E46 320D

Advice would be appreciated. Car stopped around 80 miles after a diesel fill
up. Garage say they found petrol in with the diesel. The repair will be a
drain, clean, refill, and the replacement of catalyst, intercooler and and
turbo. How can the intercooler and turbo be affected, I thought that they
only see air?

"Richard Barley" > wrote in message
...
> Advice would be appreciated. Car stopped around 80 miles after a diesel
> fill up. Garage say they found petrol in with the diesel. The repair will
> be a drain, clean, refill, and the replacement of catalyst, intercooler
> and and turbo. How can the intercooler and turbo be affected, I thought
> that they only see air?

Chances are that everything will be ok with a flush through, but you don't
say if the garage is a bmw dealer or not - the dealer policy would appear to
be not to flush but to replace pumps, injectors, lines, catalyst etc, but
the intercooler will DEFINITELY NOT be affected.
I strongly suspect that the turbo will probably survive ok as well, they can
survive running whilst glowing cherry red on some performance petrol engines
when at max chat, so I seriously doubt that a little bit of petrol getting
into the diesel system and stopping the engine would do any harm to it!
There's more chance of the petrol causing insufficient lubrication of the
high pressure injector pump and consequent damage, but even that is rather
unlikely unless you were at max chat when the petrol got drawn through.
I think your garage is probably "extracting the michael". If it were mine,
and it wasn't under bmw warranty and already at a main dealer, I'd instruct
them to fully drain and flush the whole system and change nothing until you
see how it runs. The cat may be affected by having petrol combustion
byproducts fed into it, but it also may not.
Badger.

Thanks Badger your analysis seems logical. When an independent engineer
looked at the car he confirmed traces of petrol, but only after looking
hard.
The car had been filled with 45 litres of diesel before it went pop, so any
petrol was certainly in the minority.
"Badger" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Richard Barley" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Advice would be appreciated. Car stopped around 80 miles after a diesel
>> fill up. Garage say they found petrol in with the diesel. The repair will
>> be a drain, clean, refill, and the replacement of catalyst, intercooler
>> and and turbo. How can the intercooler and turbo be affected, I thought
>> that they only see air?
>
> Chances are that everything will be ok with a flush through, but you don't
> say if the garage is a bmw dealer or not - the dealer policy would appear
> to be not to flush but to replace pumps, injectors, lines, catalyst etc,
> but the intercooler will DEFINITELY NOT be affected.
> I strongly suspect that the turbo will probably survive ok as well, they
> can survive running whilst glowing cherry red on some performance petrol
> engines when at max chat, so I seriously doubt that a little bit of petrol
> getting into the diesel system and stopping the engine would do any harm
> to it! There's more chance of the petrol causing insufficient lubrication
> of the high pressure injector pump and consequent damage, but even that is
> rather unlikely unless you were at max chat when the petrol got drawn
> through.
> I think your garage is probably "extracting the michael". If it were mine,
> and it wasn't under bmw warranty and already at a main dealer, I'd
> instruct them to fully drain and flush the whole system and change nothing
> until you see how it runs. The cat may be affected by having petrol
> combustion byproducts fed into it, but it also may not.
> Badger.
>

"Richard Barley" > wrote in message
...
> Advice would be appreciated. Car stopped around 80 miles after a diesel
> fill up. Garage say they found petrol in with the diesel. The repair will
> be a drain, clean, refill, and the replacement of catalyst, intercooler
> and and turbo. How can the intercooler and turbo be affected, I thought
> that they only see air?
>

OTT.

Get it all cleaned up and reprime the system and it should be OK after a
couple of hundred km.

Now if you put diesel in a petrol engine - oh dear!

"Richard Barley" > wrote in message
...
> Advice would be appreciated. Car stopped around 80 miles after a diesel
> fill up. Garage say they found petrol in with the diesel. The repair will
> be a drain, clean, refill, and the replacement of catalyst, intercooler
> and and turbo. How can the intercooler and turbo be affected, I thought
> that they only see air?

Richard, howsabout an update?
Badger.