Gas and water do have complete separation. Is your plane in a hanger? Someone may have put something in there if yours lives outside. Cloudy is not normal.

You didn't happen to fill up just before taking Your sample did You?

KEN G Wrote:
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> If it's cloudy it isn't water. Would a small
> amount of Jet A turn cloudy and settle to the
> bottom?

Water that gets around your fuel cap when it rains will usually be clear. But there's no guarantee that water infiltrating an FBO's system obeys that rule. I sumped some nice rusty water from one wing after a fill-up in the Bahamas. One can't use cloudy vs. clear to diagnose water vs. something else.

Jet A doesn't settle out - quite the opposite. If you prepared a container carefully with layers of avgas and Jet A, after a while you'd find the two liquids had diffused into each other and were completely mixed. The two liquids are solvents for each other. Gas doesn't make Jet A cloudy, either.

Eric: Most likely water, but then you examined it, we didn't. Water will separate out with a distinct boundary, but when you have a lot of it your first sample won't have that boundary (it's all contaminant). So it's important to verify that your fuel samples actually are fuel. More than one pilot has taken a nice, clear fuel sample and gone flying only to abruptly discover it actually had been a nice, clear water sample. Your contaminant was polite enough to call attention to itself through its appearance. Keep a sharp eye on samples from that wing for a while. I kept finding drops of rusty water for the next half-dozen flights after the Bahamas.

You have three choices for source of the contaminant: the FBO's fuel truck, someone malicious, or leaking seals on your gas cap or around that small plate which holds the fuel filler onto the Toga's wing. If the plane had been left out in the rain recently or washed suspect leaking seals. Easy enough to test by hosing down the wing and, later, sampling the fuel.

Regards,
Joe

To answer some of the questions:

- Plane is usually, but no always in its own secure hanger.
- Had been several days since last fuel added.
- I did not check for odor. This sounds like a good idea in general.
- It was blue, but cloudy. I always use the white fuselage as a background. But I cannot say for certain it was proper blue level.

I visually checked the seal on the right tank, but hosing with water & checking later sounds like a good idea.

Eric Johnson
2005 Saratoga II TC
KCRQ
N392HP

JoeB Wrote:
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>
>
>
> Water that gets around your fuel cap when it rains
> will usually be clear. But there's no guarantee
> that water infiltrating an FBO's system obeys that
> rule. I sumped some nice rusty water from one
> wing after a fill-up in the Bahamas. One can't
> use cloudy vs. clear to diagnose water vs.
> something else.
>
Granted, water isn't necessarily clear. But I don't see how water could be dispersed into the fuel to make a cloudy mixture. If it had been all cloudy water in the vial it wouldn't have been blue.

Pour a sample of the fuel onto a plain white piece of paper, if there is any Jet A, it will leave a stain on the paper when it evaporates, if its pure 100LL it will not


Jeff