Who’s to blame for bad gas in West Palm police cars?
WEST PALM BEACH — The number of new West Palm Beach police cars sidelined with engine trouble is up to 15, with as many as 20 more also needing replacements — potentially putting more than half the fleet out of action, though not all at the same time.
Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County Police Department has 60 cars with similar problems, The Palm Beach Post has learned.
Both departments found diesel fuel in supply tanks that were supposed to have unleaded fuel in them. Both get their fuel through PortMiami, through two separate suppliers owned by competing brothers.
The problems cropped up for both departments in the past couple of weeks.
After two West Palm cruisers broke down and had to be towed, inspections of the entire 60-car fleet found problems in the others.
The West Palm engines are high-performance ones, made for police cars, and the cars are
all 2 years old or newer. The issue, still being diagnosed, has to do with oil levels and corrosion in the Ford Taurus Cruisers and Explorer SUVs, City Administrator Jeff Green said. Mechanics found oil was getting sucked into the engine air intake.
The problem was subtle enough that “check engine” lights didn’t come on and officers couldn’t detect a change in performance at first. In some cases, even dealership mechanics didn’t spot problems, but police mechanics who’ve been dealing with the issue did.
Sabotage was ruled out as a likely cause because the take-home cars had been at separate locations and serviced at separate times, some no more recently than three months ago.
Bad fuel was suspected because it could cause carbon to build up near the pistons, causing the cylinders to stick open and oil to blow into the engines, ruining them, Green said. The city was still checking the additional 10 engines to see if it would be possible to fix them without having to replace them, he said. But by Wednesday afternoon, staff had decided that since the cars were so new, they should have new engines, Green said.
Green said five of the West Palm engines have already been replaced, at a cost of $6,000 each, and 10 more will be replaced by next week, completing work on the initial 15 vehicles. If the other 20 need changing, that could take two or three more weeks, he said.
Meanwhile, cars that were take-home vehicles are being kept in use, sometimes for three shifts in a row, to have sufficient cruisers for patrols.
Miami-Dade Police Department vehicles have had engine trouble over the past month, said Jose Galan, assistant director for that county’s internal services department.
“The police vehicles affected have experienced engine problems, with the most common being running rough or engine blow-by on one or more cylinders,” he said.
Blow-by is when fuel leaks between a piston and cylinder wall into the crankcase.
“Miami Dade County Internal Services Department (MDC ISD) suspected the engine problems may have been from bad fuel. MDC ISD immediately shut down the two sites where vehicles were having issues until laboratory testing of the fuel could be conducted,” Galan said in an email.
“The subsequent testing resulted in the discovery of significant levels of diesel fuel within the unleaded fuel tanks at the two locations. MDC ISD has conducted testing on all unleaded fuel site tanks and found no other evidence of contaminated unleaded gasoline.”
John Mansfield, CEO of Indigo Energy of Gainesville, Ga., Miami-Dade’s supplier, said after being alerted by Miami-Dade, his company tested two fuel storage tanks the police use and, as the department did, the company found the gas tanks had diesel in them. “We pumped it out, and things are back to normal,” he said Wednesday, adding that the company paid to dispose of the fuel.
“No one’s been able to determine how the diesel got into the gas,” he said.
West Palm gets its fuel through Mansfield Oil, also of Gainesville, Ga. It could not be reached for comment, but John Mansfield said the two companies are owned by competing brothers and “have no connection to each other at all.” He didn’t even know Mansfield was selling to West Palm Beach, he said.
What they likely have in common is getting their fuel from major oil company storage tanks at the port, as all suppliers do, he said.
Asked about Indigo’s potential liability for the damage, the CEO acknowledged that as likely. “We didn’t touch any of the fuel, but we’re the supplier, so unfortunately I’m sure we will be liable for it,” he said.
A handful of Palm Beach County law enforcement agencies contacted, including Boynton Beach, Delray Beach and the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office, said they had not had car issues.
But Green said West Palm’s problem is “identical” to Miami-Dade’s, and the city checked its fuel and got the same result: diesel contamination. The blame clearly lies in the supply chain, he said.
Who pays for West Palm’s blown engines? “That’s a good question,” Green said.
For now, he said, “I don’t have an answer to that. We are working with Ford; Ford is helping us. They’re going to tear the engines apart and document what they find and put it into a report.”