Filled diesel uxd tank with petrol? The classic Ahhh moment

[10k]

Evening chaps,

Every once in a while we all do something daft, and usually at Christmas!! On this occasion there was no alcohol involved to blame, just your basic 'fill the diesel tank with petrol at the garage and then drive off scenario'. So I got a mile from garage then it conked out. I normally run it on vegoil mix but had run out and the low tank light was on, thus the trip to the garage.

Car got towed to workshop and there I blew air down the fat and thin fuel lines to the tank and blew air from the fuel line bulb up to the filter once the filter was out. I also let the filter drain into a cup. I put 30 ltr of veg oil in the tank, which already has £22 of petrol and then tried turning over the engine. Nothing doing there. I took the fuel filter out and there was no fuel being drawn from the tank. I guess I turned over the car maybe 10 times, which I would have thought would bring a supply up. However the battery went flat after that so its now on charge. O h yes I also put a differnt battery in the car and put some veg oil mix directly into the fule filter housing and tried turning the car over like that but nothing doing there either?

i'm sure there is stuff about injectors and fuel lines and pressure issues i'm missing here to get the car going. I really need to have the car on the road tomorrow any advice would be very welcome.

Thanks

[Northern_Mike]

Sounds like it's got air in the fuel lines. I wouldn't worry about the injectors or pump itself, those old lumps will run on just about that burns. Many mix in petrol with the veg oil mix in winter. It does sound like you might have too much petrol in there to me. They run well on a 5-10% mix of veg and petrol in winter. Personally, I'd fill it with veg or diesel, and make sure the lines are bled through at the injector end.

[10k]

Sounds like it's got air in the fuel lines. I wouldn't worry about the injectors or pump itself, those old lumps will run on just about that burns. Many mix in petrol with the veg oil mix in winter. It does sound like you might have too much petrol in there to me. They run well on a 5-10% mix of veg and petrol in winter. Personally, I'd fill it with veg or diesel, and make sure the lines are bled through at the injector end.

Thanks for thoughts, the Xantia normally runs on 10% petrol and the rest filtered veg oil. On this occasion looks like its the other way round!
I'm wondering why the fuel wasn't getting drawn up to the filter? As part of that I guess I also need to know how to bleed the lines through at the injector end?

[Northern_Mike]

Pump the fuel bulb with your hand until it goes hard. This might take some time. This *should* give you some fuel at the engine end, and depending on the mix of fuel, it *should* fire after some cranking. The last car I did this on was an old diesel Merc that was supposed to be self-bleeding, but wasn't. Just loosening the fuel lines on the injectors so the air could get out speeded the process up considerably. The owners manual for that Merc also said that you could crank it for up to a minute to draw fuel up... so, it does take some time on some engines.

The air will have got in when you blew the fuel lines out. Diesel engines are a bit of a mystery when it comes to air injestion It can get trapped in various places.