what now?
not me mind you but my step mom in her '08 Mercedes diesel Grand Cherokee.
shes 100 miles from me at a truck stop, my dad is 200 miles away the other way

 

She will need to have the tank drained.

 

Get it towed and drain/drop the tank asap. Do not run/drive it.

 

Thanks. She got it towed to a local Jeep dealer who will look at it in the am.
should she worry about any long term damage?

 

I think it will be good, but I would add one qt. of 30 wt engine oil to a tank of fresh fuel, just for added protection.

 

Be sure she gets a letter from the goofball that filled the tank with gasoline. She no longer has a warranty from MB if the engine goes, so a claim needs to be filed against the filling station to make her whole!

And, these new generation MB engines are trouble prone and very expensive to repair, so she needs the warranty!

 

I would guess she is the one that filled the tank, so she would be the one at fault unless I read the first post wrong

 

Yea she filled it herself. Does the MB warranty extend past Chrysler's? Because that one is up I know.

 

This happened to me in Iraq. I was the primary driver of an Asian Ford Ranger diesel. One of my troops borrowed it and took it to the fuel point where they put MOGAS (GI for Gasoline) in it. It ran ok before, but we had to have some work done to get it to run right later on. Also made sure to stencil "Diesel" on the fuel door after that.

 

As long as she didn't start it no harm no foul. A quart of engine oil is the last thing I'd put in the fuel tank for any reason.

 

why not???

 

Because the Gasoline never made it to the Injectors.

Even in small concentrations, Gas will not cause any undue harm, we ran it up to 10 percent or so in extremely cold weather when #1 was not available.

Drain the tank, fill it with #2 ( and a bit of oil if it makes you feel better ) and drive on.

 

Why would you want to add something to the fuel that wasn't designed to be there? Engine oil has little to no cetane and unlike 30 years ago is more additive than actual base stock oil. An 08 diesel engine has a fuel injection system with components with 25 millionth of an inch clearences. Engine oil is designed for bearings with .005 inch clearence.

However getting all the gas out of the system is essential. I got this information from the TDR.

Gasoline and alcohols hit diesel fuel right where it hurts the most. Those light thin fuels will lower the cetane number and lubricity. To explain how octane and cetane DO NOT work together, I’ll have to review more crude oil and fuel fundamentals.

The light distillates that gasolines are made from have a natural high-octane index. The middle distillates that diesel fuels come from have a high cetane index. The octane and cetane indexes are INVERSE scales. A fuel that has a high octane number has a low cetane number, and a high cetane fuel has a low octane number. Anything with a high octane rating will retard diesel fuel’s ability to ignite. That’s why each fuel has developed along with different types of engine designs and fuel delivery systems. Gasoline mixed in diesel fuel will inhibit combustion in a diesel engine and diesel fuel mixed in gasoline will ignite too soon in a gasoline engine.

A lot of old-time mechanics added some gasoline to diesel to supposedly clean the carbon deposits out of the cylinders. I have never read anything that said it worked. Gasoline will make the fuel burn hotter, and hotter burning fuels burn cleaner. That’s probably where the theory got started. In the older diesel engines that belched lots of black smoke even when properly tuned, the result of adding gasoline was probably more white smoke instead of black. This might lead one to believe the engine was running cleaner. Maybe so, probably not. Here’s what happens.

Gasoline will raise the combustion temperature. This might or might not reduce carbon deposits in the cylinder. This also might or might not overheat the injector nozzle enough to cause coking on the nozzle. That’s a clogged injector tip in layman’s terms. The fuel being injected is the only thing that cools the nozzle. Diesel fuel has a lower combustion temperature than gasoline. The fuel injectors depend on the fuel burning at the correct rate and temperature for a long life. If the combustion temperature is raised long enough, the gums and varnishes in gasoline will start to cook right in the fuel injector and turn into carbon. These microscopic carbon particles will abrade the nozzle. High combustion temperatures alone will shorten fuel injector life, gasoline makes the problem worse.

Gasoline and alcohols do have an anti-gel effect on diesel fuel, but these fuels are too thin and will hurt the lubricity. Alcohols work as a water dispersant in small amounts, but also attract water in large amounts. Diesel fuel is already hydrophilic (attracts water) so why add to the problem. The old timers got away with this because high sulfur diesel fuel had enough lubricity to take some thinning. Today’s low sulfur diesel fuels have adequate lubricity, but I wouldn’t put anything in the tank that would thin out the fuel, reduce lubricity, or attract water.