Petrol instead of diesel: what to do and what risks you run, urgent do-it-yourself interventions and possible damage to the engine and injectors.
If you put gasoline instead of diesel in your car, stop the engine immediately! I don’t want to alarm you but you could cause a lot of damage that would result in a very high expense.
Did you know that recently produced diesel cars have smart sensors that lock the tank and prevent refueling if the fuel is wrong? If you have refueled instead of diesel , your car probably does not have this option and now you are in a big mess.
Yes, because if the opposite happens, that is, if you make the wrong fuel and make diesel instead of petrol, the engine “manages to some extent” to dispose of and burn the wrong fuel … on the contrary, if you put petrol in a diesel car , you are in trouble! The first components at risk are the injectors!
Before alarming: how much petrol did you put in and above all, how much fuel did you still have in the tank and how many km did you travel?
By answering these three questions you will be able to get a picture of the gravity of the situation. For example, I present a lighter scenario to face and a more difficult one .
- If you filled up with petrol instead of diesel but the tank was half full and you only put in 20 euros of fuel, you will have to limit yourself to consult the mechanic and, almost certainly, empty the tank of the car.
- You refueled with the car that was in reserve, you even refueled and traveled several kilometers… this is the most tragic scenario.
Another variable: the more at risk are the recently produced diesel engines that are more sensitive to impurities, how new is your car?
If you find yourself in the most tragic scenario (a car with a recently produced diesel engine and a full tank of petrol in circulation) the car, at a certain point, no longer starts because it goes into protection . Basically you turn the key but the car doesn’t even mention starting.
This is because the car crashes to protect the heat engine from further damage. If this happens, however, it means that the petrol is already in circulation , so it has already passed the filter and is in the fuel system . A big trouble because your mechanic will have to remove it from each of these components.
Petrol instead of diesel
As you have seen in this long introduction, if you have loaded gasoline in the tank of a diesel car , putting the wrong fuel , you could run into a big expense. In the best case, it will be enough to empty the tank but this is not always the case.
If the fuel is already in circulation, you will need to take the car to the mechanic who will have to disassemble and clean the entire fuel system of the car , including the diesel injectors . In addition, if the injectors are very old, they may need to be changed and it will not be enough to clean them.
How much is the damage?
Unfortunately, it is not possible to quantify the economic damage because there are many variables, first of all your car model.
I must confess that, unfortunately, I too have once been so careless as to put the wrong fuel and refuel instead of diesel . The economic damage, in the end, was 600 euros, not counting the 80 euros for a full tank of petrol. I had filled up with petrol in an Audi A8 with a Euro 5 diesel engine (therefore relatively recent). The car had no safety system (it was bought in 2014) and to repair the damage, the mechanic had to:
- Completely empty the tank
- Disassemble the fuel system and clean it
- Replace the fuel filter
- Change the injectors
The cost was not linked to the replacement of the filter or the injectors as to the manpower, since, the mechanic explained to me, it is not at all easy to completely disassemble a fuel system, and carefully clean that duct that goes from the tank to the engine.
How to take out the gasoline in case of wrong fuel
If in the worst scenario you must necessarily contact the mechanic, in the best one you can do it yourself.
So what to do?
You will need to empty the tank. How? With an electric or manual transfer pump. For the purchase you can contact your trusted hardware store. Drop the hose into the fuel tank and suck all the liquid out. Then fill up with diesel (this time put the correct fuel!) By adding an additive to clean the injectors as explained in the article dedicated to dirty diesel injectors .
