It’s spring! It’s time to start working on your project car, learn a new twisting skill, learn how things work underneath the hood, or simply give your everyday vehicle a makeover. All month long, we’ll review our best do-it-yourself, maintenance, and information articles from Jalopnik’s nearly 20-year history to get you ready to go. Welcome to Jalopnik’s Spring Tuning.
Thankfully it’s a rare problem, but a horror : An accidentally driving accidentally pumping diesel fuel into their gasoline-powered cars, somehow bypassing the built-in safety feature where the diesel fuel injector doesn’t fit into the gasoline car’s fuel filler. This is bad for your engine, so if it happens, here’s what to do next.
a Jalopnik Readers cousin put diesel in a (running on traditional gasoline) Toyota Camry 2010, and having driven it a few miles before, sure car stop.
Complete email:
This may not be in your wheelhouse (no pun intended), but the extent of the damage that can be done to a diesel engine in What does a petrol engine do? My cousin accidentally poured diesel into his 2010 Camry and drove it for a few miles until it stopped. He took it to a mechanic, who was advised by his boss to flush the fuel system.
When the system was flushed, the mechanic said the car wouldn’t start and did a compression test and found that one of the cylinders wasn’t fully compressed so he told us there must be a valve. vent. Now the mechanic is saying that the whole engine is broken and it is better to buy a new one. So with my question in it, can an engine fail by accidentally putting in diesel?
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Obviously this is bad, but please explain why.
Problem
First, perhaps we need a quick summary of the differences between diesel and gasoline engines. Both fuels are refined from crude oil, but diesel is refined in a different way, and so, engines designed to run on diesel different activities. They usually have different compression ratios, different requirements air-fuel mixture, and perhaps most importantly, diesel engines use compressed air to ignite the fuel instead of spark plugs like gasoline engines use. So while both are fossil fuels, your gasoline engine only burns gasoline and your diesel engine is designed to only burn diesel.
Here’s a helpful video from our friend Jason Fenske at Technical explanation:
It’s really hard to put diesel in your gas tank if you don’t have permission come—next time you go to the gas station, check the size of upper nozzle a gas pump and compare it with a diesel pump. Diesel pump hoseyou’ll see, a little bigger and won’t fit easily in the neck of your car’s gas tank (if it goes in, it won’t go in at all). This is done on purpose, especially to prevent these kinds of risks.
So here we’re assuming that the reader’s cousin got the diesel into it in some way – from a can of gas perhaps, maybe in some reckless and ill-advised attempt to run his car in the absence of real gas, or perhaps just a untimely mixture. Who knows!
what to Do
Moving on to the real question at hand. Is our reader’s cousin a bit drunk? The short answer is: Maybe. this slightly longer answer isas you can haguessed: meif he’s not drunkRepairs won’t come cheap.
If you make this mixand you are lucky enough to realize your terrible mistake, do not start the engine. If you don’t start the engine, your fuel tank will easily drain before the wrong fuel is injected into the engine. If you empty the fuel tank, drain the water, and fill it with proper fuel without even starting the engine, odds are you’ll be fine. Shame, but fine. Maybe don’t tell anyone you did this then.
But our reader’s cousin was actually driving that car, running the engine on the wrong fuel (namely, a random mixture of some diesel fuel plus whatever gasoline was left in the tank). Whether). And according to the email, Our reader’s cousin has already gone through the necessary first steps, equivalent to flushing the fuel system including fuel tank, fuel line, fuel injector, And Fuel pump. In most cases this is all that is needed and Before long, you’ll be driving again, a little wiser, if a little worse, experience.
How much poorer? According to Tim Anderson, as little as $400 or as much as $1,500, depending on the vehicle. He is owner of automobile agency in Troy, Michigan, and repaired some cars after the owner accidentally poured the wrong fuel.
But what if I flush the system? Are not enough? In the worst case, what happens if you drive the wrong fuel until your car breaks down?
It’s really conceivable how our readers’ cousins got into this situation. camry can run normally for a few minutes after filling with diesel, burn remaining gasoline in the fuel lines and never come into contact with the diesel in the tank. But soon a good amount of gasoline is consumed and the car begins to suck up a nasty mixture of diesel and gasoline.
this can result IN According to Chia-Fon Lee, a professor of mechanical engineering and an internal combustion expert at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the engine damage was severe.
First, because engines aren’t designed to burn diesel (or diesel/gasoline blends), the engine will start to slouch and misfire. This can by itself cause damage to piston or cylinder headleads to loss of compression, Lee adds that most people will turn off engine before the worst happens. Rough running, bad sounding engines clearly indicate that something is wrong.
How to fix in the worst case? Complete rebuild the engine.
Even if your engine isn’t so damaged that it won’t run, you can cause problems that only become apparent later. John Heywood, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, says it’s likely that sediment builds up when the valve is closed while driving on rough roads. diesel engine, resulting in loss of compression, although he added he would be “surprised” if any permanent damage occurred.
Whatever happens, things go awry for readers’ cousins. In a follow-up email, the reader said his cousin must Toyota engine replacement at a cost of $2,300. So bad! But it can also be a lesson for the rest of us.
What should you do then if you accidentally pour diesel into the gas tank? Don’t drive, obviously, or at least, turn it off immediately and drag it in for repair. It can still be saved.
