A friend, thinking they were helping out has filled my 2010 cherokee with diesel fuel.

I've drained the tank by syphon and I've got to drain the system. I can't find anything on the Web to help.

I live 70 km from town so I can't just drop in somewhere and ask.

Any tips?
Rob
from Ballimore NSW Australia

 

ok, drained the tank by syphon. Good. I have no idea how much might be left in the tank. I assume diesel will not run well. However if diluted with enough gasoline, it may not harm, and be harmless at low enough concentrations.

if you can get all but a gallon out, then add 5 gallons of gasoline, shake the jeep to mix it up, jump on bumper. then syphon that out, now you have a gallon left of 20% (assuming worst case that there was 100% diesel in the tank). Now fill tank all the way with gasoline, 20 gallons, now you got 1% diesel, (worse case) which should be harmless.

that waste five gallons you syphoned might be ok for a two stroke motor or run it in a lawn mower ☺.

Thats what Id be doing.

I assume the motor was not started, if it was, the fuel filter, if like on my 1990 xj is rather large and Id replace it as it will have a good deal of diesel concentrate in it that wont be subject to syphoning. You may wish to flush the fuel system by opening the fuel line at engine and run pump if the motor was started and experienced problems. but if it was not started, just cleaning the tank might be all you need to do.

Of course if it is smoking really bad, that can kill a pricey catalytic converter, if it does smoke on that "cleaned" tankfull, well then there is too much diesel in there, so repeat the syphon and dilution process. Likewise if she runs poorly.



Its a hassel to clean, but you should be able to recover with no harm.

Boy, if I did that, putting diesel in a gasoline car, I sure will feel fuelish.
Have fun, smile!

 

2010 XJ? A 2010 Cherokee would be what we called a Liberty in North America, a model KK. In the US, the diesel nozzle is actually a little larger than the gasoline nozzle and wouldn't fit.

 

That was my initial thought... it's generally not as easy to accidentally get diesel fuel in a gasoline/petrol engine as it is the other way around due to the intentional nozzle size difference.
Unless someone was siphoning into the tank and grabbed the wrong jug/can by mistake. I've never personally siphoned diesel fuel myself so I don't know what it smells/tastes like. Petrol isn't the most pleasant taste either.. but very distinctive.

 

drain it fill it with petrol and drive it it will come good after a few tanks i did this to a Hilux once lucky it had two tanks so i just switched back and forth on the highway until i used all the diesel up but lucky i realized before too much diesel went in

 

Generally speaking, putting diesel in a gas (petrol) engine is a lot better than putting gas in a diesel engine. The latter gets expensive fast.

 

This is the correct way to proceed.

 

I had trouble disconnecting the fuel line near the engine. Once I saw the tool that's used to do that I made one.
I had syphoned as much as I could out, once I got past the anti-syphon things in the filler coupling. Then with the fuel line disconnected, I used the fuel pump to get another 20 liters out till it was dry. I put some unleaded in it and pumped that out too.

Put it all back together and after a few cranks it spluttered and fired up.

Blew some smoke for a bit but all's good now.

Saved me a bit of cash.

I was worried that the fuel system had to be bled to get it to go properly like that with other injected fuel systems but apparently not.

The fuel lines had me scratching my head to for a bit.

Thank you everyone for your help. It was great advice.

👍👏
Rob from the outback, down under

 

I love a happy ending! When people come back and post the results of their work, it makes it so much easier for people to use these threads in the future to solve their own problems.