Wife filling up at fuel stop.

Wow, you really dodged a bullet there. There was a thread here on PriusChat where someone put diesel in a rental and incurred an expensive repair bill.

SCH-I535

 

Petrol is green and diesel is black over here too and high octane unleaded is red and high performance diesel is yellow. I think the US has it opposite to most of the rest of the World.

But luckily you instigated that unleaded fuel nozzles are smaller and thus diesel pumps shouldn't fit into a petrol car. You won't have the issue we get where many many many diesel owners put unleaded nozzles into their car. With many modern diesels being quiet, you can see how the mistake is made.

A small amount of diesel (and I mean a small amount) won't cause much if any damage. A gallon probably would cause the car to small and fowl your emissions system.

You had a lucky escape.

 

Having had three diesel vehicle for a total of twenty years, putting the wrong type fuel in any of our cars has never been an issue. Anything is possible, but you can smell a diesel pump a mile away.

 

If it's a pump all on it's own.

But you can also smell it when it's one nozzle of four to choose from.

You're also likely to make the mistake if one car in the household is petrol and the other diesel. If one normally drives the petrol but borrows the diesel, that's when the mistake is likely to be made.

 

Forty years ago that's exactly what I did when I first drove a rental in Spain. I filled it at a pump marked "gasolina" not realizing that was diesel. The car shuttered and stumbled and was barely driveable. At the next station the attendant gave me an additive to put in the tank....octane booster If I recall, and the car was manageable after that. With the next fillup at the proper pump there were no more driveability issues.

 

There's no set standard for nozzle colors in the USA, you have to look at what the pump says. Also, diesel nozzles come in at least three different sizes. Luckily, your wife picked a pump with one of the larger sizes.

 

I have noticed that many BP gas stations in the US use green handles for Regular Gas. This causes me to do a double take every time. One of 2 reasons I usually don't go to BP's

 

In France, IIRC, the term for diesel was "gazol", which confused me greatly . But worst is refueling a rental car after an all-nighter on the red-eye from US to Europe, then trying to figure out what pump with which color of nozzle and foreign language label, was actually the correct one for the rental car you just had driven away from the airport. I cross-fueled a diesel with regular gas--the nozzle fit perfectly!--, but fortunately figured it out after a few seconds, so little enough was added that it mixed in and did no harm. Also fun driving on the left side of the road, rotating clockwise around roundabouts, and figuring out which traffic regulations the local folks actually obey, if any. Ah, memories!

 

I agree it's very confusing since they use both "diesel" and "gazole" (sounds like "gas" to an anglophone) synonymously over there.

 

A buddy of mine had his wife put regular into a diesel. They caught it after about 15 gallons were pumped and before they started the truck. It sucked. They had to find a pump and pump out the entire tank into 5 gallon cans.

It can happen and I bet it does more often then we think.

 

Putting gasoline into a diesel vehicle is not the disaster that putting diesel into a gasoline vehicle is. In fact the owners manual for the 1979 Mercedes diesel I drove from 1979 to 1990 had instructions on how much regular gas to mix with diesel to keep the diesel fuel from gelling in extremely cold weather when winterized diesel #2 was not available or when there was no diesel #1 available to mix in. Even when using winterized diesel #2, sometimes the only way I could get the Mercedes to run below -15 F. or so was to add regular gas.

 

Yea, but that was 25 years ago. Diesels nowadays are very sensitive to lubricity, especially with the ULSD in the pumps now.

 

But that's the problem. You're remembering a car from 1979. You could put a fair amount of diesel into a 1979 petrol car and it would still run - albeit smokily. Do that with a modern petrol car and you'll foul up the oxygen sensors, the catalyst etc.

Same applies to a modern diesel, especially the common rail diesels. Even a relatively small amount of petrol will ruin the high pressure diesel pump, the very high pressure common rail and the injectors. Gone are the days of mixing diesel with upto a quarter (or more) of petrol in winter. It might work on an old Mercedes but I'll leave you to try it on a modern diesel.

 

It won't kill even a modern diesel, I've seen it done a few times with people hauling 5th wheels stopping in the middle of nowhere and pumping mislabeled gas into their truck. Tank usually needs to be dumped and after that it will typically run fine again. Its far worse to put diesel in a gas vehicle since it will dissolve lines, ruin sensors/cat, etc.

 

Well must be something different with your diesel vehicles. It happened quite often, infact very often to the diesel cabs at the cab company I part owned, and whilst the cab would still run it was never the same and would suffer loss of power or hesitation or particle filter issues. That was if you got away lightly. If you didn't, you needed new pumps, common rail and injectors.

Might be a BIG difference between a 50 ton truck engine and passenger cars.


What to do if you put Petrol in a Diesel Car? | RAC Breakdown Cover | RAC

Put petrol in diesel car - Fuel Doctor | Wrong Fuel in Car | Fuel Drain

Also, half of all new cars sold here are diesel and from all manufacturers, not just VW and Mercedes. Putting petrol in a diesel car is more common as the petrol pump nozzle is smaller and fits in a diesel aperture (you can't put a diesel nozzle into the smaller unleaded aperture). Problems caused by this mistake are very very common and well known about as they are very expensive to fix.

And whilst we're on the subject of diesel. The ultra low sulphur diesel would destroy diesel cars that were not designed for it, including many vehicles designed for the Japanese market (grey imports which are popular here and in Ireland). You guys have only had low sulphur diesel for about 5 years. We've had it for about 15 (legally mandated from 2005 but very widely available before that time). You should start to be seeing problems any time now; mainly older diesel cars and trucks.

 

Funny how no one commented on the fact that the enemy (as they so often are portrayed here) was kind enough to prevent schmuly's wife from making this big mistake.

 

Probably coal rolled her when he left.