Strange intermittent engine cut

[Wheelz]

I took a trip out in the Stag to Epsom to join the local SOC group, then we drove to Dorking for a chat and coffee. On leaving Dorking, my engine started cutting out intermittently, but still kept going. I managed to safely exit the fast road and crawl into Leatherhead, then pulled up to investigate, engine idling. Now the fault seemed to disappear, and didn't recur for the remainder of the journey.

This felt like a typical coil problem, but later I learnt that local fuel stations had problems with water in their fuel. Since I did refill there I suspect that could have been causing the cutting. Anyone else had this?

[Wheelz]

I took it out for a drive today and no sign of a problem so I think it was bad fuel.

[FrenchStag]

Happened to me 30 years ago in my Vauxhall Cavalier, engine cutting out and starting again after a short stop. The garage spun the engine over and filled a glass jar from the fuel pipe, you could very clearly see the petrol & water layers separating out. But I think they had to drain the entire tank to sort it.

[Rigid]

Bumping an old thread.
Suffering from a very similar issue, car feels like it goes into limp mode for a few seconds. This also coincided with filling up from a ‘new’ garage.
1st tank full and it went away once burnt off the top 1/4 tank. Just refilled again at the same place and it’s started doing it again.
If it cures itself again I’m calling it as a bad place to fill up.

I assume petrol floats on water as the phenomenon only appears in the first few minutes of a journey so any water gets sucked into the pump early doors. No debris in the filters which would match.

[Rigid]

Thinking about this further it might not be the garage at fault as we fill our modern at the same place without any obvious issues.
It is the only time I put E10 in but surely the engine isn’t that sensitive?