Over the years, sedans and other cars have seen a drastic shift to Diesel engines. Petrol cars were already in a very high amount, but the addition of Diesel engines has given car enthusiasts a new option to consider. This intermix of different vehicle types has also resulted in a lot of wrong fuel problems.
In order to resolve wrong fuel issues, you’ll need a great service which flushes all the mixed fuel from your car tank and refuels your car with fresh fuel for which your car is designed to run with. This will bring the car back to normal but it is imperative to know first what wrong fuel exactly is.
What is Wrong Fuel?
Wrong Fuel is an occurrence when a person fills a fuel in his car which is not designed to run on that engine. When a fuel which is not designed to run on a specific engine enters its combustion chamber, the engine is bound to have difficulties burning it. This greatly affects the performance of the car and also damages parts of the engine.
Types of Wrong Fuel
There are many types of wrong fuel but the main kinds which are the most common are two. The first is putting Petrol in Diesel car engine and the second one is inserting Diesel in a Petrol car engine. Both have their disadvantages which are important to be kept in mind.
The four overall types are:
- Petrol in Diesel
- Diesel in Petrol
- Unleaded in Diesel
- AdBlue in Diesel
What happens when you put Petrol in a Diesel Car?
When you put Petrol in your Diesel car, it has a lot of repercussions than you might think. If not taken care of in time, Petrol can destroy your entire engine. So, this issue must be given priority to make sure that your car doesn’t get damaged. Petrol is flammable and dry, so it also increases the friction between engine parts, resulting in increased resistance and damage to engine parts including the fuel pump.
What happens when you put Diesel in a Petrol Car?
When you insert Diesel in a Petrol car, the damages to the engine won’t be permanent. Diesel acts as a lubricant for fuel parts, so when it enters the Petrol engine, it also increases the lubrication. But, it does too much lubrication and clogs the spark plug and other engine parts.
This clogging results in layers of greasy content forming on top of engine components. Your car engine might have to be cleaned with fuel draining and adding other additives to make sure that all parts of the engine are cleaned from greasy content.
What you can do after you’ve filled Wrong Fuel?
After you have inserted the wrong fuel and have realized your mistake in time, you should stop the car immediately and don’t turn the ignition ON again. You should contact a fuel draining company which will drain all the fuel from the car tank and clean the car engine. The fuel draining company also refuels the car with the desired fuel, so that the car can be ready to be driven once more. At the start, the car might struggle a bit but it will get back to its best once more after some time.
Parts damaged due to Wrong Fuel
When someone inserts the wrong fuel in their cars, the biggest brunt of this blunder is faced by the parts inside the engine. An engine is not made of one or two parts. It runs due to the collective work of several parts, and damage to any of those parts will greatly reduce the engine efficiency and affect its performance.
When someone enters Diesel in a Petrol engine, the detriments of putting the wrong fuel are not as much when someone enters Petrol in a Diesel engine. The only disadvantage might be that due to clogging, the spark plug of the gasoline engine might have to be either cleaned or replaced, and that’s about it. But, when Petrol in entered in a Diesel engine, there will be several parts which will be damaged, and hence the Diesel engine’s running will be greatly affected.
Catalytic Converter
The duty of the catalytic converter is taking the exhaust coming out of the Diesel engine, which are highly toxic exhaust gases and converting them into low toxicity pollutants with the help of a redox catalyst. Putting the wrong fuel can impact the catalytic converter greatly and one way or the other, it will either not let the exhaust gases through if it is clogged or it will let out too many gases if cracked. Both cases are very harmful for both the car engine as well as the environment.
Oxygen Sensors
The main job of the oxygen sensor is to measure the amount of oxygen present in the fuel at a specific time. Oxygen sensors can also be affected when wrong fuel is put in car tanks. Failure of the oxygen sensor running properly affects the performance of the car. The car will run jerkily and with less efficiency, and the fuel consumption will become really high which will greatly reduce the engine’s efficiency by which it runs.
Injectors
The main task of injector is to provide fuel to the engine in the form of a fine mist. Regular and timely supplying of fuel to the engine keeps it running. The injector also has to deliver fuel to the engine precisely at specific time intervals. If the injector is not running properly, the supply of fuel to the engine will be affected and its performance will be highly reduced.
Carburettor
The basic function of a carburettor in the gasoline engine is to mix the air and fuel properly to ensure that the combustion process takes place smoothly. The carburettor can be damaged if wrong fuel is inserted inside of it. When the carburettor is damaged or not working properly as expected, the air and fuel will not be properly mixed and the burning process will be highly affected with it as well.
Fuel Tank
When you insert the wrong fuel in your car, the fuel is placed inside the fuel tank of the car. If the tank already contains some fuel and some incorrect oil is mistakenly put inside of it, then all the fuel mixture inside becomes useless and results in contamination of the tank.
The solution in this case is getting the whole fuel tank drained of the fuel inside of it, and refuelling it with the fuel which both the tank and the car support. Only this will help the car return back to performing to its normal capacity.
What can you do to tackle Misfuelling?
There are some things which you can do to avoid misfuelling issues at all. The first thing you can do is placing a sticker on the fuel tank insertion cap. So, whenever you see the sticker on the cap, you’ll realize the mistake you were about to make.
Another thing you can do is that the Diesel fuel hole is quite big in Diesel cars. So, what you can do is place a neck on the hole so that the wrong-sized nozzle cannot be inserted inside, and you realize your mistake in time. With these approaches, you can somehow avoid the incorrect fuel mistakes, but these approaches do not offer any guarantees.