Last week, in the span of a couple days, three Yokayo trucks all had performance problems. Our 2002 Ford F450 flatbed was having intermittent power problems and was dying at times, our 1996 Freightliner FL 70 biodiesel delivery rig was having similar issues, and Cesar's 1983 Toyota pickup was acting very strange and getting horrible fuel economy. In light of this, it seemed quite apparent that there must be a problem with our fuel.

Sunny and I were racking our brains on what could be up- no complaints from customers, and all the test results were showing that our fuel was better than ever. We had used the fuel in our own car and my parents' Jetta, with no problems (I even drove both cars like race cars a little bit just to test the power). Also, the fuel sampled from the pump where all these trucks fill up was perfect. But there would have to be something wrong, very wrong, to cause all this...

Amazingly enough, it was just a bunch of coincidences designed by some galactic Puck who wanted to have some fun with us:

• The flatbed had a leaking fuel filter gasket, and was sucking air. No big deal.
• The FL 70 had a problem with a solenoid. I don't know the details, but apparently Art was able to fix a mechanical part with JB Weld.
• The Toyota had a rag in the air filter.

So it goes. As an addendum to this whole thing, when I got to work today, Cesar showed me a sample of fuel taken from our evaporator tank, which is the final processing step before polish filtering and storage prior to fuel delivery. The sample had a tiny amount of what looked exactly like glycerin at the bottom. This seemed absolutely impossible, after our wash process and the fact that we have never, ever, failed an ASTM test on free glycerin. I was getting that feeling again in the pit of my stomach. Then we found the culprit- some rubber gaskets in our supposedly-biodiesel-proof evaporator were melting, and coincidentally, that black rubber becomes a brown liquid the exact color of glycerin. It never got into our fuel supply, as the production guys were draining it off while scratching their heads. I ordered some viton to make new gaskets. Another problem (and weird coincidence) solved.