can old diesel be saved?

The M817 I just bought came completely full of fuel (100+ gallons). I have no way of knowing how long the fuel has been there, but I would guess several years.

I know that diesel attracts water. Is there any way of draining/straining/additive that will save it. Given today's fuel prices, that's a small fortune to throw out

Thank you,

Jason
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1972 M817

Water will settle to the bottom. Drain off the bottom maybe a gallon or so from each tank. The rest I would try to use. You could always cut it 50% with fresh diesel. Bought an M54A2C many years ago. Sat at the DIV of Forestry for 10 years. I drove it home on the fuel that was there. Ironically, it sat so long, when I pulled it fwd the first time, it ripped the tread off one tire.

I'm with kenny. Drain about a gallon off the tanks. Then change the fuel filters. Don't forget to put fresh fuel in the filters. Since you got it from a city, does it have red diesel in it? A lot of GOV agencys in Texas use non tax fuel. If so you'll want to burn it before you drive it on the road. The DPS will impound it and charge you $10,000 a gallon for using it on the road. Funny how they don't like missing out on .53 cents a gallon tax.

Thanks. When I get ready to fire her up, I'll drain a little out the bottom and change the filters as suggested. How do I know if it's red diesel? Is it actually red?

If it is off road / farm use desiel it will be died red. Yes it looks red and not the regular tan yellow of on road desiel.
Most citys now use regular desiel and they get the tax back.

The ten ton I posted was parked for 5+ years and fired and run on the diesel in it . Do the filter and drain some route , maybe an additive wouldn't hurt .

A bit of tubing and a long piece of brass tube to siphon out the bottom of the tank is a good idea. You can get up bits of crud as well as water off the bottom of the tank that way and make it far cleaner. Ideally, a pump with a filter attached that pulls fuel from and then dumps back to the tank would be best, but that's not so cheap, for a single odd job a siphon is the way to go. Dump the fuel into a large can, and then drain off the water. Once that's done you can filter it through a terry cloth towel to get the water and crud and then dump the cleaned fuel back in the tank.

rmgill, Thanks for the advice.

Fuel Oil

How well will furnace fuel oil run in the deuce? I have a chance to get a 100 gallons for nothing. Thanks

The only factor is viscosity and I routinely use a mixture of biodiesel and veggie oil, which is much "thicker" at room temperature compared to diesel.
You should be fine running on heating fuel, especially now in the summer time. It should even give you a little boost in power (although the FDC will try to compensate for the more viscous fuel), since it has a higher heating value than regular diesel.

And you can always dillute it with regular diesel.

Heating fuel around here, is the same as summer diesel.... comes out of the same tank.

heating oil

Thanks I am going to pick it up this weekend.

Free Fuel, I love it! Last batch I got was mostly gas though. Kind of makes the deuce surge at idle. Add diesel and it stops. The truck i got sat 8 years. Fired right up on the stuff in the tank. I was surprised there was no water, moss or debris in the tanks or filters.