fuel contamination?

[bodger]

Ive been using the wife's e36 318is whilst shes in hospital just to save some fuel, today the fuel light came on so went to my local petrol station that i always use and filled half the tank

As soon as i started the car and pulled out of the forecourt i started feeling a judder which lasted a minute or so only when the engine was under load. After that it seemed to disappear so i just put it down to running low on fuel. the car was then parked for half an hour then when started it would only run on 3 cylinders for a few minutes and then back to normal again . it was then parked again for another ten minutes and now it is running on 3 cylinders all the time. all this has happened since putting the fuel in so i can only assume it is a fuel related problem

The car has the latter M44 1.9 engine and was serviced last week using all BMW filters and plugs etc and the car has done 155 thousand faultless miles until now. obviously it is very dark now so haven't been able to even look at it but in the morning what checks should i do thanks in advance for any replies

[E30Gheko]

Was it raining when you filled it up? U might have just got a bit of water in the petrol which will sink to the bottom of the tank. If so I would expect it to sort itself out within another few miles. Just a thought.

[bodger]

no not raining, seems like loss of spark but cant understand why it suddenly happened when it was serviced over a week ago with no probs

[E30Gheko]

Does ur Mrs normally just throw in 5 or 10 quid's worth of fuel?

[bodger]

no always tops up when she gets down to quarter of a tank , just started it this morning at it is running fine hope it stays that way will post again later if it starts misbehaving again

[cass1_5503]

filling up might have nothing to do with it, this happend to me not long back the car drove fine on the way to the petrol station filled up then started running rough, it turned out to be the crank sensor, it might be worth checking