Diesel in petrol car!

[technophobic]

what do I do

[mr rusty]

See-http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Motoring/Cars/Q uestion318012.html

[Agent_Smith]

how much diesel have you put in? and i wouldnt have thought you could do more damage in a petrol engine that if you put petrol in a diesel?

first thing i would do is call the rac/aa if your in one of those,if not you have got to get the tank drained (this is if you have filled it to the top) if you have only put a tenners worth in, fill it up with petrol? it may run sh1te for a while but it will sort itself out?

alternativly, you could take it to a garage and let them tell you what you really dont want to hear and spend loads of money letting them sort it?

[ugly_bob]

er.. diesel in a petrol engine is BAD<\b> news. Diesel is more explosive than petrol and will blow your engine apart!
You need to get your tank drained and filled with petrol.
If there's only a small proportion of diesel mixed with the petrol, you should get away without any serious damage.

[Siamsal]

Diesel more explosive than petrol? I find that hard to believe. I know you can throw lighted matches into a tin of diesel and they go out. I wouldn't like to try that with petrol.

[woodchopper]

I can see what ugly bob is saying - diesel is more powerful but only due to the higher compression ratio
within a diesel engine - a petrol engine generally has a lower compression ratio.
As for putting diesel in a petrol car - i would have thought that would choke/ruin the catalytic converter.

[Gef]

I just wonder how you managed to do it. A diesel nozzle at the garage is too big to fit into a petrol filler pipe unless it is a very old car.

http://www.carpages.co.uk/news/forecourt-opera tor-29-08-05.asp

[Siamsal]

As regards the catalytic converter, why would it damage it? My diesel, along with most others now, I guess, has a catalytic converter.

If it were my car, if the engine ran apparently normally, I'd just run it, topping up with petrol as often as possible.

Though with too high a conentration of diesel, I doubt it would run.