Diesel and heating oil?

I don't know. Rather than risk your engine, I suggest that you use Google to find some authoritative articles on the subject, or just.ask VW.

I found a statement released by the Consumer Energy Council of America, which states:

Q: What is the difference between diesel fuel and home heating oil?

A: Home heating oil and transportation diesel are chemically identical, but in the refinery they are processed in slightly different ways for their respective sectors. In addition to having specified regulations and taxes, transportation diesel has a low sulfur standard, meaning that it must contain 0.05 percent sulfur or less. Home heating oil is required by law to contain a maximum of 0.5 percent sulfur, but due to unintentional mixing of transportation diesel and home heating oil at the refinery, the sulfur content of home heating oil usually hovers around 0.2 percent. In order to distinguish home heating oil from transportation diesel, the refiner will typically dye heating oil a cranberry color, but otherwise these fuels are the same.

END OF QUOTE

I'm not sure as to whether or not the above statement is true. It is certainly worth verifying.

Regards.

"Papa" wroteIn order to

They put red dye in "off road diesel" too. In some States however unlikely, if you get caught with the dyed stuff somehow, either being checked or by an accident, it is a humongous fine like 10 Grand. At my local station off road diesel that is dyed red is about 30 ro 40 cents a gallon cheaper than diesel but no transportation taxes paid on it like the full Diesel.

One could conceivably I guess, sneak in with fuel containers and buy off road and then put it the diesel auto in but it is taking a chance and illegal.

Harry

Besides breaking the law, you could run into some mechanical problems. The two are very similar but there are differences. I would guess that most of the time it would work. How lucky do you feel?

Can't say what might happen with a TDI, but I have done it plenty of times on older diesels with no notable problems. My understanding is that the major difference is the dye. If you run a trucking company, or have trucks moving non-road taxed diesel you may be checked for the proper color/tax diesel...but in close to a million miles of driving diesel passenger cars in the US, no one has ever checked to see what color fuel I was running. There was a while where I had a place where the home heating oil tank was right in the garage, and I ran my 79 diesel on nothing but heating oil for a couple of years.

Ah, you should be driving over in Germany. They continously check for heating oil in passenger vehicles over there. The Germans also check for illegal repair garages, IOW fixing cars is illegal unless you are state licensed. Over here in the US, you can fix cars on the side and nobody give a crap.

Another difference is that diesel fuel has additives to:

(a) prevent gelling in cold weather (b) lubricate the injection pump and injectors

It's the second one that would give me pause, given how expensive injection pumps are.

I work right on the waterfront in Portland Maine, where there are lots of fisherman who love to put off-road untaxed diesel in their cars. The State Police do fuel checks several times a year where they put up a road block and dip the tanks on all diesel vehicles. When I had my Peugeots and TDI I was checked several times. And as a previous poster pointed out, the fine starts at $10000....

Kevin Rhodes Westbrook, Maine

That is what I was trying to say (but didn't very well)...if you are someone who is likely to be checked because of a work situation, it certainly isn't worth the risk. I do not fit that profile, and have never been checked in almost 30 years of driving diesel cars.