Can you advise?
Made a big mistake by putting 2 Litres of Unleaded Petrol in a Pug 405 Diesel.(non-turbo)
Having realised, I then immediately filled the car up with 44 Litres of the right Diesel.
Would this small mix cause serious damage to the car?
Many Thanks for your advice.
Matts.
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My guess is that <5% is not important. Might even rinse out the injectors on the way through!
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No damage at all.
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Agree with previous posts.
Nothing to worry about in this ratio.
As an aside, I was recently amazed to learn that the Lufwaffe mixed petrol with the lubricating oil of their aircraft in cold conditions!
Lubrication technology has come on a long way since then, but I found this article interesting: www.jiop.fi/ksimuseo/faq_kaltstart.html
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Up until fairly recently (and maybe still ongoing), a bit of petrol was added to the diesel tanks of lorries travelling overland through Europe to Asia to lower the freezing point of the fuel.
2 litres in 44 should not cause you any problems at all. Thank goodness you realised your mistake so quickly.
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I think that the technique of thinning sump oil with petrol is still used by Alaska bush pilots. It is just to enable the starter to turn the engine at -40C when the oil is like treacle and the engine can hardly even be turned by hand. Presumably when the engine warms up the petrol 'boils off' and everything is back to normal, until the next cold night.
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I stupidly put over 15 litres of petrol in a cavalier d, then topped it up with diesel so there was 12 litres petrol 48 litres diesel - ran fine, no lasting damage was done.
with modern high pressure diesels you will probably be less lucky.
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I agree - no problem whatsoever with the 405 but probably not advisable with the latest diesel engines.
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I heard the same from a soldier who served on the Eastern front with the Luftwaffe.
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A 5% petrol to diesel mix was all that was needed to stop diesel from freezing in a trucks fuel tanks, all though strictly illegal, parrafin did the same job as well. Although diesel doesn't strictly freeze in a trucks tanks, unless you happen to be in Siberia that is. What happens is that wax crystals form in the fuel, thus blocking fuel lines and filters. Every modern truck manufacturer offers as an option, fuel line and fuel tank trace heaters to avoid this problem although the diesel you buy vitually anywhere in western europe is capable of being used without additives down to -15c anyway.
Pastyman
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When I took delivery of a new company car (golf 1.6d) in 1986 the garage recommended putting 'a few litres' of petrol in the tank every time you filled up, but especially in winter. My mate owns the car now and it's done 300,000 miles!!
No worries.
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Some of those folks running diesels on vegetable oil regulary use unleaded petrol as a thining agent to lower the viscosity of the veg oil. Although, I haven't done this myself, a mate has, with no problems for a good few years. (I just heat my veg oil).
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Some of those folks running diesels on vegetable oil regulary use unleaded petrol as a thining agent to lower the viscosity of the veg oil. Although, I haven't done this myself, a mate has, with no problems for a good few years. (I just heat my veg oil).
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I wonder why they used petrol, diesel would have done the same job; diesel mixes lovely with veggy oil and doesn't seperate.
I once put 11 litres of petrol in an old diesel. I got into a flap and had the tank drained, seems I wasted my money. I'm glad this subject came up, I'll know better next time.
What harm could it do to a new diesel?
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In most diesels a common trick is to use half a tank of petrol and half diesel to get through the MOT, I wouldn't worry about an insignificant amount like yours.
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The mix is between 5-15% unleaded to the oil. It's to aid combustion and starting when cold - and to lower the viscosity. Apparently unleaded actually gives better cold starting than a similar quantity of diesel. The centane value of unmixed oil is also pretty low, being <40. Unleaded boosts this closer to the minimum recommended cetane value for diesel fuel, which is 51. The theory goes that, for the same %, the unleaded boosts the cetane value slightly more than the diesel.
Incidentally, the owners manual of my friend's car (1980 M-B 300D) recommends the addition of up to 20% petrol, in cold weather. So with M-B recommended the use of petrol as an additive and its better qualities as an additive to veg oil, gets you to the dubious mix of 5- 15% unleaded to straight veg oil!
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I wonder why they used petrol, diesel would have done the same job; diesel mixes lovely with veggy oil and doesn't seperate.
Petrol intereferes with the weak Van der Wahl links, but diesel doesen't.
My tests showed that white spirit is even better, and can be bought from Makro for £2 for 4 litres, it's also doen't have the safety risk of petrol vapours.
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Hi Sooty. There's been quite a lot of discussion in the newsgroups over the addition of white spirit as a thinning agent. Much discussion has been about the quality & purity of the stuff. I understand that low quality white spirit is sold as "Turpentine Substitute". So if you chop and change suppliers of white spirit I guess you?re in for variable results. Definitely the case if you?re using used veg oil, with its variable amount of contaminants such as water & animal fats.
From my own experience, with a PUG 309 GLD, white spirit did indeed give variable results ? even with new oil! On a cold day the engine was decidedly unhappy, with lots of white smoke and engine 'hunting' until warm.
My best results so far are with around 5-10% diesel / oil mix with heating the mix to around 85C. I also now add around 1% 2-ethyl hexyl nitrate (a recognised cetane improver). Definitely better than conventional Optimax dino-diesel, or whatever the 'latest super-fuel' the marketing men have convinced the public they should be buying.
My fuel works out at around 30p / litre (using waste oil), gives better mpg and quieter operation than conventional fuel, and of course I'm way more environmentally friendly! Plus far less queuing at a petrol station.
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Hi there,
I did something very similar to this about 4 weeks ago. Hopefully my experiences will prove useful to someone?
I'd owned my 1996 Renault Laguna 2.2 diesel for around one year - then for some strange reason, picked up the wrong nozzle!? I wonder if it was because I was at a petrol station other than the one I usually use - I really don't know what happened - anyway, I put in 3.5 litres before realising my stupidity.
My tank was about 4/5 empty, so I immediatly changed over and continued filling with diesel, before driving home.
Straight away, I logged onto the internet and did a search - and there were so many conflicting recommendations. Hardly any of these were backed up with any experiences or hard facts.
So, since then, I have done about 2500 miles. I used pretty much the full tank of diesel before topping it up each time. I guess there are two schools of thought on whether you should continually top up, or use most of the fuel before topping up. I chose the second as by the time you put your second tank of clean diesel on top of the contaminated, you have diluted it to virtually nothing.
The first couple of tanks I nursed the car. Didn't go over about 1/4 throttle, didn't go over 65-70mph - just took it quietly, trying not to let things get too hot. There was nothing noticable in the way the car was running, still started and performed like it normally did.
2500 miles on and it's still fine! Hopefully I haven't done any damage, but then the cars only worth £1000 - I thought it was worth the risk.
As an indication, my tank is about 65 litres, so:
Tank 1: 3.5/65= 5.4%, Tank 2: ~1%, Tank 3: <0.1%
Hope this helps anyone in a similar situation!
Danny Blair
1996 Renault RT-D 2.2 (non turbo)
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