Hope I can get some sound advice. Screwed up a bit and put 33 litre (8 gallons) of gas in the diesel engine. Didn't know what to do so filled the rest of the tank with diesel - about 87 litres (22 gallons) and drove it home (about a mile).
Should I have it towed to a garage or is the ratio of gas/diesel ok?
DONT START IT again!!! Gas will quickly destroy your CP3 pump and injectors - older diesels could take it a little bit but these cant.
Tow it to the shop and have the tank drained and refill with fresh diesel. You'll be money ahead.
BTW, you may not have ingested any of the gas yet - the filter housing has enough fuel to get that far.
Best of luck, I hope all goes well,
Scotty
Scott, Grace and Wesly
2003 Dodge 3500 4x4, 6 speed Cummins (lightly bombed),
2004 Forest River 25RKS many, many mods.
H0NDA eu2000i
There is enough diesel in your fuel filter to carry you a mile. Beyond that, you are in serious trouble. It will be necessary to drain the fuel tank, replace the fuel filter, and flush all the lines with fresh diesel. The contaminated diesel will have to be disposed of by sending back to the refinery, as the mixture will likely damage any engine into which it is put.
This is going to cost you some money, several hundred dollars is my guess, between the drain/filter/flush/disposal fees, not to mention the fresh diesel. If you ever make that mistake again, do not even attempt to start the engine. Have it towed. If you don't start the engine, you only have to drain the tank and refill; this is much cheaper. Certainly a LOT cheaper than having to replace your injection pump, all injectors, and all fuel lines, filter, and housing, along with the tank. In essence the entire engine fueling system, which is what has to be done if the injection pump dies -- all the microscopic metal shavings have to be removed lest they destroy any new parts introduced to the system, and they are impossible to vacuum/flush out.
I did pretty much the same thing in NOrthern Canada on our trip to Alaska and was scared to death. I walked a couple of blocks and talked with a diesel mechanic who said to put double the recommended amount of fuel additive to replace the lubricating properties of the diesel fuel and forget about it. He said that chances are you won't notice any difference at all but if you do it will be a little white smoke out the tail pipe. This was a 2004 Ford PSD.
I did as he said and the engine ran perfectly and there was never any repercussions from my little screw up. I was used to a green pump being diesel and that's just not necessarily so in Canada lol.
In my case I had put 10 gallons in a 40 gallon tank. I DID stop every chance I got and added more diesel fuel to dilute the gasoline more and more but it turned out to be no big deal. The additive I used was "diesel klean"
* This post was
edited 07/18/12 09:03pm by skipnchar *
2011 F-150 HD Ecoboost 3.5 V6. 2550 payload, 17,100 GCVWR - 2004 F-150 HD (Traded after 80,000 towing miles) 2007 Rockwood 8314SS 34' travel trailer
US Govt survey shows three out of four people make up 75% of the total population
25% unleaded fuel in your diesel tank, you really should have towed it home. I really don't think it damaged the truck already.
For reference, back in the 80's when I had my diesel truck, they stated in the book that I was reading about diesel trucks, if you could not buy winterized diesel, that mixing in a 1/2 gallon with 20 gallons of regular diesel will make it thin enough to consider it winterized. But that is only 1 gallon in 40. 2.5%, not 25%.
When they ship unleaded fuel, then diesel through a pipeline, they ship one fuel about 4 days, then change over to the other for a few days, and also jet fuel, and sometimes home heating oil. IT is easy to put the unleaded and diesel mix into the home heating oil storage tank, the home heaters don't really care about the percentage of gas to diesel, it will still burn about the same, yet diesel has a higher heating value of 135,000 Btu's per gallon while unleaded gas is only around 115,000. So home heating fuel with a higher BTU rating will burn a little faster and give less energy, but still close.
So I would call someone who can get rid of the fuel in your truck. But don't let them panic you.
I'm not a gambler so the truck will be towed to our mechanic in the morning. We are leaving for a three week trip into the US with the truck and camper in a couple of weeks and I wouldn't want to risk damaging the truck before we go.
Mulvey wrote: Thanks for sharing all of your knowledge!
I'm not a gambler so the truck will be towed to our mechanic in the morning. We are leaving for a three week trip into the US with the truck and camper in a couple of weeks and I wouldn't want to risk damaging the truck before we go.
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