In this article will will demonstrate the true effect of putting petrol into diesel car and diesel fuel into a petrol car. This is one of the most embarrassing mistakes you can make. It’s easy to do, and hundreds of thousands of drivers do it every year. The schoolboy error in question is called miss fueling putting the wrong sort of fuel into your car. Whether petrol into diesel or diesel into petrol. More than one in seven of us have done it. Men are twice as likely to commit this humiliating error than women.
Some of the most frequent miss fuelers are police officers. Your garage is likely to prescribe a new fuel tank, new fuel lines and new fuel pump, new injectors, in fact, the whole fuel system. A cost of thousands of pounds factoring the environmental problem of disposing of contaminated fuel. You can see, why miss fueling cost British motorists millions of pounds a year. Sometimes your insurance will cover the mistake. But often in a quote, but is it essential to replace everything or would say a quick blast down the road with the right fuel be enough to sort everything out. To find out, I bought a couple of old cars, one diesel, and one petrol. We are gonna see how they cope on the wrong fuel.
Diesel fuel into a Petrol car.
In practice, diesel nozzles are slightly wider than petrol ones, and any petrol car with a catalyst should have a narrower fuel filler neck that prevents miss fueling. But even though it’s a tough push to get it in. Over 20,000 people make this mistake every year. Now in a petrol engine, the power is produced by the spark plug. Igniting a compressed mixture of petrol and air. But diesel has a much higher flashpoint than petrol. Meaning it’s much harder to ignite.So there’s a possibility, the engine just won’t go at all. The tank in our escort was nearly empty of unleaded, and I’ll be putting in five liters of diesel.
The sort of amount you might put in on the forecourt before realizing your mistake. Right, let’s try it starts. The vehicle is moving as seen in the video with the wrong fuel, which is a good thing. At first, the diesel in a petrol car didn’t seem to have any unusual effects. But after a few minutes, the car started to shudder. We’ll have to do something. Probably time to remove off this contaminated fuel and put in some fresh unleaded petrol and see if we can restore it to health.
Which is easier said than done this car seemed to be fitted with an anti-siphoning device, so we abandoned the idea left the diesel in it and filled it up with its usual petrol. Surprisingly after a few minutes, the car seemed pretty much back to normal. But has its brief encounter with the wrong fuel damage the catalyst. We did an emissions test to find out, it passed. So putting diesel into your petrol car doesn’t seem to be a disaster at least once you’ve recovered from your initial loss of face.
Petrol into Diesel car.
Diesel has no lubricating effect, and it’s particularly likely to damage the fuel pump. A more modern diesel engine would be much more likely to be destroyed by now. Because the pumps run at much higher pressures and to tighter tolerances. But I’ve driven up and down for around 15 miles, and the Astra seems to be running on petrol very happily. Hey if anything feels a bit quicker. After about half an hour playing around the only signs of anything wrong were sparking falling from a newly-developed hole in the exhaust. Apart from that, the car had been running fine. But then during our emissions test, things took a turn.
It actually stopped doing his emissions test. Let’s try and start it again. Gonna try burning diesel in if we’re gonna store it to life, maybe if we fill the tank with its original fuel. I could flush out the petrol and have it up and be running again. The moment of truth. It looks like a victory, but then the engine died again eventually after a few attempts. I had it working still the diesel was starting to run through usually. The smoke gradually turned to the right diesel color.
Time for a test drive, and it was fine the very next day I went shopping in it. The day after that I took it for a children mile drive on the motorway. Indeed proves you don’t always need to replace the fuel system at great expense. Though I would suggest, you have the fuel tank drained professionally. If your car’s worth more.
I don’t suppose a highly tuned modern diesel would be so robust, but this exercise indeed restores your faith in old cars.
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