Questions and Answers
Water In The Gas
Q. Greetings, we have a 1997 Mercury Villager Van, with 45k miles, 6 cylinder.
We recently got a tank full of bad gas, 14 gallons worth that was 50% water, the gas company has agreed to pay for repairs, so we had it fixed and the tank drained ( my wife drove about 1/4 mile after filling up and it stalled, and was dead ). 2 days later the van sputtered again, and the check engine light came on, The Ford repair shop could find no problems and recommended running HEAT through the system, they did indicate it may be a fuel injector. 5 days later the van starts sputtering again, it is taken into the shop and this time they say the fuel injector #1 is bad and it will now cost me $475.00 to fix. As the shop believes it has just failed and is not related to the prior problems and water gas. We have driven the van about 200 miles since the water gas was put in. My question can the water in the gas cause the injector to fail? As if so I do not want to pay the $475.00 to fix it out of my pocket, as 10 days ago our van had been running perfectly until we got the bad gas.
Thanks for you time, your insight is appreciated.
CraigA. I looked up the price of an injector for that truck, just to see how reasonable the estimate they gave you was. It's pretty close to what it should be. Then for giggles I looked up the price for a Nissan Quest. The two vans use the same engine and transmission, made by Nissan, and the same injector from Nissan is $150.00 less. Hmmmm....
Anyway, it will be very difficult to prove that the injector failed due to the water in the fuel. The fact that the computer picked up on it indicates that it was an electrical malfunction and not a mechanical one. If it was water related, the failure would have been mechanical.
I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but it looks like the injector failure just picked a lousy time to go bad. Maybe they would allow you to get your own injector from Nissan. I'd rather pay $113.00 at a Nissan dealer than $263.00 for the same thing at Ford. All you need to know is if the injector is blue or black.
