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The guy who works at a gas station was filling up for brief moment wrong fuel type in my car until he realized what he did.

I own Citroen Xsara 1.9d, make year 2000.

Before filling the tank which is 60l capacity, I had about half tank full.

The pump pistol filled up petrol 95 for about 5-6 seconds until it automatically kicked off. Then the guy realized what he did and switched to diesel and filled the tank to the full.

After that I drove the car 2-3km.

My question is will this make any problems to my car or is the amount negligible?

tolkinski
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4 Answers4

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The main concern with using petrol in diesel systems is that diesel is used to lubricate the fuel pump, which petrol cannot perform adequately, which will shorten the useful life of the fuel system.

I think it's fair to assume that in the 5-6 seconds the fuel bowser was able to deliver no more than 2 L of petrol. 2 L out of 60 L is around 3%.

I wouldn't worry about a 3% contamination. The amount should be negligible.

Zaid
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The main problems from misfueling a diesel car with petrol stem from the fact that (as Zaid points out) petrol doesn't provide the lubrication effect of diesel fuel and as a solvent it can actually inhibit the diesel that is there from providing lubrication and this can do nasty, nasty things to the fuel pump which can then have knock-on effects to other components - including small shavings of metal (called swarf) from the damage to un-lubricated pump components getting passed down to the engine which can do significant damage to the injectors in modern diesels that run more advanced injection systems such as common-rail or VW's PD engines.

Additionally there is the potential for petrol to eat away certain seals in the fuel system and possibly the fuel lines themselves.

While this all sounds pretty scary the good news for you is that these scenarios generally involve much larger concentrations of petrol in the mix which isn't the case here.

I'm also fairly certain the engine in your car will be either the XUD9 or DW8 which aren't common-rail injection engines but used Bosch mechanical injectors instead (PSA brand their common-rail engines as "HDi" and in the Xsara only the 1.4 and 2.0 diesels in the facelifted car used it). And that small an amount of petrol which has been diluted to about 3% isn't significant enough to do any damage.

If you're wanting to be extra safe or if you aren't going to be using the car much over the next few days then it would be prudent to keep it topped up with diesel to further dilute the petrol.

motosubatsu
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This will not be a problem - in fact, some of the older truckers used to add 2% of petrol to the diesel to help in winter conditions to help reduce waxing of the diesel fuel.

Solar Mike
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The petrol will change the burn characteristics but it is minor. If you were concerned about injection system lube you could mix a little (350 ml) engine oil with a litre or so of Diesel and add that to the tank.

mongo
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