I have a 2007 Volvo XC90 diesel. Yesterday I had a moment of true stupidity and mistakenly put unleaded fuel into my diesel car. I drove it for about 20 miles. The next morning it stalled coming out of the driveway and I realized suddenly what I had done. How deadly is this mistake going to be for my car? I think it was only about 1/4 full of diesel when I added the regular fuel…
Did you FILL it with gasoline? Giving you a 3 to 1 gasoline to Diesel ratio?
This could be bad news…Step one is the drain the fuel and flush the lines. See if it will run. If it runs, have a real compression test performed and see if it’s within spec.
Agree on the first thing being to drain the tank and lines, along with flushing the lines.
One of my worries is the condition of the injection pump. It depends on the natural lubricity of diesel fuel to operate normally; needless to say, gasoline is an awful lubricant. I’m hoping that the pump hasn’t been damaged as a result, because they are VERY expensive to repair/replace.
Unless this is a common-rail diesel system, which I don’t believe uses an injection pump in the traditional sense…
This is bad news and is going to be an expensive repair. One of the truck drivers at one of my former employers did this, and it required a lot of man hours to fix. Unfortunately, I can’t be more specific than that.
So there seems to be agreement that it is going to be expensive…but are we talking the ballpark of $1000 or $10,000? I’m starting to panic. Too bad auto insurance doesn’t have “momentary lapse of reason” coverage.
By the way, my research indicates that it is, indeed, a common rail diesel system…