GASSY DIESEL

I own a 2006 Chevy Silverado 2500HD, Allison, Duramax 6.6L. I put 24 gallons of gas into the tank, which still had about 1.5 gallons of diesel remaining. I then drove about nine miles. Other than a slight increase in diesel noises, everything seemed OK. I parked it and shut it down.

I returned to the truck a couple of hours later. It would not restart. I tried three times and then flashed back to the image of the pump. I realized I grabbed the wrong nozzle. Smelling the filler spout confirmed the error ... which resulted in an embarrassing tow truck ride home.

I fixed it by using a siphon pump and several gas containers to empty the tank. I then replaced the fuel filter and added 5 gallons of diesel. When priming the fuel filter, I kept pumping until only diesel fuel came out of the bleeder port. I caught the overflow in a drain pan.

Then, I was ready to attempt a restart. I figured I'd give it three tries for 10 seconds each. The first and second tries did nothing but crank the engine and do more to purge the fuel lines. On the third try, it fired up, ran erratically for about 10 seconds or so and then smoothed right out.

Once my truck was running smoothly, I drove to a nearby diesel fuel station, filled the truck with diesel, and the normal engine sounds and exhaust smell returned. All seems to be fine now. I dodged a bullet—and my gardener just scored 25 gallons of free lawnmower gas ... with a little diesel fuel additive.

Rich Pascuzzo Via e-mail

Hey, Rich,

You did good! That's basically what I would recommend for anyone in a situation such as yours. Thank you for giving us your solution.

As you mentioned, the fuel mixture shouldn't be wasted. Just use it in an engine that isn't too picky, such as a lawn mower. If the mixture is mostly diesel, I'd only use 10 to 20 percent of the gas/diesel mix per lawn mower tank with the balance straight pump gas.