Diesel Fuel In A Car -Ooops!

[crokett]

The news had a story about a supplier at a gas station that put diesel in the wrong underground tank. A couple customers put it in their cars before they figured it out. I am thinking as long as they catch it right away, you could siphon or drain the tank and fill it with gas. Worst that would happen is the car smokes a bit while the diesel burns off, no?

[radhak]

Couple of years ago, the brother of a friend, fresh off the boat, filled her tank with diesel because he did not pay much attention.

She ended up paying $5000 to flush it out completely.

[docrowan]

I know older cars could shrug it off okay. I'm not sure about the newer cars with all their sensors.

I was told this first hand from a buddy. Back in the 70's my buddy worked for a service manager who drove out with him on a construction job - a new causeway in South Louisiana. Half way back on the causeway the field truck ran out of gas. It was several miles to the end of the causeway, and further to the closest gas station. The service manager found a 5 gallon can of diesel in the back of the service truck and poured it in the gas tank. Mixing with the small amount of gas left in the tank and cranking the fool out of it, he got the truck engine running. It was spitting, snorting, jumping, and smoking like a coal fire, but it was running. They were able to make it back to a gas station, where they filled up the tank. Never drained the tank, just mixed the gas with the remaining diesel and never had a problem. Pretty sure you couldn't do that these days.

[docrowan]

Radhak,

Sounds to me like your friend got taken for a ride. $5,000 would have bought a whole new engine. Even if it had destroyed all the sensors and injectors, I can't imagine it costing $5,000 to fix.

[LinuxRandal]

Not the only one he has done, but to give you an idea:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Davidsfa.../6/vgTlZIId4cI

[JimD]

One of my co-workers stopped by to tell me of his daughter's mistake a month or more ago. He bought her a used Prius when she got her drivers license. He had to have it towed to the dealer because it wouldn't run. The call from the dealer was to inform him that the gas tank was full of kerosene. I think he said they quoted $800 to fix it which didn't seem too bad. The worst part was his wife was in the car while his daughter filled it with kerosene. And this was his level headed daughter.

Jim

[cabinetman]

I would think the severity would depend on the ratio of diesel to gasoline. It would likely not run well, or not at all.
.

[unknown poster]

Around here the diesel and kerosene nozzles are wider than the gasoline nozzles. You physicaly can not put diesel into a gas powered car. That will stop the average fool from messing up, but won't stop a color blind truck driver from putting diesel in the gas tank.

I do know a guy who filled an F350 with gas. He caught it before he cranked it and got towed to a mechanic who drained the tank.

[phi1l]

The biggest difference between gas & diesel is that gas is designed for a compression ratio of about 8:1 to 9:1 .. Diesel is for more like 15:1

Also, diesel is more dense that diesel is too rich for an engine tuned for gas.

So running a gas engine on diesel for any period of time will really carbon up a gas engine. If you can get it to run due to the octane rating difference.

Back in the early 70 cars still could have the "high octane" engines that had a compression ratio closer to 10:1, those would do better on diesel than modern engines. But the EPA nixed all that to reduce the NOx emission from compression engines.


When the EPA made cars go to no-lead gas they required that no lead gas nozzles be smaller than leaded gas nozzles & cars designed for no-lead gas have a smaller insert in the gas filler pipe the prevent the larger leaded gas nozzles from being inserted. I think diesel nozzles are also larger, so I am surprised that someone could actually get diesel in a modern gas car ... unless the filling station had the wrong nozzle on the diesel pump.

[crokett]

The problem was the truck driver putting the diesel in the wrong storage tanks so when customers pumped gas they were actually pumping diesel.

[JSUPreston]

I did some growing up at a Children's Home in Talladega, AL. I remember in the summer of either '93 or '94 when I was home from college and working on the maintenance crew having to push a '90 Mazda Protege onto a trailer and hauling it to the local mechanic to have the tank drained, etc., because a house parent put diesel into the car. In the house parent's defense, we used a fleet pump at a local gas station, and I think everything used one nozzle, you just selected octane level or fuel type through a push button on the front.

The Home gave me that car in '96 before I left. Now I wonder if that is why the car always idled so roughly while in gear at a stop light. Put it in neutral and it was fine, but when in drive, you got a massage everytime you stopped.

[dbhost]

That is a HUGE whoops. Just like the nozzles on the pumps, and the necks on the cars. The truck hoses and in ground tanks are labelled. You would have to REALLY be not paying any attention to do that...

IF you caught it before turning the key, you should be able to have the car towed, pushed into the shop, the tank dropped, the fuel emptied, the tank cleaned, and then everything hooked back up and filled back up and drive on your merry way. A little tiny bit of diesel in a gas tank won't do much to a carburettor equipped car beyond smoke, but with modern fuel injection systems, sensors etc... That diesel is bad news...

[phi1l]

Ahh .. that's right..

[RAFlorida]

Not to hijack David's thread;

But never use ether as a quick start in Diesel engines either. My old boss, very bright indivual who owned his own company and employeed sometime upto 10 electricians found out that ether is a no-no. The repair bill was over 2 thousand dollars.

[Mowgli]

Back in the early 80s I had a '69 Ford van ****buggy.
I was a punk and used to syphon with my friends.
I had a 5 gallon can from WWII and a length of garden hose at all times.
We got some in a rich town out of a Mercedes and dumped it in.
We got it started but it didn't go far.

I had to call my dad to come help.
He fixed it by draining what he could and adding 5 gals of fresh fuel.
We filled it when we got to town.
He wasn't too impressed with me that night but explained all about diesel to me.

Him towing my Nova out of the woods during a sleet storm on Thanksgiving night when I found a well hiding in a puddle was another of my greatest hits.
I went through 3 transmissions in that thing.
One was shifting from drive into reverse on a highspeed timbertorch run down I90.
OOPS I missed Low2.

Mom's Skylark got dragged out of the reservoir.
Melted the alum block in my Vega. Left it there 100 miles from home.
No mechanical knowledge + drugs/booze + teen angst + cars = pissed-off dad
Good thing I evolved

before


after


Back to the original topic - it must really suck to have to pump out ##### gallons because some stoned delivery driver dumped D into your F tank.
How much would something like that cost?