What happens if you put gas in a diesel tractor engine?

Answer 1

Basically nothing good, depending on if it fired and if it ran at all, depending on engine make and type injection system. The result would be or could burned-broken piston and or liners or cylinder walls and the injector pump and injectors would all be scratched etched due to no lubrication to very closely machined parts so if you already did it it very well might cost a great deal of money and time. Worst case? Engine detonation or BOOM! Best case... you'd need to clean out all the injection lines if it didn't fire.

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First answer is partly correct....nothing good! Diesel fuel explodes in the cylinders under very high compression of the air as soon as it is injected into the oxygen. That's why diesel engines do not use spark plugs......gasoline however is much more volatile. the air and fuel is mixed into the cylinder and then compressed by the piston, and it wont explode until the spark plug shoots a spark into the mix....now if you put gasoline into a diesel engine and the cylinder compresses the air/oxygen to a very high compression ratio and then the gasoline is injected into that mix...... the result is disastrous....explosion, flying heads, flying debris....... DO NOT DO IT!

Another opinion

One fact that needs to be mentioned here: for it to be able to produce and withstand the much higher pressures which are necessary for it to work, every part of a diesel engine has to be made much heavier and stronger than the same parts in a gasoline engine. However the use of neat gasoline - undiluted by diesel - can still damage a diesel engine's fuel injector pump and its injectors. How much damage occurs mostly depends on the quality of the materials used to make them and whether they were designed to handle a small amount of fuel contaminated by gasoline.

Also, this question is asking about a a diesel tractorengine, which is a much heavier engine than any small car's engine, so the situation won't necessarily end up as disastrous - "explosion, flying heads, flying debris" - as was described above.

Here is another fact: in climates where there is a big difference in temperature between Summer and Winter seasons, the actual blends of petroleum distillates used to make gasoline and diesel fuels can't stay the same all year round. More particularly, a "Summer blend" of diesel turns to the consistency of "jello" inside the tank and fuel lines if it is used in winter temperatures. All major fuel manufacturers automatically change the blends of distillates they put into their fuels to cope with seasonal temperature changes so that drivers of diesel vehicles don't have to worry about diesel gelling.

In the old days, if the weather suddenly turned much colder, but there was still a lot of Summer diesel left in the fuel tank, wise truck or tractor drivers would put a couple of gallons of gasoline fuel into their diesel tanks to help prevent them from gelling-up. Nowadays, instead of having to add some gasoline, cans of special fuel additives are available to do the same job.

For more information please see the answer to the Related Question shown below.