94708 was towed into the shop today for a died while driving concern that turned into a crank/no start. I pushed the car into my bay and started looking.

I started with the basics. Fuel pressure was within specs. I grabbed the scan tool to pull codes and didn't find any. The live data all seemed to be ok. I had spark, but it seemed to be weak. So I pulled a spark plug and found it wet. This is feasible - a weak spark may not make the plugs fire which would leave them wet. The curious thing was that the wetness didn't really smell like pure gasoline. So I took a fuel sample and found the source of my troubles.

The fuel that came out of the fuel rail was pink in color, which is definitely not right. Regular gasoline is yellow. But off-road diesel fuel is dyed red. But what is actually in the tank doesn't really matter at this point. The fuel tank has to come down and be completely drained.

I removed the fuel tank and started draining. The first bucket, (on the left in the photo above), came out very red at first before gradually changing over to yellow. The second bucket came out mostly yellow.

The difference between the two buckets is quite clear.

The first bucket contains both red and yellow, (the dividing line between the two can be seen in the photo above). Diesel fuel is heavier that gasoline and will sink to the bottom of the container.

There is a small amount of red in the second bucket. But most of its contents is yellow gasoline.

Shop Foreman Phil poured the gasoline off the top of bucket number 1 into bucket number 2.

The red color is much deeper with the gasoline removed.

Looking closely at the red bucket, the dividing line between the gasoline and what we suspect is red diesel fuel can clearly be seen in the photo above.

It looks like a substantial amount of red diesel fuel was added to the car's gasoline fuel tank. This would result in significant driveability concerns with the car, including seeing a lot of smoke and/or a crank/no start concern.

Once all of the old fuel was drained, I reinstalled the fuel tank and added 5 gallons of fresh gas. But before I could start the car, I needed to clear any remaining contaminated fuel from the fuel lines and rail. Using the fuel pressure test port on the fuel rail, I cycled the key several times and collected the fuel into an empty jug. It took a while, but I finally got all of the contaminated fuel out of the system.

With everything reassembled, I managed to get the car started. After some initial hiccups, it ran normally.