LOST JEEPS :: View topic - Accidentally mixing diesel and gasoline?

What would happen if you mixed gasoline (on accident) with your diesel fuel? For example, 2 gallons of gasoline to 18 gallons of diesel. I know you guys think I'm nuts, but I had a dream last night that I accidentally filled up my Cummins with 2 gallons for gasoline before I caught myself. :shock:

But somehow in my dream, I remembered that it was okay to mix small amounts of gasoline with diesel. (I don’t know if that is true or not)

Anyway, I didn't know how to drain the gasoline in my tank, so I filled her up with 18 gallons of diesel and figured it would be a good enough gas to diesel ratio to allow me to drive to the nearest shop so someone could help me drain the tank. SO, here comes the next question, what if someone accidentally did what I did in my dream. What would you do? And what is the easiest way to drain fuel from a tank? Thanks.......................

Thats good to hear from everyone, even tho I haven't put any gasoline into my CRD. I'm in the planning stages of potentially making biodiesel again, but this time I would be using Ethanol instead of Methanol as the alcohol. Since I can get E85 at home for a LOT cheaper than Methanol (Meth is like $8 per gallon now IIRC) the end percentage should look about like this:

20% E85 to oil volume, so about 1.5 gallons of gasoline in 50 gallons of biodiesel oil... less than 3/4 of a gallon in each tankful, assuming it doesn't somehow evaporate off or separate into the glycerin. I haven't run a test batch yet, so I don't know *exactly* how well it will mix or separate, but the chemistry looks sound. It should still make good bio, and cut the cost by a LOT.

I'm thinking about making biodiesel myself. Using E-85 didn't occur to me in the past. I did some math though and using E-85 may not be as economical and in light of some of the discussion above, it may not be worth the trouble...effort...risk...etc.

Assuming equal densities, for each unit of methanol used in the formulation, one would need 1.44 times as much ethanol (ratio is 1.88 for propanol and 2.31 for butanol) because of the differences in molecular weights. If E-85 costs $4.00 per gallon and correcting for the fact that it's actually 85% ethanol, the effective cost of using E-85 in place of methanol ends up being about $6.77 per gallon. So, E-85 is a tempting raw material but maybe not at the discount that we're thinking.

As mentioned above, one should expect the gasoline layer to be with the biodiesel layer or floating on top of it rather than residing in the glycerine/water/methanol layer. Its lower density and the fact that it's a hydrocarbon pretty much excludes it from partitioning into the water layer.

Where do you guys get your methanol from? What do you do with the glycerine and salts that are left over from the process?

Author:	dieselenthusiast [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 9:41 am ]
Post subject:	Accidentally mixing diesel and gasoline?
What would happen if you mixed gasoline (on accident) with your diesel fuel? For example, 2 gallons of gasoline to 18 gallons of diesel. I know you guys think I'm nuts, but I had a dream last night that I accidentally filled up my Cummins with 2 gallons for gasoline before I caught myself. But somehow in my dream, I remembered that it was okay to mix small amounts of gasoline with diesel. (I don’t know if that is true or not) Anyway, I didn't know how to drain the gasoline in my tank, so I filled her up with 18 gallons of diesel and figured it would be a good enough gas to diesel ratio to allow me to drive to the nearest shop so someone could help me drain the tank. SO, here comes the next question, what if someone accidentally did what I did in my dream. What would you do? And what is the easiest way to drain fuel from a tank? Thanks.......................

Author:	dgeist [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 9:59 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Accidentally mixing diesel and gasoline?
dieselenthusiast wrote: What would happen if you mixed gasoline (on accident) with your diesel fuel? For example, 2 gallons of gasoline to 18 gallons of diesel. I know you guys think I'm nuts, but I had a dream last night that I accidentally filled up my Cummins with 2 gallons for gasoline before I caught myself. But somehow in my dream, I remembered that it was okay to mix small amounts of gasoline with diesel. (I don’t know if that is true or not) Anyway, I didn't know how to drain the gasoline in my tank, so I filled her up with 18 gallons of diesel and figured it would be a good enough gas to diesel ratio to allow me to drive to the nearest shop so someone could help me drain the tank. SO, here comes the next question, what if someone accidentally did what I did in my dream. What would you do? And what is the easiest way to drain fuel from a tank? Thanks....................... Probably not good for the injector and injection pump and might be bad for the combustion chamber too (different burning characteristics)... also, it would only ignite AFTER the diesel ignited.. I think. Easiest way to drain it would be to disconnect the supply line from the fuel filter and let you pump do its thing... You do have a lift pump, right? After it's drained, you probably want to put a gallon or so of clean diesel in and pump that out, too, so your lines only have diesel in them. Also, drain all the lines connecting to the fuel head and replace your filter. Dan

Author:	ATXKJ [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 10:04 am ]
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I assume the Cummins are at least as tolerance as the CRD and MrMopar has said it was designed to run on a fairly high % gasoline (I'll add the link if I can find it)

Author:	bdptp73 [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 11:57 am ]
Post subject:
I would run the tank of fuel. I had a couple of gallons of gas left over from the lawn mower last year, and I added it to my jeep along with some 2-stroke oil(about 10 oz.), and it ran just fine. Me personally I wouldn't try to run more than 10% gas in the fuel. I have no statistics to back that up just my gut feeling.

Author:	john jr [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 1:55 pm ]
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It would be fine I did it in my 99 dodge put like 5 gal in b4 i caught myself

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Author:	nursecosmo [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 2:38 pm ]
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I can tell you from many miles of experience running gas blends that it will not hurt a thing and you will probably not be able to even tell that it is in there except for decreased mileage. Adding 10% gasoline to #2 thins the fuel down to about the equivalent of #1 diesel. If you are worried about the decreased lubricity just add 20oz of two stroke oil, which will raise the lubricity past what you get from the pump. Contrary to a popular myth, there is no coating on the metal surfaces of the fuel pump which is washed off by gasoline.

Author:	geordi [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:
Thats good to hear from everyone, even tho I haven't put any gasoline into my CRD. I'm in the planning stages of potentially making biodiesel again, but this time I would be using Ethanol instead of Methanol as the alcohol. Since I can get E85 at home for a LOT cheaper than Methanol (Meth is like $8 per gallon now IIRC) the end percentage should look about like this: 20% E85 to oil volume, so about 1.5 gallons of gasoline in 50 gallons of biodiesel oil... less than 3/4 of a gallon in each tankful, assuming it doesn't somehow evaporate off or separate into the glycerin. I haven't run a test batch yet, so I don't know exactly how well it will mix or separate, but the chemistry looks sound. It should still make good bio, and cut the cost by a LOT.

Author:	nursecosmo [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 2:57 pm ]
Post subject:
geordi wrote: Thats good to hear from everyone, even tho I haven't put any gasoline into my CRD. I'm in the planning stages of potentially making biodiesel again, but this time I would be using Ethanol instead of Methanol as the alcohol. Since I can get E85 at home for a LOT cheaper than Methanol (Meth is like $8 per gallon now IIRC) the end percentage should look about like this: 20% E85 to oil volume, so about 1.5 gallons of gasoline in 50 gallons of biodiesel oil... less than 3/4 of a gallon in each tankful, assuming it doesn't somehow evaporate off or separate into the glycerin. I haven't run a test batch yet, so I don't know exactly how well it will mix or separate, but the chemistry looks sound. It should still make good bio, and cut the cost by a LOT. In all of my experiments with it, the gas separated out as a layer on top.

Author:	geordi [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 3:17 pm ]
Post subject:
Cool, thats even better! As I said, I wasn't sure exactly how it would separate, but I figured something would happen b/c the molecular weights are different.

Author:	warp2diesel [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 6:14 pm ]
Post subject:	Runs lousy!
Once I got 2 gal of gasoline from a pump that was not properly marked, as soon as I smelled gasoline, I quit pumping and went to #2 and filled up the rest of the way. When I started driving the 10% gasoline it ran a little less than OK, but fired on all four cylinders, when it was putting out some torque it ran almost OK. Under very light load it would feel like a gremlin was shutting off the fuel until I pressed down harder on the accelerator. Since I was driving the concoction stayed mixed and as the contaminated fuel worked its self out of the system it ran better.

Author:	naturist [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 8:37 pm ]
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Here's the deal: if you tried to run a diesel (any diesel, VM Motori, Cummins, VW, any diesel) on 100% gasoline, it won't run at all. Puts the fire right out. At the other extreme, under 10% gasoline, might run a tad rough, might not have enough lubricity and wind up being a bit extra wearing on IP and injectors, but basically, not a major problem. The problem lies somewhere between <10% and 100%. Somewhere in there lies mixture ratios that can cause major problems. Opinion varies as to what those damaging ratios are, and I do NOT volunteer to find out by experimentation. Doesn't matter anyway. 2 gallon of gas in 18 gallons of diesel in your CRD tank is 10%, and you will probably be ok just running it. Higher than that, and it's up to you whether you want to risk it or drain, flush, and refill with known good stuff. I will tell you that all the anecdotal evidence I have (from the VW TDI forum, where a fair number of incidents have been reported) it seems that the worst possible outcome occurs when the engine runs for a while, but very poorly, before finally conking out. In such cases, damage has ranged from ruined IP and injectors to piston/rod/valve problems in a few cases. Concensus there is PAY ATTENTION WHEN FUELING, and NEVER let any friend or relative fuel your ride.

Author:	nursecosmo [ Sun Sep 21, 2008 10:33 pm ]
Post subject:
The problem with high percentages of gasoline is that the gas burns much faster than diesel. This causes injector tip burning as well as the possibility of blowtorching the pistons. There are a huge number of postings on the net comparing octane to cetane. In most of the comparisons they are stated to have opposite ignition values, which is true but the values are only true if they are applied to the same engine. Octane resists auto ignition in a low compression gas engine but in a high compression diesel engine it ignites so fast that it does bad things and can actually blow the head gasket or worse. Cetane improves diesel's ability to auto ignite when injected into a high compression engine but if it is inducted or injected into a low compression gas engine it will not ignite at all, even if it encounters spark ignition. The tendency of gasoline to burn super fast in the diesel engine is mitigated when it is added to a slow burning fuel like Veg oil or WMO, both of which have a high autoignition temp and slow flame speed. So if you accidentally put gas into the fuel tank the harmful effects can also be mitigated by adding an appropriate amount of two stroke oil.

Author:	kdlewis1975 [ Mon Sep 22, 2008 11:21 pm ]
Post subject:
I'm thinking about making biodiesel myself. Using E-85 didn't occur to me in the past. I did some math though and using E-85 may not be as economical and in light of some of the discussion above, it may not be worth the trouble...effort...risk...etc. Assuming equal densities, for each unit of methanol used in the formulation, one would need 1.44 times as much ethanol (ratio is 1.88 for propanol and 2.31 for butanol) because of the differences in molecular weights. If E-85 costs $4.00 per gallon and correcting for the fact that it's actually 85% ethanol, the effective cost of using E-85 in place of methanol ends up being about $6.77 per gallon. So, E-85 is a tempting raw material but maybe not at the discount that we're thinking. As mentioned above, one should expect the gasoline layer to be with the biodiesel layer or floating on top of it rather than residing in the glycerine/water/methanol layer. Its lower density and the fact that it's a hydrocarbon pretty much excludes it from partitioning into the water layer. Where do you guys get your methanol from? What do you do with the glycerine and salts that are left over from the process?

Author:	nursecosmo [ Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:44 am ]
Post subject:
kdlewis1975 wrote: I'm thinking about making biodiesel myself. Using E-85 didn't occur to me in the past. I did some math though and using E-85 may not be as economical and in light of some of the discussion above, it may not be worth the trouble...effort...risk...etc. Assuming equal densities, for each unit of methanol used in the formulation, one would need 1.44 times as much ethanol (ratio is 1.88 for propanol and 2.31 for butanol) because of the differences in molecular weights. If E-85 costs $4.00 per gallon and correcting for the fact that it's actually 85% ethanol, the effective cost of using E-85 in place of methanol ends up being about $6.77 per gallon. So, E-85 is a tempting raw material but maybe not at the discount that we're thinking. As mentioned above, one should expect the gasoline layer to be with the biodiesel layer or floating on top of it rather than residing in the glycerine/water/methanol layer. Its lower density and the fact that it's a hydrocarbon pretty much excludes it from partitioning into the water layer. Where do you guys get your methanol from? What do you do with the glycerine and salts that are left over from the process? The ratio of Etoh for making BD is about the same as Meoh. The "equilibrium ratio" for Methanol is ~13% by volume but because it is fairly resistant to binding with the ester chain it has to be "pushed" past the theoretical chemical equilibrium by increasing the amount to ~20 by voulme. Ethanol is much less resistant to binding with the ester chain so only 20-22% is needed for a complete reaction. I used to think that E85 would be a great alternative to Methanol but it is so finicky that I abandoned it.

Author:	tshikle [ Fri Jan 02, 2009 11:19 pm ]
Post subject:
Did this very thing this summer: Wife put almost 6 gallons in ours. She noticed she had grabbed the wrong nozzle stopped the pump and called me. We were headed out of town and I was at the parts house getting plugs for our jet ski's. I picked up a bottle of Marvel Myster Oil and a bottle of Power Service. Poured them in and finished filling it up. Hoping to do what bugnout described above. After about 40 miles it started acting up (high rpm's, lossing power, loosing speed, problems pulling hills). When we got to the lake I left it at the storage facility and called the dealer. Long story short called brother-in-law and had him bring his trailer so I could carry it to the dealer. 3 days and $600.00 later it was fixed and running great. They dropped the tank, dumped it, flushed it, flushed lines, changed fuel filter, and performed injector service. I asked about siphoning the tank to drop the mixture and found out that most vehicles have a valve in fill nozzle where it can not be siphoned. It was not totally her fault it was a new station and every handle on every pump had a green handle. The next week they changed the handles and only green handles were diesel. I talked to them about the problems the following week and of course they denied any responsibility. A lawyer would have cost me more than the case was worth so I let it drop. Later thought about buying some 5 gallon cans put it on a lift open the fuel line somewhere and turning it on and let the pump empty the tank. Filling the tank and changing the filter and going for it. Any thoughts on this. Also Insurance reimbursed us for the issue on comprehensive policy, except for deductible. I have done the same thing with my Dodge Cummins but it was only about 2 gallons and a 34 gallon tank. No problems.

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Author:	dieseltoyz [ Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:21 am ]
Post subject:
you're good rhett. 2 gallons out of 18 wont do anything. If you're worried about it, add a fuel additive like powerservice or the like. -Todd

Author:	bugnout [ Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:13 pm ]
Post subject:
Resurrecting an old thread. First time I had to put this info to the test. Just got back from a cross country trip, 16 hours on the road, grabbed the wrong nozzle at first fill up and inadvertently added 7 gallons of 87 octane. Now thats about a 33% mixture. Thought about trying to drain some from the tank, but decided to give it a go. Thought if I could get down the road about 100 miles I could dilute it more and eventually eliminate it. I decided not to shut down the engine, not sure what effect it might have on the glow plugs. It ran fine for about 20 miles, then starting noticing the effects described by Warp2diesel. Not as peppy acceleration, at cruise, I could feel the early detonation, engine temp ran a little bit higher than normal. I was in central Virginia, and it was most noticeable cruising on the flat sections with little acceleration. Climbing the hills and coasting down the other side it was tolerable. I ran it for about 80 miles with these symptoms, then stopped to top off. Added 5.4 gallons diluting the mix to 25% (I was getting 14 mpg). Filling up must have helped mix it, because after leaving the station, I didn't feel the symptoms at all. I cruised for another hour without feeling much, then about 160 miles, the symptoms returned. I suspect that gas doesn't mix completely, separates over time and the longer I cruised the more it separated out. I stopped after 200 miles to top off. This time when I stopped at the pump, it idled rather rough until I got fresh cool #2 into her. Added 14 gals diluting the mix to 7.5% (mpg about the same) and she idled smoothly. After this fillup, I never felt any more effects from the 87 octane mistake. The rest of the trip and the couple of days I've been home have been uneventful, fuel mileage returned to my normal 22mpg. I'm not recommending anyone run gas, just wanted to relate my experience. If I made this mistake again, I think I would drain enough to dilute to about 10% before continuing. crossing my fingers, but so far doesn't seem to be any ill effects. I've got 66500 miles on my CRD.

Author:	BlackLibertyCRD [ Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:34 pm ]
Post subject:
I would drain and refill with fresh #2 so no possible damage could happen. Even completly draining the tank would leave a little but not be noticeable. Less of a pain in the neck to drain than replace the engine later

Author:	geordi [ Sat Jan 03, 2009 3:19 am ]
Post subject:
"turning it on and letting it pump itself out" would only work if you have a lift pump. Chances are, when you NEED it, will be just BEFORE you have installed said pump.