[William_86]

Hello I'm in south padre island tx with some fiends, one of them refilled with diesel, it's a 2008 Honda vtx 1800 fuel injected, it had about one quarter of fuel when refilled with the wrong hose, the bike started to lose power and hesitate a lot, using a small hose from Walmart manage to get almost all the fluid from the fuel tank and refilled with regular gas and added a can of deadpan, It worked better but still pops on the exhaust a lot then we changed the sparkplugs
And now works smooth and quiet but it's smoking a lot my fiend also added half can of seafoam, what should we worry about? We will drive back to Mexico tomorrow

 

[Bellboy40]

Hi William, I think it should be ok now since you have drained all the diesel out and refilled with gas. The smoking now may be from the seafoam.

 

[jimsjinx]

That's gonna be one CLEAN top end! I don't think diesel fuel would harm anything for such a short duration. I'd ride the snot outa that bike, and clear out any fuel oil left in the system. I know some cages would need to have the ECU reset, but don't know about 1800's. Hope it goes well, jimsjinx

 

[AZgl1800]

The smoking will continue until that tank of fuel is gone,

when they fill it up again, the smoking should be almost all gone.

It won't hurt anything. just lubes the cylinder walls and valves a bit.

Oh, welcome to God's country! :waving:

 

[GLGREZMONKI]

Will not do any damage. It's gas into a diesel engine that would cause damge. No need to add Seafoam . After a few tanks of fuel it should be just fine

 

[wingnut]

I get this all the time in work with cars William. It will do no harm, except smoke for a while until all the diesel is burnt off. At worst, the spark plugs my oil up and need replacing, but usually even that is unlikely.

 

[UNY_Pete]

My friend John did the same thing last year. After he drained it out, he says his wing has never run so good.

 

[dwsonar]

Wouldn't hurt to change the fuel filter.

 

[exavid]

Diesel isn't going to hurt the engine, I'd recommend not filling gas tanks with the stuff the engines don't run all that hot on diesel. (joke). It's going to smoke for awhile as already mentioned because a lot of diesel didn't burn in the cylinder and ended up in the mufflers. Ya just gotta keep those "fiends" from putting stuff in the bikes.

 

[AZgl1800]

The upside is, it will not damage the bike.

Ignore the smoke, it will fade away like a bad dream.

 

[redwing52]

First I should say you did exactly the right thing and long term it will not suffer any ill affects. I do know first hand of a case where that was not true but the owner did everything wrong. If you add just a little diesel it will just pass through. Too much and it won't run at all. If you're unlucky and get just the wrong mix it can fatally damage the engine. That was the case I'm refering to. Diesel burns much hotter (combustion temperature, detonation) IF you get it to ignite. It has more energy (BTU's) in a gallon than gas. The particular car I was talking of was back when the filler tubes didn't have the unleaded (smaller) hole for filling. The man was going home from a long trip and just kept going even after realizing what he had done. The motor ran bad and eventually got hot and quit. It seized up. When I took the heads off it looked just like someone used a torch to melt the piston tops. It was unrepairable. Like I said at the start, that is an extreme case and not likely to happen very often. Especially now with the smaller opening for cars. I never thought about that possibility for our bikes though. I have seen much more often gas put in to diesels. That's no good either. Very similar consequences just too different engine parts. Pumps and injectors suffer from gas in diesels as there is not enough lubricity. Best to run gas in gas and diesel in diesel. I do have a friend with an old tractor that will run on either or a mix. Don't ask me how that works. It's gotta be 30 or more years old.

 

[pcfix_3]

As said in other posts, you should be fine. I put a small bit of TCW-3 marine 2-cycle in my bikes tank without any problems (about 1 oz per 6 gal). It lubes some of the top end. I'd imagine that it will smoke until all/most of the diesel is gone from the fuel system and replacing the fuel filter wouldn't hurt. keep an eye on temps and the plugs.

 

[William_86]

Ok guys thanks for your answers, This happened to a close friend of mine while we were on the US for the SPI Bike fest, on Friday we went to San Benito HD Dealer and on our way back to the island we refuelled on Brownsville.

The fuel tank had less than a quarter of gasoline, continued the trip to the island and we all noticed there was something funny happening to his bike, poping out a lot and acting weird, no one noticed he was fueling with Diesel not even He remembers.

When we arrived to Port Isabel he said he think the fuel as bad and we bought a can of seafoam and a big bottle for taking out the fuel, added half can of seafoam and continued to the island to drain the fuel on the Hotel, as i mentioned on my first post we drained all the fuel/diesel mix as much as we could and thats when most of us noticed the funny smell and oily feeling of what he had on the tank, then we all agreed that it was diesel.

Filled the tank with regular gasoline the bike ran better but still was poping a lot on the exhaust and smoking since he had added a whole can of seafoam we blamed it to it, Now that someone mentioned that Diesel runs hotter i remember i noticed the front cylidner exhaust getting the chrome burnt to blue on some places.

The next day we drove to o'reilly and bought a set of sparkplugs and the bike ran like new, my friend says it was running even better than before very smooth and strong but the smoking continued, we still blamed on the seafoam and decided to go on.

on our way home, the front cylinder exhaust started to look darker and ended up all oiled up from the end. the oil light suddenly lighted up and there was no sign of oil on the dip stick. added a quarter of oil and continued, on our next stop he had to add two more quarters and the smoking never stopped, So i guess my friend is a very unlucky man who managed to get the perfect mix of diesel/fuel to damage an engine.

The bike is 2008, he bought it this year with only 80 miles on it and barely has 4k miles on it so we all are sad about both, our friend and the bike.

Anyone has a clue of what could be the damage or the work that has to be done? there are no mechanics that will internally work on bike engines, so we're thinking of getting a manual and do the work or just try to find a working engine and do the swap.

 

[AZgl1800]

Hind sight is 20 20 as we all know.

When dirty fuel was first noticed, it would have been best to completely drain the tank and put in fresh gasoline.

I never tried to run Sea Foam with diesel in a gas engine. But I can only surmise that the mixture provided a really hot flame.

I would continue to try and work with this engine, you can't "hurt it now" worse than what has been done.

Drain all of the oil out of the engine, put in fresh oil. There might be diesel in the oil itself.

By now, I am sure there is only gasoline in the fuel tank.

Ride it and see how it performs.

Pull all of the plugs and do a compression test to determine if a valve has been burned. If so, maybe he get by with just a head job and new valves where needed.

 

[donno]

It would be my guess there's a hole burned in the #1 piston. There was enough gas for the bike to still run but the addition of the diesel leaned that out. Running lean it would run really hot. The weakest point in the combustion chamber for heat is the piston. After the fuel was corrected it was too late and normal running finished burning the hole through thus blowing your oil through that cylinder and out the exhaust. It sucks but I'm thinking your friend is looking at a complete rebuild.

 

[fgh]

Half a can of Seafoam? That's like a human chugging a pint of moonshine. Don't exceed the recommended ratios on the label.

 

[Kimswang]

Half a can of Seafoam? That's like a human chugging a pint of moonshine. Don't exceed the recommended ratios on the label.

Now there is one that never partyed with a Viking.....:waving:

 

[fgh]

Now there is one that never partyed with a Viking.....:waving:

No, but always wanted to. Give me a hollar if you ever get up Jax way.:grin:

 

[redwing52]

William,
That is unfortunate and sad to hear about. The car I was referring to was a Chrysler many years ago. The damage I saw was that the piston deck had melted around the outer circumference of the top. When this happened of course the ring pack got stuck and was destroyed. The cylinders were scored beyond repair. There were multiple cylinders invoved so a sleeve was not going to work. Too expensive. We put a rebuilt in the car.

That does not mean your friends has to be to the same extent. Keep your fingers crossed that it is much less. Maybe just a piston and hone job? Maybe less if he's lucky but I think you need to get inside the thing. I'm encouraged by the fact that it ran good with new plugs. It muct still have compression. Oil is just getting by somewhere it shouldn't. I think it will be obvious when you take the head off.

 

[Hockybro]

+1 on no problem. I did it 2X & just kept adding regular gas every 50 miles. Hit the interstate & just rode North, after calling the wife & told her I had to run the bike till the smoke cleared. Great ride, both days..........