Beware of contaminated gas.

[Tommy-the-Greek]

I just wanted everyone to know what just happened to us and hope this never happens to anyone here.

My wife's car engine light came on. It is a 5 month old elantra with less then 2000 miles on it. I took it to the dealer and they said it was just a bad sparkplug. They replaced it and I was on my way in less then 2 hours. About 3 days later the light came back on. I called the dealer and they made me wait over a week for a service appointment. In that time the car became sluggish with no power and it felt like it was going to stall. The dealer hadit all day and couldn't figure out what was wrong and they gave us a loaner. The next day they told me we had contaminated gas in the tank and it wasn't covered under the warranty. It was going to cost 1300 dollars to drop the tank and send it out to be cleaned and replace the fuel line and the injectors etc. They gave me a sample from the tank and I saw the black crude in the gas and in the lines and injectors. I called our auto Ins. company and they said the adjuster will call me and they might cover this minus our deductable. They asked me where did she get the gas. My wife told me from the Shell station that was going out of buisness. The adjuster knew the station's address befor I even had the chance to tell him. It seems that he got a few calls from our area for the same problem from that station. They must have tried to pump out all the gas from there tanks before going out of buisness. The gas at the bottom of the tank is filled with sediment and they just pumped it anyway. So here we get stuck with paying 500 for this. I guess I should be happy it was only the deductible, but I am still pissed off.

The moral to this story is if you see a sign that a gas station is going out of buisness, DO NOT BUY GAS FROM THEM.

Being the shrewd greek that I am. I did use this to get the dealer to buy the car back from us and sell me a Sonnata at his cost and the options at his cost too. I went in to talk to the owner and told him that because his service dept. failed to diagnose the problem the first time and sent an unsafe car back on the road he put my wife and daughter's life in jeopardy. If that car had stalled and they got hit. I told him he would be talking to my lawyer right now instead of me. I also told him if he wasn't going to buy the car back and give me a deal on something else I was going to the newspapers, emailing Hyundia of North America and Hyundia in Korea and my attorney and not necessarily in that order.

Well it worked because he opened the books and showed me how much he payed for the car and what the suggested price was and what he was selling them for. We ended up saving about 3k on her new car.

[Pete]

Boy, that bites. I don't even fill up if I see the truck filling the tanks, which also stirs up a ton of shlitz. There tanks must have had a ton of crud in them. Every stations I've been involved with would always run dry leaving about 2 to 3 inches in the bottom of the tank. A lot of older stations shut down due to the price of tank replacment. Haz Mat waste removal costs are off the wall in the entire country, never mind the north east. It cost just over 1 mil in 1988 for our station in Port Chester NY to have all the tanks replaced, and contaminated soil hualed off . We were doing it to comply with a state mandate, and SUNOCO picked up the tab. You may be able to recoup your 500 in small claims court. Might be worth a phone call.