Running Engine with Contaminated Diesel

There is normally a simpler way because most high pressure systems rely on the electric transfer pump to bleed the system. Some have a pressure switch which stops the pump as pressure rises. Some offroad engines have the ignition key turned anticlockwise from the 'off' to actuate the pump. Anyhow, this is not important to the man's problem.

Huw

Would you like to go away and come back when you know what you are talking about?

Do they really? Which ones then, perhaps you can provide some sort of reference?

Well it is actually, as he needs to find some way to get the fuel out of the tank, and knowing how to activate the fuel pump would help a great deal in his situation.

I thought the reason they cut out is because the line had reached pressure.

NH Powerstar engines. Sisu Fortius. DPS Powertec and common rail. Coincidentally perhaps, all of these use Bosch fuel systems with Stanadyne filters with the Stanadyne electric lift pump fitted on top of the fuel filter. Land Rover also have some way of doing this, possibly a sequence that the driver/mechanic has to follow, otherwise the TD5 is impossible to restart.

It is not important that he empties the tank as long as he has no more petrol in there than diesel. There is a lot of profiteering going on in this problem area.

Huw

Some cut out on a pressure switch, but most are on a timer.

Petrol does not destroy case hardened steel. Friction due to poor lubrication does it. High pressure pumps have very low tolerances. Even a Bosch VP30 rotary pump can be destroyed just by turning the engine over on the starter prematurely during bleeding.

If the tank is still not full then you could put a bit of oil in there and top it up to full with diesel and see how it goes. It will probably cost you the same whether you get everything renewed before it fails or afterwards. Of course, nothing might fail for a very long time. Common rail systems are, in any case, very much less reliable and far costlier to repair than older rotary injector pumps which are themselves less tolerant that in-line piston pumps.

Huw

There are cells available that will detect alcohol, smoke, carbon monoxide fumes etc, so maybe it would be possible to develop something along those lines that could differentiate between petrol and diesel fumes, this could then be used to trigger some kind of alarm if it detected petrol vapour in fuel being wrongly put into the tank of a diesel vehicle (or the other way around) any company coming up with such a device, would certainly make a lot of money!

That's certainly the way that my petrol cars have all worked - cannt speak for my diesel as that's a mechanical lift pump.

The message from Conor contains these words:

That's /one/ of the reasons. Most also won't allow the pump to run without the ECU's sayso based on having the engine actually needing all that fuel.

Why, who would buy one? Car owners certainly wouldn't, they all think they will never put the wrong fuel in, right up until the day they do. Manufacturers wouldn't, as it would add to the price of the car, for no perceived gain. About the only people I could see having any interest would perhaps be car hire firms.

Going back to basics, and I believe there may be a difference in filler holes, but I don`t know for sure... why the hell haven`t they used different shapes of nozzles for different fuel types (i.e. round for unleaded, square for diesel) - the cost to the manufacturers would probably be negligible (just stamp out a different shaped hole), and the cost to forecourts could be kept down by use of a "nozzle adaptor" that simply slides on, pending replacement of the nozzle over time.

Maybe this is something unique to the stanadyne system, probably wont help much with an Alfa though.

The TD5 workshop manual makes no mention of this. The fuel pump is described as 'two stage, SELF PRIMING wet type pump.'

Rubbish, a diesel engine will not run properly on 50:50 mix, and will almost certainly sustain damage. Besides which, even if he doesn't need to completely empty the tank, he still needs to get some fuel out.

no you cant do that we charge £130.00 to drain a mis-fuel ;o)

seriously though, long gone the days of just siphoning it into a 25 litre container, health & safety would have a fit if they saw that going on, we've had to invest in a proper fuel siphoning/draining equipment.

A young apprentice got killed and the firm fined heavily for draining fuel believe it or not into a dustbin, and the fumes got sucked into the workshop heating duct and caused an explosion.

Most systems are similar. The only common thread in those above is a mainly Bosch system combined with the increasingly common Stanadyne ultrafine filtration with the provision of an intigrated lift pump.

Run it out of fuel and you will find out it is not that easy. In fact it is damn near impossible without knowing the correct sequence. More than that even, severe and expensive damage can be caused by using wrong technique.

Huw

Yes but mass-produced a piece of standard electronic kit fitted worldwide, would hardly add anything serious to the cost of the vehicle and could probably prevent 'millions of pounds' worth of dama... oh I think I see where you're coming from!

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "SimonJ" saying something like:

Exactly. They'd buy one after they do just that, though.