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Diesel fuel dyed red?

JEDI

JEDI

Lifer
red diesel isnt street legal. it's meant for farm equipment, and other off road vehicles.

any damage to a car/truck's engine if it uses red diesel?

and Is that high sulpher or low sulpher?
 
Originally posted by: JEDI
red diesel isnt street legal. it's meant for farm equipment, and other off road vehicles.

any damage to a car/truck's engine if it uses red diesel?

and Is that high sulpher or low sulpher?
Click to expand...

yes
no
high

I've heard of people getting busted with it in their car and paying stiff fines.

I've driven diesels for years & no one has ever asked to see the color of the fuel in my tank...

I filled up with farm diesel once accidentally...
 
Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
Originally posted by: JEDI
red diesel isnt street legal. it's meant for farm equipment, and other off road vehicles.

any damage to a car/truck's engine if it uses red diesel?

and Is that high sulpher or low sulpher?
Click to expand...

yes
no
high

I've heard of people getting busted with it in their car and paying stiff fines.

I've driven diesels for years & no one has ever asked to see the color of the fuel in my tank...

I filled up with farm diesel once accidentally...
Click to expand...

The dye leaves stains, it can been seen.

 
I pump it into my pickup occasionally, when I have some leftover fuel for the dozer. Much cheaper to do it that way.

Around here no one cares at all, my closest neighbor is a state trooper and he does it himself.
 
Originally posted by: Yzzim
Never heard of this before.

Why is red diesel illegal?

edit: only because of the sulfur content?
Click to expand...

You don't pay any taxes on the fuel, therefore it is for "off-road" use only. You can use it in bulldozers and whatnot, but you aren't supposed to use it in your personal vehicles. It is died red so you can visually distinguish it from regular diesel.

Edit - glenn beat me to it.
 
Originally posted by: adairusmc
Originally posted by: Yzzim
Never heard of this before.

Why is red diesel illegal?

edit: only because of the sulfur content?
Click to expand...

You don't pay any taxes on the fuel, therefore it is for "off-road" use only. You can use it in bulldozers and whatnot, but you aren't supposed to use it in your personal vehicles. It is died red so you can visually distinguish it from regular diesel.
Click to expand...

wow, never knew that. Thanks.
 
We had an F-800, I think, dump truck that was practically brand new, and the customer kept coming in and telling us it smoked really bad in the mornings when started. And it did, too....it would kill every mosquito in a square mile. The truck team lead tech started it one morning and we lost sight of the parking lot.
I kept asking him if he used off-road diesel, and he always said no.
Finally the techs (after I asked them many times) pulled a fuel sample, and guess what...it was red. Don't know why it caused that problem in that particular truck.
 
The fine is 10 grand in our state, and traces of the dye will remain practically forever.
The state has test kits that detect it in just a few parts per million.
 
Originally posted by: JEDI

and Is that high sulpher or low sulpher?
Click to expand...

Technically it is "low sulfur", which is classified as 500 ppm sulfur.

Off-road diesel was transitioned to the 500 ppm "low sulfur" standard before 2007. This replaced true "high sulfur" diesel that had much higher concentrations of sulfur. Off-road diesel will transition once again to ultra-low 15ppm by 2010. Highway diesel transitioned to "low sulfur" back in the mid-90's if I remember right.

Current (2007 and later) diesel fuel for highway use is "ultra low sulfur" 15ppm. It is very dry and lacks lubricative properties of earlier formulations and it is recommended to use lubricity-enhancing fuel additives in engines made before 2007.
 
A red dye is added to diesel fuel (gas oil) for non-road use, to show that tax has not been paid. A similar dye is added to heating oil, as essentially the two fuels are the same, and are interchangeable.

There may be differences in fuel formulation - e.g. road diesel may be mandated to be ultra-low sulphur, whereas the same requirement may not exist for off-road gas oil. Depending on the emission control system, this may cause problems, as catalytic particulate filters may be damaged by sulphur. By and large, however, sulphur plays an important role as a lubricant in a diesel engine, and the transition to ULSD fuel has been very difficult for car manufacturers (e.g. BMW and MB engines from the early 2000s would be rapidly destroyed by the use of ULSD fuel).

The fuel dye has been designed to be easily detectable. It is visibibly detectable even at dilutions of 1:50 or 1:100. Use of optical analytical equipment can detect dilutions of 1:5000.

In some areas, the dye may also be isotopically labelled with Carbon-13 (this isotope is very rare in natural oil) and this allows detection of the dye down to dilutions of 1:100000 using a gas-chromatograph-mass-spectrometer. Additionally, the isotope label is not destroyed by 'laundering' techniques that chemically destroy the dye, or bleach it with UV light.

While the dye does not damage or stain components of the engine, it's ability to be detected in trace amounts mean that, in suspected cases, forensic examination of engine parts (e.g. fuel filter or fuel pump) to extract samples of fuel may be worthwhile, even if tainted fuel is not detected in the main tank.
 
Here in the UK people have been known to filter the red Diesel through those granules you put on the garage floor to soak up oil spills. That removes most of the red dye. 😉 Chemicals can be used, but can damages delicate fuel pumps.

However, the penalties for using red are very severe.
 
Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
Originally posted by: JEDI
red diesel isnt street legal. it's meant for farm equipment, and other off road vehicles.

any damage to a car/truck's engine if it uses red diesel?

and Is that high sulpher or low sulpher?
Click to expand...

yes
no
high

I've heard of people getting busted with it in their car and paying stiff fines.

I've driven diesels for years & no one has ever asked to see the color of the fuel in my tank...

I filled up with farm diesel once accidentally...
Click to expand...

During my years of driving trucks twice during inspections they checked the fuel, once in CA and once in KS. So they do check, but not very often.
 
I'm a bus mechanic for U of I. The diesel that the University uses in all of its vehicles is red. I suppose since it's government, it doesn't matter though.
 
Originally posted by: angry hampster
I'm a bus mechanic for U of I. The diesel that the University uses in all of its vehicles is red. I suppose since it's government, it doesn't matter though.
Click to expand...
lol, thats fairly whack.
 
Originally posted by: compman25
During my years of driving trucks twice during inspections they checked the fuel, once in CA and once in KS. So they do check, but not very often.
Click to expand...

Semis or just diesel pickups?

I'm thinking that they would be more likely to check semi tanks than random diesel pickup tanks.

ZV
 
Originally posted by: DivideBYZero
In Ireland they dye it green.
Click to expand...
Indeed. So if you then go to Northern Ireland, where it's dyed red - you can mix them, and they kind of cancel out to give a light yellow which is difficult to distinguish from the normal diesel appearance.

Not that I'm advocating this, of course.
 
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