There’s a trend in the bloodmobile industry to refurbish older busses and continue to keep them on the road with a fresh new look and brand new equipment. Here at PowerTech, we have the opportunity to replace older aging generators on bloodmobiles every day. Some of these generators were built in the 1990s and had close to 100,000 hours of usage on them!

Tier 4 Final Clean diesel generator sets are very particular on the fuel quality. They only want Ultra-Low sulfur diesel fuel, and they are much less accepting of bio-fuels. This is clearly evident in the fuel filtration systems on Tier 4 Final engines. Gone are the old cartridge style screw-on filters you saw on Tier 3 engines. Those have been replaced with redundant small micron fuel water separators with clear sight bulbs.

As Blood Centers replace these old Tier 3 dirty generators with the newest in tier 4 Final clean diesel units, there is one thing that is often overlooked: the bus fuel tank. Diesel fuel tanks on the busses have baffles inside to keep the fuel from sloshing during transit. The interiors of the tanks have experienced years of condensation leading to rust and corrosion build-up. If a retrofitter doesn’t clean out the diesel fuel tank on an older bus, the results will be immediately evident in the fuel filter system on the Tier 4 Final engine. You can see the fuel come in bright stained orange from rust with dense particulate matter suspended in it. Within 50 hours, you will start to see a restriction in fuel flow and a warning from our TG410 Advanced Series Controller.

If you are refurbishing an older blood bus or any specialty vehicle for that matter, take the time to drop and clean the fuel tank. Your generator will thank you, and you’ll increase your run time between filter changes substantially.