Hydraulic Oil in Fuel Tank

[lgrant]

Have a Cat 320 Excavator ran good till the other day when one of the people that work for me put two 5 gallon buckets of hydraulic oil in the fuel tank. He drained the tank and got ten 5 gallon buckets of the mix. So in the machine was eight 5 gallon buckets of diesel and two 5 gallon buckets of hydraulic oil. So my question is if the diesel still usable? Thanks

 

[OzDozer]

Of course it is. But as it is, any diesel engine running on it will produce a smokey exhaust with excessive levels of blue smoke.
Dilute the oil/diesel mixture with some more diesel, and older diesels will run just fine on it.

The exception is, any of the more modern diesels, that have ECU's that measure fuel viscosity may produce a fault code, or go into "limp home" mode with the oilier diesel.

Exhaust purification systems such as exhaust catalytic converters or DPF's may be adversely affected by the oily diesel, so don't burn it in one of the modern diesels with exhaust treatment systems.
I'm presuming your Cat 320 has Tier 4 emission controls, so I wouldn't be burning it in the 320.

 

[Diesel Dave]

Perfect fuel for a Detroit !

 

[92U 3406]

Buddy of mine used to run his old 7.3 Powerstroke on something like a 60/40 mix of diesel to used hydraulic oil. Said it never smoked either, which suprised me.

 

[farmerlund]

Sure it is useable, the older engines might be better to use it in. anything with a mechanical injection pump. just add a little every time you fill maybe 5 gal to 50 or so.

 

[OzDozer]

My brother ran out of diesel on our minesite once, and he mixed up a brew of mostly lighting kerosene and some light lube oil, and ran his 1981 HJ61 turbo-diesel Landcruiser on it!
The Landcruiser ran on this brew quite happily for many hundreds of kilometres.

Lighting kerosene has a pretty low cetane number, but the old Toyota diesel obviously accepted a fairly low cetane number for a fuel.
Maybe the lube oil increased the cetane number, I don't know - but the reason he added the lube oil was to provide some lube for the injection pump.

 

[Welder Dave]

Was the fuel tank drained before the machine was started with the oil in the tank? I'm not sure if you put the bad fuel in a bucket it would separate or not but maybe. If it did you could mostly add the diesel to the fuel tank. If not just add a couple gallons every time you fill the machine up to further dilute it.

 

[Chrisso]

Have a Cat 320 Excavator ran good till the other day when one of the people that work for me put two 5 gallon buckets of hydraulic oil in the fuel tank. He drained the tank and got ten 5 gallon buckets of the mix. So in the machine was eight 5 gallon buckets of diesel and two 5 gallon buckets of hydraulic oil. So my question is if the diesel still usable? Thanks

I swear I read a similar question in my daughters homework the other day.