She called me because she couldn’t get her car started after work. We had to get it towed out of the underground parking which is quite a pain in the ass apparently.

I spent a couple hours troubleshooting the issue (smoky exhaust, barely started, ran like shit) and I burned out the starter in the process and had to put a new one in. Starters in these little 3.7L engines are pretty pathetic.

At some point in all this she mentioned she had filled up before driving to work, so I figured out how to jumper the fuel pump and pumped out this piss-colored junk. Feels oily like diesel, doesn’t burn explosively like you’d expect with straight gas.

Fresh fuel and some Seafoam snake oil to maybe clean injectors. Since I didn’t drop the tank to clean it perfectly, she’s going to put small amounts in for a few fills and burn it off completely between fills because the solution to pollution is dilution.

Her receipt showed she uses the gas pump, not the diesel, so I’m wondering how many people got to deal with this bullshit since I’m guessing the station got an entire compartment contaminated. Haven’t bothered to talk to the company, since I did the work myself and they certainly aren’t going to reimburse me for my time.

Ah well, it’s an excuse to do a pile of other maintenance I’d planned anyway and had parts for.

Wife is happy she isn’t buying a new car. Happy wife, happy life.

  • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    As if pranks from other sources are merited any higher? No one got hurt and while I can’t say I particularly recommend trying this, the partner’s reaction might be a major red flag as to how they’re going to react sometime else with a real, more serious issue.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      See, I like pranks where the “victim” laughs too.

      Give you an example, Apollo astronaut Wally Schirra was a bit of a practical jokester, he once delivered a urine sample to his flight nurse in a 1 gallon jar.

      Going in for knee surgery, writing “This knee” on the correct knee and “Not this knee” on the other knee and both elbows, that’s a prank."