Diesel in generator

[trubru2u]

Does anyone have any ideas of how to take care of this: A construction worker tried to be nice and refilled and restarted the generator during the recent ice storm. Unfortunately he refilled it with diesel instead of gas. It ran for about four hours with unburnt diesel being thrown out of the exhaust and without him noticing that was unusual.
What should be done to restore the generator to working order??
Thanks.

 

[Terra Firma Scott]

does the generator run at all now?

i see this alot in the automotive world..somehow people manage to get the diesel nozzle in the filller neck and filler up...usually they drive off about a few blocks and it dies...

i drain the tank, purge any supply lines , fill with fuel, replace or clean the spark plugs, attempt to start it.....usually it will fire up , misfire a bit and smoke alot as it attempts to burn the remnants of diesel out of the exhaust and combustion chambers.

just think of it as someone running 2 cycle mixed gas in your generator...lubed everything up real good for you .......you should be ok to follow the same procedure in your generator..good luck

 

[C.G.S.]

Drain the fuel tank and carburetor bowl if so equiped, remove and clean the spark plugs. refill the gas tank with fresh gas , change the engine oil and filter. Try get it started it may foul the plugs so it might help to spin the engine over with out the plugs installed before you put clean plugs in it. It will smoke like **** for a little while but it should be alright.

 

[DieselPower]

Unlike filling a diesel with gas which is bad filling a gas engine with diesel is more of a inconvenience than anything. As already mentioned drain the tank and fill with gas. The plug may be fowled, you may be able to clean it up and reuse it. Once started let it run for a little bit to purge any remaining diesel from the system.

 

[trubru2u]

Thank you.

 

[Travelover]

I've run gas engines on diesel before with no bad effects, other than once cold they won't restart until you get pure gas back into the carburetor.

In fact, back in the day, some stationary engines had two tanks, a small gas tank and a larger diesel tank. You'd start it on gas, switch to diesel, then switch back before you shut if off.