to the fuel truck while I ran inside to quick-change out of my casual flying clothes and into my jacket and tie in preparation for my meeting. Three or four minutes later, I was back at the airplane. The fuel truck was parked by the plane and my fuel caps were off but the nozzle was lying on the ground and the fueler was nowhere in sight. I checked the truck's meter and it said 25 gallons, so it looked like maybe he'd filled one tank and then got interrupted. Then I saw the marking on the truck: "AVJET A". I froze! About this time, I saw the fueler walking toward me from the fuel shack, looking badly shaken. He explained that he had fueled the right tank, and then while switching to the other side he realized that he had driven the wrong truck over and was pumping Jet A instead of 100LL. He told me he'd just phoned his boss, who was high-tailing it over to the airport from a doctor's appointment. The boss was very angry, said the fueler, and told him that he would certainly be fired because of this error. Three years ago, I had complied with an airworthiness directive and installed restrictor-type fuel filler ports on all five tanks of my 310...specifically to make it impossible for such a mistake to occur. I checked the nozzle on the Jet A truck...it was a wide/oval nozzle that could not possibly have fit into the filler port. The only way the fueler could have filled the tank was to hold the nozzle outside of the port and let the kerosene run into it. The boss showed up, the airport manager showed up, a bunch of mechanics showed up...this was a big deal at SQL! They all started making phone calls looking for 55 gallon drums, wobble pumps, grounding cables, and other paraphernalia required to defuel 50 gallons of half-and-half. Meantime, everyone had their own theory about how to make sure all the contamination was removed from the fuel system. And contamination there was...we drained a small sample from the crossfeed drain 20 feet away from the misfueled tank and the jet fuel had already made it that far through the fuel lines! Finally, I located an A&P mechanic at an outfit called Trans-Bay Airways who owned his own older-model Cessna 310 and obviously knew the fuel system well. He came over, we discussed the problem and the appropriate purging procedure, and he said he'd take care of it while I was away at my meeting. The plan was first to drain as much of the contaminated fuel from each of the system drains (tank, fuel strainer, crossfeed lines) as possible. Then 10 gallons of fresh 100LL would be pumped into the tank, circulated around the tank and through the fuel lines with the aircraft's transfer and boost pumps, and then drained into a bucket and tested for Jet A contamination. This procedure would be repeated until the drained avgas was completely uncontaminated. The manager of the Texaco dealer would provide all necessary avgas gratis (he was totally freaked out by the mistake of his fueler, and obviously worried that either I would sue him or the airport manager would close him down). Finally, the airplane would be fuelled with 100LL and a full-power runup and high-speed taxi test would be conducted, monitoring for any sign of roughness or EGT anomaly. At this point, I left the airport for my meeting, feeling that the problem was in capable hands. Shortly before 5 pm, I phoned the mechanic at Trans-Bay to verify that the purging and fueling had been completed and the airplane was ready to fly. Turned out that nothing at all had been done! Why? Because the mechanic discussed the siatuation with his boss, and the boss was completely paranoid about incurring any liability by purging the airplane's fuel system. The boss had decided that it would be necessary to remove the boost pump from the rear of the fuel tank and inspect inside to make sure that no jet fuel remained after the purging process. This procedure (assuming I authorized it) could be completed by tomorrow afternoon if all went well. I was most unhappy about this. The idea of removing the boost pump did not set well with me, because I know from experience that it is a very nasty job. I was concerned that it might create new problems (fuel leaks) and that, if the pump were damaged in the process, a replacement was close to $3000. I voiced my concerns but the Trans-Bay boss insisted that he could not go along with any less traumatic procedure. I told him to hold tight for a few minutes and I'd call him back. I then called John Frank in Santa Maria, related my entire tale of woe to him, and asked him whether he felt the Trans-Bay boss was being prudently conservative or absurdly conservative. John felt it was the latter, and that the purge-with-avgas procedure that the mechanic had originally suggested and we had agreed upon was more than adequate. I arranged for John and I to get on a conference call with the boss at Trans-Bay so John could twist the guy's arm a little. The final result was that the boss agreed to allow his mechanic to purge the system "our way" provided I would immediately FAX him a signed release absolving him and his company of all liability for the consequences. Which I did. An hour later, I arrived at SQL to find the mechanic just starting up the engines on my airplane. He had completed the avgas purging...it took three fill-and-drain cycles before the avgas came out clean. We then did the full-power runup and high-speed taxi test together, and everything looked fine. I sumped fuel from every drain point in the airplane and used a paper towel to test each sample for jet fuel contamination...in each case, the sample evaporated completely with no kerosene ring visible on the paper. I had just one surprise left in store. It turns out that the Texaco man was so anxious not to give me cause to sue him that he not only provided the avgas for purging and topped my main tanks after it was done, but he also topped all my aux tanks as well! Which meant I was carrying 1000+ pounds of fuel and was close to gross weight for my departure from SQL's little 2600' runway. Wonderful. To make an already long story short, I finally departed from SQL, using every last inch of the runway. The airplane performed flawlessly. During the flight home, I ran the engines from the mains, auxes, on double crossfeed, fired up the combustion heater, and generally tried to pass fuel through every fuel line and pump in the entire system. SMX (whose W0X0F forecast had influenced me to fuel at SQL in the first place), was CLR 30 upon my arrival at 8:15 pm. Hey, hey, hey...be careful out there! --------------------